…whose reviews should I be reading the morning after I see a film? For me, part of the ritual of moviegoing is that I check out Ebert the next day. Annoying he may be – that whole problem with getting pesky plot points straight – and I have no idea what proportion of the time I agree with him – but it’s always interesting to see what he has to say.
Saw “All the King’s Men” last night – liked it – and am now jonesing to know what Ebert thought. Or would have thought, had he seen it.
So – who should my next-day-experience-completion critic be?
I always look for review before I see a movie. I would always look for Ebert as he was the one reveiwer with whom I was familiar enough with, that I valued his judgement. The other place I look is the user score at IMDB (internet movie database). If a movie has a 7 or better, it is at least going to have its good points, and is not a disaster.
I use Entertainment Weekly’s reviews to decide in advance whether I’m going to see it or not – they’re meticulous about not giving away plot points. Other critics, including Ebert, I can’t count on not slipping up on spoilers. What I’m looking for is someone who’s going ahead and discussing plot points, etc., in a “day after” sort of way, not a “do I want to see this” sort of way.
Because I’m looking for a single one – I want “one-stop shopping” on commentary, not some vast array where I have to figure out who’s wheat and who’s chaff.
James Berardinelli is definitely worth reading. He’s insightful and incredibly prolific. He’s on my regular reading list and I always pay close attention to his detailed reports from the Toronto Film Festival.
Bingo. Thanks, Hodge. I checked out the last two flicks I’ve seen (the aforementioned All the King’s Men plus The Illusionist), and those are exactly the kinds of reviews I’m looking for.
I like Ken Turan from the LA Times. And Joe Morgenstern from the Wall Street Journal can be great (although he has different tastes in movies than I do).
I’m glad you started this thread - I do the same thing with movies, and I very much miss Ebert (although maybe he can get a note-taking transplant while in the hospital - what is it about constantly screwing up the factual plot points?) There’s tons of little movies I’ll probably miss because I didn’t read what Ebert said about them. I generally read him before a movie and don’t worry about spoilers unless there’s a big one.
Heh. Yeah. The friend who I went with and I both wanted to see it very consciously in defiance of the critical consenus – and we both agreed it wasn’t as bad as the critics were saying.
For my money (all $9 of it), I can’t really regard any two-hour period spent staring at Jude Law as totally misspent.
I used to read him but he’s gotten very tiresome and his attempts at overly clever witticisms are grating.
I usually read The Onion A.V. Club reviews, which are succinct, well-written, and almost invariably in line with my own estimation. Some of the critics at filmcritic.com are good, too, but you have to check the byline.
I’ve always been pretty meh about Ebert, who seems far too impressed with himself and will mention his shot-by-shot analysis of Citizen Kane at UC-Boulder at the drop of a hat. He occasionally has some interesting commentary–unlike many of his contemporaries, he does attempt more than parroting back the plot and generating movie poster quotes–but he seems to get confused easily (or maybe he just misses major plot points owing to multiple trips to the snack counter) and is manifestly ignorant in his criticism of anything pertaining to science.
RT has a “consensus” of all the reviewers… that way, you aren’t relying on a single reviewer’s pet peeves and personal preferences.
But if you’re saying “I always agree with Ebert, and want to find someone else who I always agree with,” I would still recommend RT to find reviewers, because they have at-a-glance summaries and links to nearly every reviewer out there. You should be able to find out who “votes” with Ebert the majority of the time.
I am a big Onion AV Club guy myself, but even once in a while I find myself taking issue with some of their reviews.
No, I’m saying Ebert usually has something interesting to say. I don’t need a “vote” on whether the movie is worth seeing or not – I’ve already decided that. I’m looking for someone whose observations will give me something additional to think about while meditating on the movie.
Actually, I use the User’s Ratings on Yahoo Movies. Click on any movie in their showtimes list and a bunch of information is displayed, including the Critic’s Ratings and the User’s Ratings. I find the User’s Ratings more useful because they seem more representative of whether the movie is entertaining. The critics often have other criteria.
A present example: The critics gave “The Guardian” a “C”, but the user’s gave it a “B+”. I went to see it yesterday and found it very entertaining.
I also listen to Ebert and Roeper, but have found 2-thumbs up movies that I thought were horrible, and 2-thumbs down movies that I really enjoyed. Won’t stop me from watching, however.
I think some of the posters here have missed the fact that Twick reads Ebert after seeing the movie, which is exactly what I do. I usually am not interested in a detailed review before I’ve seen the movie. And after, I’m not interested in just plot summary and a rating. After the movie, as I’m thinking about what I’ve seen, I like to look into what other people have thought about it, and invariably, I find that Ebert gives me something more to think about.
Have you tried looking at Rotten Tomatoes? They have a huge page of every review ever written with one line out of each review and a binary rating system which they average to give a percentage of goodness. Oh yeah, also the green and orange color scheme and copious ads provide hours of internet browsing entertainment. Make sure you plumb your internet tubes first, because those flashing graphics take a while to load. But since the reviews are only thumbnailed, you can get a good idea of whether the movie is popular or not without having to read anything or risk spoilers.
