Fuck you George Clooney ["The American," with LOTS of open spoilers]

[DPRK]

@Lucas_Jackson

Which counts for exactly zero. Whether a person, “critics” included, likes or doesn’t like a movie, in the end, is personal preference and opinion. The point of movies is to entertain. If a critic gives a movie 5 stars and I hate it, I don’t think it’s me that wrong.

Ebert was a bit notorious for some of his reviews, and I had my WTF moments with him as well. Usually he stood by his opinions, though there were a few occasions when he admitted he was wrong and revised his initial impressions. He described his own criticism as emotion-driven and visceral rather than analytic and cerebral. He said that ideally you have to keep an open mind and approach each film afresh, not repeating the same judgements.

I do not recall “The American” being that bad, but it came out enough years ago that I really need to see it again before making further comments about it.

By the way, I may have misrepresented Ebert’s “star” system. While he did repeatedly explain that the stars are relative, and not absolute, in “You give out too many stars” he had this to say:

6. In connection with my affinity for genres, in the early days of my career I said I rated a movie according to its “generic expectations,” whatever that meant. It might translate like this: “The star ratings are relative, not absolute. If a director is clearly trying to make a particular kind of movie, and his audiences are looking for a particular kind of movie, part of my job is judging how close he came to achieving his purpose.” Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean I’d give four stars to the best possible chainsaw movie. In my mind, four stars and, for that matter, one star, are absolute, not relative. They move outside “generic expectations” and triumph or fail on their own.

7. I have quoted countless times a sentence by the critic Robert Warshow (1917-1955), who wrote: “A man goes to the movies. The critic must be honest enough to admit that he is that man.” If my admiration for a movie is inspired by populism, politics, personal experience, generic conventions or even lust, I must say so. I cannot walk out of a movie that engaged me and deny that it did. I must certainly never lower it from three to 2.5 so I can look better on the Metacritic scale.

I cringe when people say, “How could you give that movie four stars?” I reply, “What in my review did you disagree with?” Invariably, they’re stuck for an answer. One thing I try to do is provide an accurate account of what you will see, and how I feel about it. I cannot speak for you. Any worthwhile review is subjective. If we completely disagree, my words might nevertheless be useful or provocative. If you disagree with what I write, be my guest. If you disagree with how many stars I gave it, you can mail your opinion to where the sun don’t shine.

(!!!)