10 Movies That Don't Deserve Their 100% Rotten Tomatoes Rating

2. Before Sunrise

For a short while earlier this year Richard Linklater's latest release, Boyhood, sat at the top of the pile with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Filmed over a period of 12 years and following the life of a boy through to early adulthood it represented a first in the history of cinema, with its central character ageing right before our eyes.

Before Sunrise is one of Linklater's earlier efforts and considerably less ambitious by comparison, focusing instead on a single night in Vienna as two backpacking students meet on a train and fall in love over the course of an evening together. While on paper this sounds like the formula for a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy, in Linklater's assured hands it's far more affecting and touching than you'd expect, not least on account of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy's on-screen chemistry.

Many people have taken critics to task for their unflinching adulation of Boyhood, pointing out that despite its structural innovation the direction is sometimes flat and uninspired and - more importantly - the dialogue feels forced and often sophomoric. While this is perhaps overly harsh, the same general observation can be made for Before Sunrise - it's frequently touching and the endless conversations between the burgeoning lovers are engaging, but here too the dialogue sometimes feels like a controlled, unnaturalistic idealised version of how people actually talk.

Linklater's greatest achievements can be found in the middle and final parts of his trillogy, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, where such problems of artifice were smoothed out almost completely.

What It Deserves: 93%