Here's how the Golden Tomato Awards work:
• Limited releases are defined as opening in 500 or less theaters at initial release. Platform releases, movies initially released under 500 theaters but later receiving wider distribution, fall under this definition.
• Foreign releases are defined as non-English language films.
• Each critic from our discrete list gets one vote (as determined by their review), all weighted equally.
• A movie must have 50 or more rated reviews to be considered.
• Each movie is eligible in only one genre.
• Reviews without ratings are not counted toward the results of the Golden Tomato Awards.
• Because reviews are continually added, manually and otherwise, we have a cutoff date at which new reviews are not counted toward the Golden Tomato Awards. This year's cutoff date is 1/1/2008.
• We use a weighted formula (Bayesian) to account for variation in the number of reviews per movie. The winners are determined by the rankings, designated as the "adjusted score," after applying said formula:
(R ÷ (R+M)) × T + (M ÷ (R+M)) × A, with "R" representing the number of rated reviews, "M" the minimum number of reviews needed for a movie to qualify, "T" the Tomatometer score, and "A" the average Tomatometer of all the qualifying movies.