For movies that are still in the theater, I rarely rely on reviews, at least not officially written reviews, because I don’t see them. It’s not that I avoid them, it’s just that I don’t see them or seek them out. If my brother or mom has already seen the movie, I will trust their judgement as to whether or not I will like it. It doesn’t matter whether or not they liked it, they know my taste and have been consistently accurate when it comes to movies I will like or not like.
For movies that are currently in the theater, it is usually the trailer that I saw on TV that gave me the idea that it looked good or interesting, not a written review.
There are some movies, that I would go to see, even if I never saw a trailer, read a review, or spoke to anyone about it, just because my brain is programmed to want to see certain movies, such as anything to do with Star Trek (which I just saw today : ) and anything with Judy Densch or Maggie Smith or Helen Mirren.
With movies on Netflix, unless it has an actor whom I absolutely adore (such as Martin Clunes or Benedict Cumberbatch for example) in which case I will watch it pretty much no matter what, I will read a handful of the reviews if I don’t feel like I’m getting enough information from the overview presented on the site. About half the time, the overview is enough for me to make the decision of whether or not to watch a particular movie.
If I see a lot of great reviews (on Netflix), it kind of depends upon what is actually said as to why the reviewers like it. Same goes for the opposite. If there are a lot of bad reviews, it will depend upon why they didn’t like it. I always laugh when I read the terms “slow” and “not a lot of diaglogue” and “takes a long time before anything happens” as a sign of something I am likely to love. I don’t care for typical shoot em up American-style movies, or movies that are geared to American males aged 14–40.