Hey guys, I was wondering why movie review sites are all so miserably bad. The only one that’s even halfway decent is http://www.DUMBASSANDTHEFAG.COM and that’s only because the reviewers are more like rabid dogs than actual people. Please help explain this mystery!
I know what you mean to a certain point but there are good ones out there. There is a poster here who has a movie review website, I think it is Cervaise, and it is good.
I think the problem is everyone has their own ideas about what makes a good movie. For instance, I went to the site you gave and read over the reviews of movies I had seen. I completely and totally disagreed with them. In fact, the only thing I did agree with was their rant on the AFI 100 Comedy movies. That right there should tell you why YOU feel there are no good sites out there. There are radically different tastes when it comes to movies. I think the original question should really have been “Why can’t I find any movie review sites I like?” as opposed to saying they all suck.
I think your question is answered by your inquiry. You are right… having visited the site you referenced I will concur… there are not many sites like the one you referenced which has a few amusing reviews but with the majority being the movie review equivalent of a roomful of 13 year olds making armpit farting noises. There are not more of these type of sites because 13 year olds still need to get their homework done and there just isn’t enough time for movie reviews between lighting their farts, trying to snag the hottest Napster tunes on a 56K connection and studying for the math test.
Mystery Solved!
Dumbassandthefag.com is quality? It’s two misantropes dogging every movie they review for the sole sake of sounding intelligent and detatched from the unwashed masses who…gasp…sometimes go to and enjoy mass-produced movies. I’ll admit, 90 percent of the universally released cinema is shit, but, come on, folks…
It’s cool to be a rebel and non-conformist and all, but not when you’re acting that way simply for the sake of acting that way.
Take a look at my review site and tell me if you think it’s any better:
Click on Reviews. Not all of the reviews there are mine.
Nearly all of the websites with film reviews are done by people who haven’t seen very many movies and who can’t even write well. There’s no more reason for caring about their opinions on a movie than there is for grabbing the first person to leave a random screening of a film and asking them what they thought of it. The average newspaper reviewer isn’t much better. They’re generally chosen by an editor who walks out into the newsroom and says, “Hey, is there anybody here who likes to watch movies?” He then appoints whichever new reporter answers as the new film critic.
In some sense, the problem is that nobody is certain what it takes to review a film. Most of the reviewers working today are followers of Pauline Kael. (Sometimes these people are referred to as “Paulettes.”) One summary of the philosophy of this school is “Passion comes before structure.” In other words, it’s more important to record your immediate impressions of a film than it is to analyze these impressions.
When Kael hit her stride about thirty years ago, she was a welcome relief from the critics working before her. Many of them were just general arts critics who assumed that film was appreciated just by comparing it to other arts (novels and plays, mostly), so they tended to assume that any film made from a famous novel or play was automatically good, or that any foreign film was good (since those foreigners were artists and not just businessmen like the people in Hollywood), or that any movie with an important theme (even if that theme was a cliche) was good. Others of the critics before Kael were “auteurists,” who thought a certain set of American directors (mostly action-movie types) were great. These people were really more like film geeks who could burble on endlessly about these directors and their movies but who didn’t have anything like a general theory of film.
Because Kael had no ties to any of the groups who came before her, she was a breath of fresh air. She had seen lots of films, she knew a lot about other arts, and she wrote well. As impressionistic as her reviews were, she had a very good intuitive sense of what films were good and she often stumbled onto interesting insights. Still, over the long haul she seemed to be just another auteurist whose favorite directors were a new set who were emerging in the early '70’s. She was great during the heyday of these people from the late '60’s to the early '80’s, but by the time she quit reviewing in 1991 she was irrelevant.
That’s why most of the reviewing today is so haphazard. It’s as impressionistic as Kael’s reviews were, but without her good intuition or writing ability. (And many of these reviewers, unlike Kael, think that their snide comments are hilariously funny. This is the Dave Barry school of wiseguy critics. Aside from Joe Queenan, who doesn’t do regular reviewing, they aren’t very funny.) I haven’t figured out what’s the right way to review either. At times my reviews are like cultural critiques (since film is an excellent way to look at American culture), at times it brings in comparisons with other arts (in particular, I want science fiction films to get back to the coherence of written s. f.), and at times I’m an auteurist who worships at the shrine of Woody Allen. Yeah, I recognize as much as anyone that Allen peaked back in the '70’s, but it’s obvious to me that every romantic comedy made today is indebted to him.
ebert’s site is pretty good. his reviews are well written. i don’t always agree with his opinions, but he expresses them clearly and he knows a lot about movie history and the movie business in general.
I can’t believe no-one has yet mentioned the Reader’s own Jonathan Rosenbaum, on the Reader’s own site!
I don’t always agree with his tastes, but he tends to focus his reviews on placing films within the spectrum of film history and critiquing style and technique, rather than attempting to be an arbiter of taste. It is precisely the latter that I hate in movie reviews.
I think the lot of you are being far too dismissive of http://www.dumbassandthefag.com. Let’s take a close look at its many merits:
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A guy named Mogel is reviewing.
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What reviewer other than Jarret does us the the service of featuring quickcam images of his/her every ticket stub/receipt.
2a. The ticket stub image, noting for posterity that in 2000, Jarett paid $9.50 to see movies which he despised makes me feel like I am quite lucky to live where I do. I pay a full $5 less to see the same movies.
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Extensive use of the word “Hollywood,” primarily in a (often duly) disparaging context. As of four days ago when 21 reviews were listed, according to statistics gathered by a friend, there were 53 mentions of “Hollywood” – an overall mean of 2.5 usages per review, and if one ignores the reviews with 0 usages, the mean jumps up to 7.6. Remember folks – disparaging remarks en masse = funny.
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A pleasant and smoothing color scheme.
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Not many other film sites offer reviews of children’s picture books (see Jarett’s review of Titan AE.
Indeed.
Evilbeth: Thanks for the plug. 
Wendell Wagner’s comments are very good, particularly his description of how movie reviewers are chosen. I also devote a lengthy essay on my own review website to this very question, although I come at it from the standpoint of, “Why do we need yet another movie site?” Rather than recast my comments, I’ll just excerpt the relevant part of my About pages:
There’s a lot more to this essay on my site; I just pulled out the material relevant to this question. If you want to read more, go to my site (address in sig) and click on About.
Now, I won’t pretend I get this right every time out of the gate. But I think if more reviewers were clear about their methods and objectives, and tried more conscientiously to adhere to a set of standards, film criticism as a discipline would be of much higher quality overall.
P.S. For anyone who’s been reading my site, I apologize for the lack of updates. My life’s been totally crazy; I’ve got reviews of Chicken Run, Titan A.E., and The Perfect Storm in the pipe, plus plans for a News Update, another couple of Feature articles, and a new DVD review feature. I’m hoping to be caught up with at least the reviews by this weekend…
Although I strongly suspect the OP was thinly disguised spam, I’m not going to lock this thread because of the excellent responses.
I am, however, going to move it to In My Humble Opinion, the proper place for “survey-style” questions such as this. Then slythe can delete it if he wants to.
Bwahahahaha.
I gotta confess, I’m not very impressed with Dumbass and the Fag. My favorite movie review sites:
Jabootu, for older movies. Long, shot-by-shot, merciless mocking of the cream of the crap. And the reviewers actually know “film”.
Mr. Cranky, for the newer stuff. He hates everything, and pulls no punches. My favorite remarks of his: “I could swallow a pad of paper and a pencil and pass a more original script through my colon,” and, from Enemy of the State, “If you watch a Jerry Bruckheimer film and notice a group of people waving their hands around frantically, it’s probably the deaf contingent signing “turn the shit down” because they can sense their spleens disintegrating from the vibrations.”
The Bad Movie Report, by Dr. Freex, a guy who really, really knows film. Reviews older stuff.
There are others, like Oh, the Humanity! and Bad Movie Night, but you get the idea. Jabootu’s Links page has many more worthwhile sites. Check 'em out, see what you think.
I’ll second Jabootu and The Bad Movie Report (I haven’t read Mr. Cranky).
I also like the Stomptokyo reviews on the Stomptokyo main page.
Why do you think those review sites are any good, Max Torque? I thought they were pretty awful. They’re just the usual “Since so many ads and reviews go out of their way to kiss up to mediocre movies, I’m going to go out of my way to trash reasonably good movies.” Hating everything is not more creative than liking everything.
Incidentally, the Mr. Cranky site didn’t bother to index the Enemy of the State review. I was able to find it only by using a search engine.
I’ve always been partial to http://www.rottentomatoes.com. They really don’t do any of their own reviews, but rather they collect them from a whole whack of sources and then they give the movie in question a rating based on the sum of the reviews.
Also, The Filthy Critic ( http://www.bigempire.com/filthy ) is pretty funny sometimes.
P.s. I realize that the above is a bit of a run on sentence, but bear with me. It’s late and I’m too tired to think of another way to say what I’ve already said.
“Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.”
- Ogden Nash
Which review sites appeal to you depends upon why you’re looking for the reviews in the first place. If you’re looking for a good movie to rent or see at the theater, the sites I listed will only tell you what to avoid, not what to see. Personally, though, I look for reviews in order to be entertained, and a talented writer can turn a review of a crappy movie into a piece of comedy art. Go to Jabootu and read his review of Highlander 2; you’ll see what I mean.
Bad movies (and by that I mean “movies that suck beyond mere mediocrity”) deserve to be publicly mocked, derided, insulted, laughed at, and shown for the frauds they are. In many ways, I’m like these reviewers; I have a certain affection for movies that aren’t merely mediocre, but genuinely inept. Remember: the world’s worst movies are not those that are merely badly made, but those that are boring. Badly-made movies are comedy goldmines, and those are the type of reviews I like to read.
From the main page, scroll down a bit and click on “Mr. Cranky’s Guide to Fresh Rentals.” Enemy of the State will practically jump out and bite you.
It has a neat composite meter to tell the consensus, plus one paragraph of each review, plus links to the full reviews. I chack it every week for new releases.
I second the recommendations for Rotten Tomatoes. It’s a great way to get the general consensus of a lot of reviewers without having to slog through all the actual text.
And…
Allow me to humbly offer the following for your perusal:
http://moviegeek.homestead.com/files/battlefieldearth.htm
Enjoy!
Rotten Tomatoes is the best site for getting a feel for critical consensus for a movie.
This is a serious misstatement of the the auteur theory, and also misses the time frame. Andrew Sarris, who coined the phrase “auteur theory,” was a contemporary of Kael, who was an early critic of the auteur theory, despite the fact that she completely misunderstood what Sarris was saying (and helped spread the many misconceptions about the theory).
In brief, Sarris argued that the best film directors put their own personality and concerns into their films. Because film is a visual medium, the director had the final control of what was on the screen. He did not argue that the director was always the “auteur” of the film, though (he specifically mentioned “Casablanca” as an exception), but that the best directors tended to be. There are certain identifiable themes running through the films of the best directors.
Sarris listed a group of directors as being true auteurs (his pantheon included Chaplin, Hawks, Hitchcock, Ford, Keaton, and Welles) ranked other directors who were good but fell short to different degrees, and criticized those who did not have a personal form of filmmaking.
He did not particularly favor American directors, but the book that showed his ranking of the filmmakers was titled “The American Cinema” and thus concentrated on American directors. He only listed the handful of foreign directors who worked in Hollywood. Unfortunately, he listed these as “Fringe Benefits,” giving the impression that he didn’t much care for foreign directors; a reading of the book clearly indicates that foreign directors were outside the scope of the book. Quite a few top foreign directors weren’t covered at all simply because they worked outside of the U.S. and thus weren’t part of the American cinema.
The big argument against auteurism is that films are a collaborative art and that you couldn’t give credit to one person (though critics were giving credit to the directors for years before the idea of “auteurism” was brought up). There was also the argument that the scriptwriter was as important, or more so than the director. Sarris addressed this, saying that if the director did not put his stamp on the film, it was not really directed, merely filmed. The critics of auteurism suffered from the “credit-reading” fallacy – that the person listed as the writer on the credits was the only person involved in the creation. However, the top directors were involved in the scriptwriting process from the beginning (Raymond Chandler complained about how Alfred Hitchcock kept tell him to write what Hitchcock wanted, and Chandler thought that it was madness to make the opening sequence in “Strangers on a Train” believable – something Hitchcock did effortlessly).
Ironically, the best proof of the auteur theory was a book that tried to do for screenwriters what Sarris did for directors. Both books listed an artist and his films. What was interesting was that the screenwriters only produced top-notch films when they were teamed with a top-notch director.
Unfortunately, a lot of people have latched on to the misconceptions, thinking that the theory merely said the director was God.
Auteurists were instrumental in discovering that the best movies were not necessarily the ones who did “prestige” films and that the western or comedy or thriller could be considered art. Most listing of top directors now routinely include people from Sarris’s pantheon, many of whom (e.g., Hawks and Hitchcock) were sorely overlooked before.