Disney and Marvel Studios’ Black Panther, which was a box office juggernaut and bona fide cultural phenomenon last year, also happens to be the best-reviewed wide release film of 2018. That’s according to Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregate site which just released its Golden Tomato Awards, an annual list that spotlights the best-reviewed movies of the year. Find out which films won in categories like Best Foreign Film, Best Directorial Debut, and more below.



At the risk of repeating myself, please don’t look at Rotten Tomatoes (or any other review aggregator site, for that matter) as the final word of whether or not a movie is worth your time. Movies are far too complex to be distilled down into just a percentage. Seek out and read criticism (even some you don’t agree with), and you’ll have a much richer experience.

With that out of the way, Rotten Tomatoes determined these results by using “a weighted formula that compensates for the variation in the number of reviews,” and the site separated all of the candidates into two major groups: wide release and limited release (which opened in fewer than 600 theaters upon initial release). Ryan Coogler‘s Black Panther topped the wide release list with 97% from 444 reviews, while Alfonso Cuaron‘s mesmerizing drama Roma topped the limited release list with 96% from 312 reviews.

(As The Playlist points out, the math in the limited release category seems odd: Leave No Trace came in at number 2 despite earning a 100% rating from 207 reviews. I guess that weighted formula worked in Roma‘s favor.)

Elsewhere, Roma won for Best-Reviewed Foreign Language Movie (beating Shoplifters), Bradley Cooper‘s A Star is Born took home the title for Best Directorial Debut (besting Eighth Grade, Sorry to Bother You, and Hereditary), Paddington 2 won Best United Kingdom Movie, and the Mr. Rogers doc Won’t You Be My Neighbor? was the best-reviewed documentary of last year. You can check out the rest of the categories and all of the winners here.

For comparison, last year Jordan Peele’s horror thriller Get Out won in the wide release category, beating films like The Big Sick, Dunkirk, Wonder Woman, Lady Bird, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Luca Guadagnino’s sensual indie Call Me By Your Name won in the limited category, defeating I Am Not Your Negro, The Florida Project, Mudbound, and The Salesman.