Movies

There are a lot of factors that go into choosing a movie.

We have friends who always go to a Helen Mirren movie, good reviews or bad for instance. My husband is strongly influenced by trailers. Other friends look for a political content. Still others, really demand entertainment: they want to laugh if they're going to lay out $10. Another friend will see almost anything within ten minutes of her house. And I am always amazed at people around me in the theater whose decision seems to have been made on movies available at the time they turned up. Sometimes a strong partnerpal pushes the decision.

I am mostly influenced by reviews. Even if the story doesn't interest me at all, if the reviews are good I am likely to see it. Not any one reviewer but the consensus of reviews you find on rotten tomatoes or metacritic. I see an awful lot of movies--probably more than 75 a year. So that consensus figure can be pretty low for me. Anything over 70% is fair game.

What about you? What is most likely to influence your decision?