I don’t usually take the advice of movie critics when it comes to choosing a movie I want to see. On three occasions, however, I DID take Siskel and/or Ebert up on their “thumbs up” movies. I think I’ll not be doing it again:
“Mystic Pizza”: Early Julia Roberts. Three teenage girls working at a small town pizza joint. S&E went apeshit over this one. I was bored to death.
“Ruby In Paradise”: Ashley Judd as a young woman trying to change her life. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
And most recently, “High Fidelity”: John Cusak as a vinyl record store owner with two “wacky” clerks in a story of Cusack’s failed romances. After an hour, I was GLAD Cusack, who, BTW, I usually like, was a loser in love. Whine, whine, whine.
Oh yeah…
I felt that any critic who had anything at all good to say about “Scary Movie”, my most actively loathed movie of all time, would forever be on my “distrusted” list.
I have found that most movies critics’ tastes are vastly different from my own. I like the big, flashy action movies. I like monster/alien/cheap sci-fi movies, even if no-one comes out with any really good ones anymore. I like to be entertained without having to think about what I am watching (I do enough thinking already). Even a bad movie can be fun, if you are in the right frame of mind.
Unfortunately, these are the kinds of movies that typically get poor reviews (I guess most critics are only interested in Oscar-caliber stuff), so I’ve learned not to pay attention to reviewers. I tend to rely more on word-of-mouth than ‘professional’ opinions.
I’m with ya, Mauve. I think what most critics fail to realize is that the reason you go to, for example, a Jackie Chan or Sylvester Stallone movie, is not to see depth in character or symbolism or any of those other things your Film Appreciation professor used to wax rhapsodic about – it’s to turn off your brain and just enjoy a fun movie! Good example – The Mummy. Not a whole lot of talent there, but definitely a fun ride.
I try to find a reviewer that shares the same taste in movies that I do. Since I’m looking for pure mindless entertainment (hey, I have to think all day!) and not movies with a message, I usually look for keywords, as wring does.
I tend to act on the opposite of movie reviewers’ comments. Especially if I caught the review in the local paper. Whoever the hell those people think there audience is… wish they’d share all those hallucinogens…
But my own personal rating system works far better for myself and my friends:
(Pretend these are stars:)
***** = actually pay money to go see this at the theater
**** = actually pay money to rent this at a video store
*** = actually pay money to subscribe to HBO, wait for it there
** = wait for this movie to show up on TBS
= wait for this movie to show up on the CBS Sunday night movie
no stars = don’t even bother unless you have insomnia, it’s three a.m. and you have the flu. Then, it beats watching Jerry Spring re-runs. Maybe.
I know it is not fashionable to agree with movie critics, but I think ole Roger Ebert is pretty good at what he does. While I don’t always agree with him, I generally do.
You didn’t like High Fidelity, Mr. Blue Sky? I loved it.
That just not so. Critics take films on their own merits and are perfectly willing to praise a Jackie Chan (which have generally gotten good reviews) or Stallone movie (if it’s well done, of course; Sly has had his share of stinkers). The stereotype that movie critics only give good reviews to “deep” films has no basis in fact. (I’ve actually seen people state that Star Wars got bad reviews – it did not).
A critic may be more demanding than you, but what they want, even in action films, is something that does the job well. Things like plot and characterization, for instance – and it’s not hard to include them in an action film. If you’re an undemanding couch potato, that’s not something to be proud of.
I actually enjoy Roger Ebert’s reviews. Not the show, they just rush through every movie in 30 seconds before the next commercial hits. His articles, though, are well written and you can tell just how much he knows about movies.
Most of the time he understands why a movie was made. He’ll give Jackie Chan movies 3.5 stars despite admitting that there isn’t a thing resembling plot to tie the movie together.
The one movie review that left my mouth gaping open (and still does) is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. I loved the movie. He said it didn’t work on film, that it was suited for the stage. Fair enough. He gave it zero stars. Ebert, ARE YOU ON CRACK?!? How can you possibly put this movie in the same category as Jaws 4 and BAPS, which you also gave zero stars to? I think I’m going to mutter to myself for awhile…
Well, first off, you’re contradicting yourself here. If it’s OK if they say, “I laughed” or “I had fun,” then you should be OK with Siskel & Ebert liking “Speed 2,” since that’s exactly what they did say.
Second, it’s a little facile to simply say “they were thumbs up.” Ebert is on record as not really liking the “thumbs up/thumbs down” system, as it doesn’t really tell you anything. In his print reviews, he uses stars, which are somewhat more useful.
As far as “Speed 2,” it might help to actually read the review, where you’ll see Ebert say:
"I love the summertime . . . I love going into a theater for a sneak preview of a summer movie and buying popcorn and settling back in my seat and enjoying a movie containing:
A chainsaw.
An explosive device with a red digital read-out that nobody will ever be able to see (this one is concealed inside a fake golf club).
A villain who travels with jars of leeches, to suck the copper poisoning from his blood.
A sweet girl and her lover on a Caribbean cruise. He just happens to be a member of an LAPD SWAT team.
The other passengers on the cruise, who just happen to include members of a diamond dealers’ association, who have filled the ship’s vault with treasure.
The villain’s plot to hijack and destroy the ship, steal the diamonds, and get revenge on the computer company whose ``electromagnetic fields gave me copper poisoning,’’ after which he was fired and cast aside.
. . . Is the movie fun? Yes. Especially when the desperate Bullock breaks into a ship’s supply cabinet and finds a chainsaw, which I imagine all ships carry. And when pleasure boaters somehow fail to see a full-size runaway ocean liner until it is three feet from them. Movies like this embrace goofiness with an almost sensual pleasure. And so, on a warm summer evening, do I."
I’ve read Roger Ebert’s reviews for some time now, and even though I don’t always agree with them (I thought he was way too generous to Titanic), I always appreciate his usually terrific insights. Yes, he’s an intellectual and has never pretended not to be, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy a good mindless romp, so long as it entertains.
In fact, he’d be the first person to tell you that he’s not out to influence millions of moviegoers (he even mentioned something to this effect in an Answer Man column). But reviews are still useful for getting a feel for what the movie’s about, learning whether or not it delivered on the hype, and helping you to decide whether you should pay to see it.
And yes, I understand that there will be the occasional “crack” review. Everyone has their own little quirks; it doesn’t bother me.
I’ve probably said it before, but I’ll say it again:
my big problem with film critics is that so many of them seem to be giving reviews based not on whether they liked the movie, but on whether they think they are expected to like it. Before Blair Witch Project came out in theaters, every critic I heard from talked about how they had gone to Sundance and seen the best indie film of all time. Once BWP came out in theaters, there was something of a backlash against it, and it became clear that it was succeeding mostly on the basis of being very cheap and very hyped. Now what BWP2 has come out, the critics tend to say that BWP was an ok piece of conceptual art, but not that great a movie, and that BWP2 is a piece of crap.
This is actually an exception to the usual rule of how critics respond to sci-fi and horror movies: no movie is good until it can be used as a whip to beat up on another movie. When Blade Runner came out, the critics said it was a ripoff of Metropolis, and could never match up to the original. Then Dark City came out, and people said Dark City was a clumsy ripoff of Blade Runner, and could never match Blade Runner’s intellectual depth. When the Matrix came out, the Matrix was so cool that the critics had to admit that they were entertained, but they had to keep up appearances by ignoring all the religious overtones of the movie and describing it as a meaningless piece of action fluff which ripped off Blade Runner, Metropolis, and Dark City, but had none of their intellectual depth. Now that the X-men has come out, the critics can state that sure, X-Men had good fight sequences, but basically it’s a ripoff of the Matrix, minus the Matrix’s brilliant critique of our consumer society.
As a third example, I point to Sixth Sense. My wife and I saw the movie early in its run, and tracked the opinions of critics as time went on. When Sixth Sense first came out, critics hated it. As time went on and it became clear that Sixth Sense was the big surprise success of the summer, you started to see more and more critics praising the movie.
I think we can assume, for the moment, that most major critics’ reviews come out on or near a movie’s release date, meaning the critic has seen the movie sometime prior to its release. Here’s what critics said about “The Sixth Sense” when it was released:
Ebert, writing in the Sun-Times, gave it three stars and said, “I have to admit I was blind-sided by the ending. The solution to many of the film’s puzzlements is right there in plain view, and the movie hasn’t cheated, but the very boldness of the storytelling carried me right past the crucial hints and right through to the end of the film, where everything takes on an intriguing new dimension. The film was written and directed by N. Night Shyamalan, whose previous film, ‘Wide Awake,’ was also about a little boy with a supernatural touch; he mourned his dead grandfather, and demanded an explanation from God. I didn’t think that one worked. ‘The Sixth Sense’ has a kind of calm, sneaky self-confidence that allows it to take us down a strange path, intriguingly.”
Mick LaSalle in the SF Chronicle said, “If this isn’t the single best performance ever by a preadolescent male in a motion picture, then it’s tied for whatever is first . . . Shyamalan (``Wide Awake’’), in his first major feature, builds and sustains an eerie mood made up of equal parts tension and despair. Unlike 90 percent of films, ‘The Sixth Sense’ gets better as it goes along.”
Richard Schickel in TIME Magazine: “One has to wonder if audiences eager for scarier visions of the supernatural will respond to this benign tale. But it unfolds with a patient intelligence. The Sixth Sense might not scare you out of your wits, but it could reward them.”
Desson Howe in the Washington Post (who is notoriously hard on movies) said, “‘The Sixth Sense’ is a ghost story and a psychological thriller. But there’s something finer to it than that.
Perhaps it’s the deliberate pacing, the almost contemplative timbre to the whole thing. And the chilliness, the sheer coldness in the air! It uses stillness, implication and silence in ways that reminded me of ‘Seven’ . . . By the end of the picture, a very powerful design becomes clear, with a twist that will put your head in a swirl. And launch some spirited discussion, I’d hope . . . This is an entrancing film, which dabbles in profound character revelation and the paranormal – something you don’t often see in a movie. And the 11-year-old Osment evokes the boy’s terror and awful predicament so memorably, you’ll never forget him.”
James Bowman, American Spectator? “The failures, like last year’s What Dreams May Come, fail through overconceiving their heavens and hells. In revealing too much they make us too much aware of the artifice and come to look merely silly and unbelievable. Dante, presumably, would never work on film. But The Sixth Sense does not make this mistake. In fact, the world of the dead remains almost as mysterious at the end as it is at the beginning of the film. Moreover, it doesn’t look too weird, like a self-indulgent sci-fi fantasy, but makes use of a long and honorable tradition in folklore (to which even Hamlet owes a debt) of seeing ghosts as the recent dead who are unable to rest because they have unfinished business with the living . . . This means that I can say little else about the film without giving away the stunning ending. And, as I recommend it as ‘worth seeing,’ I will resist the temptation to do that. But I can say that it made a believer of me in respect of its basic metaphysical premise. Cole tells the doctor that the dead ‘don’t see each other. . .They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.’ It’s not how we are used to thinking of the dear departed, even as they appear in the movies, but it makes total sense in its context and so also allows the film to do what such films do all too rarely, which is to persuade us, for a moment anyway, that we can understand and so begin to live with the great ineffable of the human universe.”
The New York Times’ Stephen Holden did hate it, calling it “gaggingly mawkish supernatural kitsch.”
The L.A. Times’ John Anderson said, “And now ‘The Sixth Sense,’ which has crept up onto summer '99 like a clammy chill, has arrived, proving if nothing else that there are avenues of terror still open to a filmmaker with nerve. ‘Sixth Sense’ is certainly a nervy film, one that director M. Night Shyamalan (“Wide Awake”) has made so disarmingly eerie it’s virtually guaranteed to rattle the most jaded of cages . . . There’s little to say about the story that won’t ruin some twist or turn, other than to say that the various lapses in logic will either be explained away or essentially won’t matter, because the film goes so deftly about what it does . . . If there’s a complaint to be had with the film, it’s that the ending goes on far too long, belaboring the points that have been made so alarmingly and well. It is as if someone wanted to reinforce the idea that this is a Bruce Willis Film, which it’s not. He can, however, be proud he was in it.”
So, among what I would say are some of the most influential critics in the country, exactly one of them did not like the film. In fact, it would appear that the bigger papers and critics were almost unanimous in their praise of the movie. I think you need to reexamine your premise.
** pldennison ** I have to confess, the only thing I knew about S & E’s review of Speed 2 was on the cover of the movie at the rental place “2 thumbs up” and I couldn’t believe it.
Given the description, ok. I got done in by the “deaf girl in peril” aspect to it. :rolleyes: and the premise, and the casting, and the script, and…
Wow, pldennison, I have to say that I am impressed by your research.
Although the approach several of you mentioned makes sense (read the review to see what the reviewer actually says, as opposed to just their final judgement), what works for me is to do the opposite. I see a lot of movies. All I want to know before a movie is whether it is crap or not–because I get to see so many, I don’t have to be that choosy. I usually already know a bit about it–who is in it, what genre. That tells me if I might be interested. The reviewer (usually Ebert) lets me know by his rating whether it is generally well done. If I am interested and he gives it a good rating, I go. If I am interested and he gives it a low rating, I break down and read the review or see if anyone I known has seen it. If I am not interested and he gives is a very high rating, I will read the review to see what is up. Then if I haven’t read it before and I do decide to see the movie, I read the review afterwards.
Why the backwards procedure?? I don’t want to know too much. I believe that most reviewers and virtually all trailers tell too much about the movie. I am glad I saw The Sixth Sense without knowing that there was a surprise ending–imagine my surprise at the ending. I let a friend tell me the ending of Thelma and Louise (usually I don’t–long story) and that changed the movie for me. If a reviewer mentions a bit in the movie, I can’t seem to stop myself from looking for that bit, which is distracting. And God forbid if they mention the ending–I try to figure it out throughout the movie.
I read reviews afterward for the insights they provide and to compare the reviewer’s opinion to mine own.
Ok, I know this is a bit odd, but it works for me. Anyone else do it this way?