Donald Sutherland Boasts Three ‘Perfect’ Movies on Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes isn’t solely a platform for evaluating individual movies. You can also search for actors and directors to gauge how their work has been received over time. In the case of Tim Burton, interestingly, his highest-rated film wasn’t even directed by him, which can put into perspective the subjectivity of these rankings. Similarly, for Donald Sutherland, Rotten Tomatoes’ evaluation of his career highlights that one of his top-rated projects is actually a short film he narrated — “Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia.”

But it’s hard to imagine that the acclaimed star of cinematic gems like “Don’t Look Now” would want his legacy to be largely defined by a documentary on dinosaurs. Thankfully, Rotten Tomatoes has also awarded the coveted 100% rating to two other movies featuring Sutherland. Unfortunately, these movies are “Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors” and “Path To War.” The former is a 1965 British anthology horror film, where Sutherland appears in the “Vampire” segment as a doctor compelled to stake his French bride after discovering she’s a vampire. The latter is a 2002 HBO TV movie, in which Sutherland portrays presidential advisor Clark M. Clifford. Rotten Tomatoes describes it as a “dramatization of the decision-making behind the Johnson administration’s escalation of the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s.” (Surprisingly, “Path to War” is not on my list of watched films.)

Meanwhile, the perpetually brilliant and hauntingly unsettling “Don’t Look Now” holds a 93% rating. One has to wonder how a masterful Giallo-infused horror classic can have a lower rating than a short film featuring awkwardly animated, low-resolution CGI T-Rexes. It’s a confusing reality in the world of film ratings.