Being a movie lover beyond obsession, I crave anything that takes movies seriously. I read books on movies, learn how to make movies, appreciate the jobs on a movie set, the whole lot of it. And I especially read movie reviews from several well-established and not so established places. Until recently, I was fine with how reviews are provided, but then I joined GWC.
I realized that critics weren’t really people who loved movies with the same passion I did, but seemed to simply appear to be in the more cynical cases or just wants to appear more authorative in lesser. Critics all crave authority in the subject, which is ironic since most of them have either never made a movie or failed at it. And almost all of them mistaken having a more sensitive pallate for films as having “taste”.
But I myself don’t like every movie made, some I downright hate. I like writing about movies and am not afraid to say a movie sucks, so what makes me different? Then I realized that I don’t WANT to say it. I want to think of every bad movie as a learning expirience by the filmmakers. Some learn, others don’t. When I write, I like to feel like I’m giving notes to the filmmakers with an aura of good-spiritness. I remember my high school mentor and how he would criticize school play productions and I emulate that tone.
Which leads me to my confundity when I saw the early reviews for Battle Los Angeles. These reviews were simply bile and hateful. The established critics were using this as a tentpole for their rants on Hollywood. The lessers simply joined the bandwagon. The ones who liked the movie either appeared to be non-objective or wanting their bi-line on the ads. Not one made me feel they were sincere reviews. This was last seen with Transformers 2 and I fear they will get more cruel as the year gets longer. But who are they talking to really? I am still going to see it as will others. The people who need these reviews weren’t going to see it anyways.
Most art enjoys if not neccessarily needs validation. Popular art is just that and really doesn’t need validation though it’s life expectancy is going to be short. And critics have never really been revered whereas learned enthusiests are more welcome. Roger Ebert has forgotten that in recent years. We love him for his knowledge, but turn away once he begins to get shrewd. So why even be critical? Why not simply implore what works and what doesn’t without getting personal.
But then again, does art require it’s enthusiests to be personal when playing the herald?
I haven’t read a lot of reviews on B:LA since I’m not terribly interested in it, but Ebert’s review manages to convey the anger he felt for having to sit through it,
Here’s a science-fiction film that’s an insult to the words “science” and “fiction,” and the hyphen in between them. You want to cut it up to clean under your fingernails.
with some insights into what went wrong.
In a good movie, we understand where the heroes are, and where their opponents are, and why, and when they fire on each other, we understand the geometry. In a mess like this, the frame is filled with flashes and explosions and shots so brief that nothing makes sense.
I have read his review and it is possibly the worst of the lot so far. His last paragraph was uncalled for completely. I get it that he doesn’t like the movie, but does he have to insult the director? I’m not saying Ebert is wrong. This movie might be crap. But what is the purpose of this review? It seems like he knows his words aren’t going to stop people seeing the movie, so why not piss all over it in the process.
My issue isn’t why critics hate, but how they hate and to what purpose that hate has. Critics acting like this appears petulent and sour. Most people don’t trust critics with blockbusters like they do with indie movies AS IT SHOULD. Critics should focus on the new and not so much on the popular. But that’s my opinion.
In my opinion, movie critics and reviewers are simply people who think their opinion is of more importance or more correct than anyone else’s. And therefore they have to tell everyone one else what they should think about what they’ve reviewed. And they like to hear their own voices. Like business executives or politicians.
I ignore all the reviews for any movie. I go see what interests me and decide if it was good or if I’ve wasted time and money on craaaaap.
Oh and I’ll be seeing Red Riding Hood this weekend and not Battle: Los Angeles. I have a gut feeling from B:LA’s trailers that we’ve seen it’s best moments already so I’ll wait for DVD release for it.
Part of what I do is called being a critic, but I think the separation between academic criticism and journalistic criticism is a bit more distinct than perhaps it should be.
I know I commented on one podcast about this (and Audra has too, as a fellow literary studies person), but criticism isn’t about pointing out what’s wrong. It’s about seeing the ways in which pieces of art work, and the ways that they interact with the culture from which they spring. It’s the difference between someone panning Battlestar Galactica as “melodramatic” or “space opera” because something didn’t work for them with it (journalistic criticism) and books like Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy. That doesn’t mean that individuals don’t have their opinions about works of art, but I’m not sure I’d call those opinions criticism (even though I know that’s what papers and magazines expect from critics). Rather, it’s someone who stakes a claim about their knowledge of a field, and puts forth an opinion whose importance is couched in those terms.
Long story short: I don’t read popular criticism much because I don’t really get anything out of it. If I’m looking for recommendations for something to see in a movie theater versus waiting for Netflix, I’ll come here and see what people I trust say. And without the bile that some people think makes them erudite.
Well, the point of movie (and book, etc.) critics is that you should have an idea of their taste and/or expertise. More of the former in the movie department, because the reviews are a little more timely. (You can’t read a book in two hours.)
So, you take their prejudices into account. Speed Racer got widely panned, but I expected that and saw it anyway, to my delight. (Ebert is fascinating to me because he genuinely takes each genre on its own terms, which makes him harder to filter.)
Similarly, I ignored Community b/c it seemed like a boring rehash of a dated trope, but when genre folks started praising I gave it a look, again to my delight. (Glee is next on my Really? OK. list)
tl;dr I’m not turned off by hating on something, it’s just a data point to be referred to later.
As fellow geeks, I wonder of ya’ll are like me in this respect:
When I choose a see a movie, the subject matter weighs pretty heavy versus whether or not it got a good review.
In other words, I’d rather see a bad transformers movie—cuz transformers are interesting-----than see a good, well made horror flick. (Okay, maybe that’s a poor example cuz I have seen Transformers 2).
Besides subject matter, there’s other things like “Do I like the actor/actress?”.
The Star Wars prequels were pretty seriously flawed, but I got enjoyment out of them --and I like the universe…etc etc.
My point is that, especially for geeks, the opinions of movie critics does not maybe have as big an influence on what I’ll choose to watch.
Moviedude, you need to get yourself a copy of the Lexicon of Musical Invective by Nicholas Slonimsky. It’s not about movies, sure, but it’s a great collection of BAD reviews (some downright mean, like this one, by a great composer on another great composer’s work: “I was reading through the music of Brahms, what a giftless bastard!”). Invective in criticism is par for the course. It’s been there from the beginning (the mid-19th century, when the middle class rose in afluence and could afford theatrical and musical entertainment, which had only recently gone public with the collapse of the aristocratic and liturgical patronage system) as critics took on the role of arbiters for a public who were being bombarded with options vying for their attention and their money. Some critics took on their role more seriously than others, becoming as much social critics and art theorists as commercial critics (this is still the case: a review on USA Today is very different than a write up on Cahiers du Cinema), and many of which were practicing artists themselves (this seems to be less so today, as it could be seen as a conflict of interst, although plenty of artists make their views on other artists’ work known in their blogs, etc.).
Certain movies, plays, albums, etc. will be critic proof and others won’t be. It all depends. Some critics are good, some not so much (and some are in the middle. I know one music critic who is an EXCELLENT writer whenever he is writing a bad review or a think piece, but whose good reviews are just impossible to read. It’s like he just can’t bring himself to unabashedly praise something and spends the entirety of his reviews skirting the issue!), and you have to take it with a grain of salt. If you’re interested in Battle: Los Angeles, then you should go see it and make up your own mind. If you’re on the fence, then a critic’s view (or several critics’ views) can help you make up your mind as to whether or not to spend your money on the film.
In my opinion, movie critics and reviewers are simply people who think their opinion is of more importance or more correct than anyone else’s. And therefore they have to tell everyone one else what they should think about what they’ve reviewed. And they like to hear their own voices. Like business executives or politicians.
This is true of some critics, but not all. The best critics are informed professionals who not only love the medium about which they write but have also studied it intensely.
Am I seriously defending critics in this argument, though? Critics who said of a piece of mine that it was “so loveless as to turn you off romance forever?” :eek:
Yeah, you think it’s bad reading critics reviewing a movie you want to see? Try being on the receiving end of invective. That review shook me for weeks.
As fellow geeks, I wonder of ya’ll are like me in this respect:
When I choose a see a movie, the subject matter weighs pretty heavy versus whether or not it got a good review.
In other words, I’d rather see a bad transformers movie—cuz transformers are interesting-----than see a good, well made horror flick. (Okay, maybe that’s a poor example cuz I have seen Transformers 2).
Besides subject matter, there’s other things like “Do I like the actor/actress?”.
The Star Wars prequels were pretty seriously flawed, but I got enjoyment out of them --and I like the universe…etc etc.
My point is that, especially for geeks, the opinions of movie critics does not maybe have as big an influence on what I’ll choose to watch.
I find reviews useful in making up my mind when I don’t know anything about a movie. I’m an odd geek, though, because I don’t just go to genre movies because they’re genre movies (unless they’re Star Wars, and even so, I have avoided Clone Wars on TV because of the prequels, though I’ve been getting enough positive buzz from friends I trust to move it to a “to check out” pile). An interesting, well told story is more important to me than an actor’s/actress’ performance or a director’s work, although those, too, have their place in helping me decide whether or not to see something (for instance, after Batman Begins and The Prestige, Christopher Nolan pretty much got a free pass from me. Same for Ron Moore on BSG. I’ll pretty much see anything by those two right now).
I don’t know, though; my wife things I pay too much attention to critics (I say, “I heard that was good” a lot, although when I do, it’s a combination of critics and friends’ recommendations).
Gods, yes. There was a movie critic for the Washington City Paper back in the day who hated everything. Yet his reviews were always entertaining, and usually insightful on some level.
Then one day he had a positive review for Dead Again which floored me. Sure enough, it’s one of my favorite movies to this day.
Funny thing is I’ve never seen a pro do quite that (my hates-almost-everything guy is the closest,) but it’s rather more common (or was) among amateur/semi-pro reviewers. They seem to think that since “critic” is in the job description, they need to be critical.
And to loop back towards what I think MovieDude was talking about, when Joe Blow says he hates the hell out of something, I don’t put much stock in it. But if Ebert says he hates something, I have to at least pay attention. He panned Speed Racer, but from what he said I can parse that he just didn’t get it.
Footnote: it’s odd that I keep going back to Ebert, since I don’t give the professional critics all that much weight. But as I said above, he’s constantly surprising to me, so there is that.
I understand that some are informed professionals. But professionals like Travers from the Rolling Stone telling me that a movie is crap when they haven’t even bothered to see the movie because the studio didn’t invite him to review it for free so he reviews the trailer. Well there have been too many like him over the years that I ignore them all.
Edit: I found this review on CNN after I saw the movie and totally enjoyed it. Watched the video because the title on the page said it was crap…figured it was good for a laugh.
Sorry that one of your pieces got savaged by a critic.
Oh, it’s par for the course. Thing was, the piece got a standing ovation so I was wondering which concert this critic had attended.
I get your thing about Travers. I’ve been getting most of my reviews over at Pajiba.com for a while now because they ALWAYS pay to see the films they review in order to avoid being beholden to studios and their perks.
For me, I tend to read movie reviews as discussion pieces, almost like a paper in english class about a novel, so I like the kinds of review that really talk about the movie and its themes, whether the movie or the scene successfully conveys the message, the plot devices, what moved you, what didn’t, etc. In that respect I enjoy both ‘lovers’ and ‘haters’ if they make a persuasive argument about why they loved or hated it, and give examplesto back up their point. Because that’s interesting to read - and I find that the reviews I enjoy tend to be are critics who love as hard as they hate, hate as hard as they love. Whereas I’m utterly ambivalent to movie reviews that basically recaps a film in a small paragraph and gives a random grade. That really tells me nothing about the film, and I usually read reviews after I’ve already watched the movie anyway. So it isn’t so much about whether a critic is a hater or a lover, but rather how able they are to convey their point of view through their writing, and whether or not his/her viewpoint brings anything new to the table. I don’t have to agree with a critic to enjoy his/her point of view, and I love it when I read something, a point, a theme about the movie that I never noticed when I watched it.
As for “professional” critics vs. “amateur”, I think there are pros and cons for both, and the distinction between the two isn’t always so clear…so it doesn’t really matter either way.
This is why I love GWC. Opinions are never dismissed. I want to see critical thought in reviews but more and more it appears that critics have taken that out, replacing it with “I hate/love this and this is the reason you should to.” Even the most reasonable critics get into this group-thought mentality where they expect their readers to agree with them. They do not leave room open for difference of opinion.
Ebert is easily the most recognizable critic and one of the most tempered until recently. In the last few years, his writing has become rather cranky. His tolerance for computer effects has shortened significantly. He has become more provocative over smaller things. And he has become more cynical and closed-minded.
I guess I just wish that more critics were objective with films instead of providing mere opinions.
I think coco summed it up well, but I wanted to add something else as well.
A good review is one part opinion and one part objective analysis. What this means to me is that I will be able to filter out the opinion piece and make a judgment call myself based on the facts. I don’t mind an emotional response when the heart of the review informs me as to my overall insterest. For Battle LA, I was skeptical of the film anyway, and these reviews seem to have confirmed my skepticism, but it’s the objective components that matter most. Being from a younger generation that was exposed to it at a younger age, I’m not terribly bothered by quick cuts or special effects and explosions, whereas Ebert is leery of them.
That’s another component. Find reviewers you generally like and learn their style, and you’ll be able to use them as a kind of formula to your approximate response.
