Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
I listen to Kermode & Mayo and the Empire podcasts. A good review, IMO, tells me about the film. Not giving it a rating, or if it's "good" or not - I've got no time for Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic or similar wastes of time - but tells me about what the film does, if it tells its story well or if the themes are explored in any depth. I'm not really bothered about whether a reviewer likes a film; I may well decide that I like the sound of a film that they dislike or vice versa.

Yeah, a crap review just says if it is good or not. A good review will help you figure out if you will like it.

Thats why I dont listen to critics. They LOVED Cold Mountain when it came out, took the wife to see it and we both tp this day will talk about how crap that movie is.


Like what you like. Says the man that LOVES WaterWorld

Water World is another unfairly maligned film.

Sure it's not perfect, but it's still very entertaining!

Still astounded that Critics didn't get snooty about the truly wonderful Mad Max Fury Road! I mean, totally one of my favourite films, but it is little more than a two hour car chase

In the end a Film Critic is just someone expressing an opinion - no more (or less) valuable than anyone else.

They just get paid to watch films - some of which they would never watch if they had the choice - and it almost always shows in their reviews.

I think you need to "calibrate" yourself against film critics; read their reviews of films you like (and dislike) and try to figure out what it is about a film that they praise or denigrate. I mean, much as I like Mark Kermode, we'll need to agree to disagree about Pirates of the Caribbean. The sequels? Well, our opinions start to converge there.

And remember that film criticism can be as much an art form as the films themselves.

Battleship ... bit of a guilty pleasure, that one. I'm not one for "so bad it's good", but they way that film takes its utterly ludicrous premise and runs with it is impressive. The characterisation is well done - we don't learn much about where the characters came from (except the main protagonist), but their actions during the film make things pretty clear. Dodgy science, but no more so than any other blockbuster "SF" film and it does a solid job of keeping me interested.

In the other direction, the Lego Batman movie seems to be well-received, but I didn't like the look of it. I thought Lego Batman outstayed his welcome in the Lego Movie, and the thought of two hours of just him really didn't appeal.

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
Well, good news about the music: Danny Elfman is taking over for Justice League's score.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/batman-and-spider-man-composer-danny-elfman-will-now-sc-1796113424

Hopefully it will be more memorable than his Spider-Man score, which sounded like some no name ripping off Elfman badly rather than an original score.



"La-la la-la LA-LA la-la, deedlee-deedlee-deedlee-dee, Bomp-bomp Bomp-bomp." --Danny Elfman

Opinions are certainly not equally valuable. Here again, we have to separate what is good from what we like. I get the impression that posters ITT think I like MoS because I think it is a good film. But in reality, I have not bothered to watch it once since opening weekend. MDG summed it up nicely as "dour." It falls into the category of movies that one endures. Another example would be Apocalypse Now - a very, very good movie that I honestly don't like because it is so morally numbing. In fact, like MoS, the very thing that makes it artistically worthwhile also makes me want to stay away from it. On the flip side, as sebster mentioned, critics were not wrong about films like Battleship. A better example might be ID4 - a very enjoyable but actually mindbendingly terrible movie.

If a film sets out to be enjoyable and it is - how can it not be good?

I got the impression that you thought MOS and Promethius were good films - despite both of them apparently failing to achieve what they set out to do?

Did FFC set out to make Apocalypse Now an "enjoyable film"? I doubt it very much. And I think the same is true of MoS and Prometheus. I think these films are aiming higher than entertainment.

 Mr Morden wrote:
If a film sets out to be enjoyable and it is - how can it not be good?

Because if you poll 1000 viewers who watch two films, and 30% say one was better, and 60% say the other was better, and 10% say they both sucked, the only objective conclusion is that the the second film was the superior of the two.

Of course that's simplistic. I think there are times where film critics/film professionals have come out with very different opinions than general viewers and I think it comes out most at the Academy awards, where the winner of best film is often a film I've never even heard of until the nominations are announced and that I think hardly anyone went to see in theaters but the Academy folks seem to just love

 Manchu wrote:
Did FFC set out to make Apocalypse Now an "enjoyable film"? I doubt it very much. And I think the same is true of MoS and Prometheus. I think these films are aiming higher than entertainment.

Yes and that not what I said - at all

IF a film sets out to be "just" entertainment and succeeds in that goal - again How can it not be a good film.

I did not say MOS or Promethieus were aiming to be entertainment - they apparently tried for something else and failed IMO - that they are also poor entertainment is secondary.

Why in this quest for some higher (and extremely vague) aim do they need to abandon any coherent plot structure and decent characterisation . now a film "just" trying to entertain might do this and still succeed but when film makers claim to be trying for something more and fail to get the basics right to build on - thats sad.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
If a film sets out to be enjoyable and it is - how can it not be good?

Because if you poll 1000 viewers who watch two films, and 30% say one was better, and 60% say the other was better, and 10% say they both sucked, the only objective conclusion is that the the second film was the superior of the two.

Of course that's simplistic. I think there are times where film critics/film professionals have come out with very different opinions than general viewers and I think it comes out most at the Academy awards, where the winner of best film is often a film I've never even heard of until the nominations are announced and that I think hardly anyone went to see in theaters but the Academy folks seem to just love

Again not my point - somehow many critics think entertainment is a dirty word and somehow beneath their notice. They may grudgingly admit a film is entertaining but sneer about it - even though IF that is the only goal of said film then it has succeeded and hence must be a "good" film?

Well I will take an example of a bad film that I enjoyed - Ghost Team, a horror comedy about wannabe paranormal investigators. The jokes are dull, the plot is entirely perfunctory, the characters are generic, there isn't a single original idea. It's not a "so bad it's good" kind of film, either. It's just an amateur wreck of a movie that I watched on Netflix on a rainy day that I found, all things considered, a fun way to kill a little time.

Sharknado, battle ship, pacific rim and more.

Thell they ain't great films for a critic. But they ate entertaining, they have good bits n popcorn n beer movies.

They suceed as they ain't trying to be anything more than that.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Water World is another unfairly maligned film.

Sure it's not perfect, but it's still very entertaining!

Still astounded that Critics didn't get snooty about the truly wonderful Mad Max Fury Road! I mean, totally one of my favourite films, but it is little more than a two hour car chase

Critics are largely influenced by the industry buzz that surrounds a movie. Waterworld came with a massive story about its disastrous production and huge cost blowouts. The film was already pre-judged, with 'bad production' driving a conclusion of 'bad movie'. It certainly didn't help when the final film ended up being basically a particularly unamobitious road movie bookended by two big action scenes where the audience cannot see where even a fraction of that huge budget went.

Of course, like lots of things, that production story shouldn't matter to people just watching the movie. If you can accept Kevin Costner playing Kevin Costner with gills, and like Denis Hopper hamming it up and love action scenes that embrace stupid spectacle, then the movie works okay.

That doesn't mean the movie is good, of course, but it does mean it had an audience who should have been told they've like the movie. But they weren't told because the industry dominated over actually telling people about the movie.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr Morden wrote:
In the end a Film Critic is just someone expressing an opinion - no more (or less) valuable than anyone else.

I agree that critics don't have any kind of absolutely superior view, but considering the view of a critic to be equal of that of any punter is taking the issue way to far. There is such a thing as technical expertise in film review. Kermode's opinion is actually better considered than most people, and should carry more weight than some guy who liked Transformers II because he likes looking at Megan Fox.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:
On the flip side, as sebster mentioned, critics were not wrong about films like Battleship. A better example might be ID4 - a very enjoyable but actually mindbendingly terrible movie.

For what its worth, I believe Kermode quite liked Independence Day

I'm on the fence about the movie, personally. I mean, it's utterly stupid. Roland Emmerich said Americans like watching famous monument blow up, and that seems to be pretty much the entire creative concept behind the movie. But on the other hand, I quite like that while the film still worked with broad black and jewish stereotypes, those roles were really well played by Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, and they were never made second fiddle to a white guy hero. Which I just realised is probably a large part of the reason Kermode liked it.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jhe90 wrote:
Sharknado, battle ship, pacific rim and more.

Thell they ain't great films for a critic. But they ate entertaining, they have good bits n popcorn n beer movies.

They suceed as they ain't trying to be anything more than that.

I think it's a bit odd to judge a film based on its own ambition. If someone sets out to make a deep and meaningful examination of modern war and the bond between soldiers, but ends up making a really fun bit of war porn with no real meaning, like Blackhawk Down, is the film a failure? I mean, if a film is entertaining, even if it comes nowhere near its ambition, are people wrong to enjoy it?

This to me gets to the issue of 'good' in talking about films. I mean, yeah, some films are good and some are bad, but exactly which films belong in each group is complex and hard to answer, and actually quite irrelevant to the question of whether someone will enjoy a movie.

To me, there is much better, much more useful question that is actually much, much simpler. Just ask the question 'is there an audience that will find this film a positive watching experience?' If so, then that audience should watch this movie. It doesn't matter what was intended. The Room was intended to be a serious... something... but it ended up being enjoyed as a cult movie by a certain audience. So people that like enduring awful movies should line up for The Room.

Answer the question of whether people will like a movie based on their own preferences, and leave 'good' as a whole other issue.

 jhe90 wrote:
Sharknado, battle ship, pacific rim and more.

Thell they ain't great films for a critic. But they ate entertaining, they have good bits n popcorn n beer movies.

They suceed as they ain't trying to be anything more than that.

The annoying thing of those is that, with just a little better writing/storyline Pacific Rim, could have been 2x more awesome.

*** Puts on Pretensious Hat***

A carftsman type movie uses the form to entertain its target audience. This applies to most movies. Despite the huge budgets and effects, they are the work of dedicated craftsman who are using known techniques to make the art form know as movies. This would be most of the movies we are discussing here, and critics have to wade through and judge them by craft.

It is like going to a local craft fair and comparing the look of one clay-wheel sculpted bowl from another, they all generally work as bowls but some have smoother edges, higher walls, etc.

However, some films manage to reach beyond mere craft. They are in fact Art. What is the difference? Art uses the form to make you see the world around you in a slightly different way, with a new perspective, or raises your awareness of a particular thought or feeling in yourself. There are many movies that claim to be art that fail this test, and some movies that claim to be craft but manage to elevate themselves to art.

The critics role is to help us see and understand when a film is craft or a film is art by trying to relay the experience to us the reader. However, as a critic 98% of your time is spent looking at craft aspiring to be art and then trying to explain why it is only craft; if even well done craft.

Imagine having to write an article about every clay bowl at the local craft show and to distinguish what makes one mediocre bowl different from another. Then, coming across a clay bowl that transforms how you think about the role of food production in our society. How do you compare that transcendant bowl to all the others at the Craftshow? That is the role of the critic.

It is a very important role, but one that has been denigrated by the vast array of Pop Culture it must also critique.

So, Easy, what you're saying is that we need to popularize and patronize the film appraisers rather than critics, the people trained in craftsmanship enough to tell us which bowls are good quality, which are good for only dry goods or unpeeled fruit, and which bowls will disappoint any fairly discerning consumer?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
So, Easy, what you're saying is that we need to popularize and patronize the film appraisers rather than critics, the people trained in craftsmanship enough to tell us which bowls are good quality, which are good for only dry goods or unpeeled fruit, and which bowls will disappoint any fairly discerning consumer?

How many critics are actually "craftsmen" filmmakers, actors or directors - how many just express their own biased opinion? How many of them have any actual training? How many of them did not even fail at their chosen craft.

You can slowly and labouriously craft a "ugly" bowl or mass produce a beautiful item.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
So, Easy, what you're saying is that we need to popularize and patronize the film appraisers rather than critics, the people trained in craftsmanship enough to tell us which bowls are good quality, which are good for only dry goods or unpeeled fruit, and which bowls will disappoint any fairly discerning consumer?

In essence. Ignore critics who clearly have no idea what they are talking about *ahem* such as most internet critics.

There are critics who have studied film-making or were part of the film-making process. They will have more useful things to say.

I can't imagine the hell that it is to try to spend 95% of your time differentiating between craft-level items when you have seen what is better.

There are two things critics are good for;

1) should I watch this thing?
2) what do you think about this art?

If you don't care about the artistry of film, then 2 is completely irrelevant to you and thus critics who know what they're talking about aren't necessarily going to help you. Instead, look for a critic who generally likes movies you've liked. That's usually a good sign that their tastes are close to yours and makes their opinions more relevant to you. Sure people who have studied film making can have great critiques when it comes to technical areas and the "artistry" of the medium, that doesn't necessarily reflect the enjoyment you'll get from said movie, especially if you don't give a gak about the art and just want a good time.

Wow, it's almost like the people commenting here have opinions. Weird. So do film critics. Difference? Film critics see most of the films that come out every year. Do you? Most film c tics have degrees in film studies, do you? Most critics don't give a crap about your personal opinion about a film, do you? Like something, or don't like something, but I'm really not going to listen to you until you have gotten you degree in the given field you are opining about unless I know or like you personally.

* when random people on the internet talk rot*

Which one happens more? Which should you probably be more concerned about? Which one do you spend more time on?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
There are two things critics are good for;

1) should I watch this thing?
2) what do you think about this art?

If you don't care about the artistry of film, then 2 is completely irrelevant to you and thus critics who know what they're talking about aren't necessarily going to help you. Instead, look for a critic who generally likes movies you've liked. That's usually a good sign that their tastes are close to yours and makes their opinions more relevant to you. Sure people who have studied film making can have great critiques when it comes to technical areas and the "artistry" of the medium, that doesn't necessarily reflect the enjoyment you'll get from said movie, especially if you don't give a gak about the art and just want a good time.

Read Eberts own criteria on how he reviews a film. I think you will find it agrees with you criteria quite well