Critical consensus is overrated. Rotten Tomatoes may have trained movie-lovers to quantify a movie's worth with a percentage score in recent years, but some of the best movies ever made deeply divided critics and audiences alike. Early Hollywood star Katharine Hepburn made plenty of divisive films in her career, from the John Wayne-led Western "Rooster Cogburn" to her first Oscar-winning film, "Morning Glory," to the bold interracial marriage dramedy "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner." Time Out once called the latter, which earned 10 Oscar nominations upon release, "a wishy-washy, sanctimonious plea for tolerance, directed with Kramer's customary verbosity and stodginess."

It's a truth universally acknowledged that good movies sometimes get trashed by certain critics, but that makes the rare film that achieves complete critical consensus all the more interesting -- if not always necessarily better than the more polarizing films. Plenty of great actors only have one 100% Rotten Tomatoes score under their belt,...