The art of film criticism has long been dominated by men, yet half of moviegoers are women.
Film producer and director Miranda Bailey wants to address that imbalance with a new movie-review aggregation site similar to Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, but for female critics only. It will feature reviews for film, TV, music, and more, according to its website, offering a women’s perspective on media. ”We’re creating a platform where women can go to and see what other critics that are their gender think about art and media,” Bailey told The Hollywood Reporter.
The service, called CherryPicks, is starting with an email newsletter, and later plans to launch a full site. Reviews will be illustrated with pits or a bowl of fresh cherries—to indicate negative or positive reviews—as opposed to the rotten and fresh tomatoes on Rotten Tomatoes.
It was announced at SXSW, during a time when women in historically male-led Hollywood are fighting for pay parity, better representation in front of and behind the camera, and against sexual harassment with the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements.
Recently, men have also been accused of tearing down movies like A Wrinkle In Time—directed by a woman, Ava DuVernay, and featuring a female-led cast—with bad reviews on review-aggregator and ratings sites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB.
It was also a male critic who ended Lady Bird‘s perfect run on Rotten Tomatoes—because he had mixed feelings about the movie and didn’t think it deserved to rank among the greatest films of all time on the site.
Actresses like Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon, and Jessica Chastain have recently questioned the gender balance of these review aggregators, and how their biases might be affecting the industry. It will be interesting to see, when the site debuts, whether reviews from female critics differ from the consensuses on Rotten Tomatoes and elsewhere.