10 Awesome Movies With 99% On Rotten Tomatoes
7. Chinatown
Were Chinatown released today, it's easy to imagine the film proving far more divisive with critics, if only because of its icky, controversial subject matter.
But as it released way back in 1974, there's only around 70 reviews registered on the Tomatometer, and just a scattered handful of them from the last decade.
That's not a knock against Roman Polanski's masterful film noir in any way, simply that its deeply nihilistic narrative and host of scarcely likeable characters would likely make it less-palatable to many contemporary critics.
But it's absolutely a film worthy of such a mighty rating, a totally bold and uncompromising thriller with a knowingly convoluted, labyrinthine plot, working fully in service of well-rounded characters, aided by sublime performances from Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston.
Curiously, the single negative review was from legendary, late film critic Gene Siskel, who called it "tedious from beginning to just before the end."
Sadly there's no word on whether or not Siskel ever re-evaluated the film before his untimely 1999 death, but it's certainly a strong outlier of an opinion.