However, The Blind Side only got a 70 on Rotten Tomatoes, so it ain’t like it got rave reviews (versus say The Hangover which got a modestly better 78 or Star Trek which was world’s better at 94). In fact, if you look at a slightly better movie rating site, Metacritic, The Blind Side only got a 53.

The difference in the two sites rating systems is significant. On Rotten Tomatoes they measure each critic’s opinion purely as Fresh or Rotten, meaning a mixed review that’s slightly positive would get the same weight of Fresh as a glowing review saying it was the best film ever. Metacritic on the other hand takes each critic’s review and turns it into a numerical score between 1 and 100. Also, equally important, Metacritic gives better reviewers more weight so that say the Boise Bugle’s reviewer doesn’t have the same power as the New York Times’ critic.

However, should you want to keep using Rotten Tomatoes, there are a couple of ways to get more useful information from them. First, instead of looking at the large percentage # they give you, instead check out the smaller # underneath it that says what the average rating is our of 10 (in other words, this is their attempt to do what Metacritic does but out of 10 instead of 100 — which again makes it much less specific). In that case, The Blind Side got a barely passable 6.2 out of 10. Also, instead of just looking at that main %, look at what the Top Critics’ percentage is. There you’ll see The Blind Side got a 58%, or in other words, a review of being Rotten.

Again, if you’re offended that I implied that The Blind Side was as awful as Transformers, I apologize. That was supposed to be a humorous exaggeration. But I’m offended that a Rotten film (as determined by the Top Critics on your beloved Rotten Tomatoes) was given a Best Picture nominee.

But I’m a blogger, not a journalist, so that’s just my opinion.

And you call yourself a journalist? Well maybe you don’t and I’m trying to attribute a position to you that you don’t want or deserve.