Truly, it just depends on what you think a movie should be. Is it just pure entertainment? Is it suppose to be thought provoking? Is it suppose to be educational? I personally think the "entertainment" factor should be at least 80%. Sure, deep stuff help raise a movie from "good" to "memorable", but they're nothing if the movie's too boring for me to soak in the intended message. And that's what I really think "critics" should be doing. That is, pointing out the entertaining films in an objective manner so that we don't go watch movies based only on what the trailers look like - and waste my time and money. They're suppose to point me to that small-budget film without the multi-million dollar ad campaigns that's worth my $8 and 3 hours of my time. And over the years I learned that they're really no better judge of entertainment than snazzy trailers and big ad campaigns.
Actually, I am basing my criticism strictly upon the marketing being used to try to entice people into watching the movies. And if I, a degreed professional with a liberal arts education, and a foundation in history, literature, philosophy, religion, and all manner of performing arts, cannot be stirred to anything other than revulsion at the notion of seeing 'There Will Be Blood' or 'Persepolis', then I must conclude that either A) their marketing sucks, or, more likely, B) they have done the best they can do marketing a movie that practically no one will pay to see. Anyone remember 'Lions for Lambs'? Remember how the critics could barely keep from spontaneously orgasming in their praise of this 'important' movie from the 'great' Redford? The thing is completely forgotten almost as soon as it is released. Fortunately, I didn't need to pay to see it to know that it was a celluloid dog turd. As for these other 'critically-acclaimed' films coming out, which will garner some awards, but zero profits, well, more power to them. Personally, I will opt-out of their pretentious little circle-jerk that they have going. Seriously, does anyone actually sit through the Oscars any more? Life is too short to have 4 hours of it stolen like that.
As much as I personally don't watch a lot of obscure film titles that end up at the Oscars, at least they aren't the Grammys! Talk about irrelevant. I don't generally care for critics of any art, but if it were left to the general public, the only films that would be made would be cartoons, dumb comedies and action movies. Nothing WRONG with them as long as they are balanced out with great films. Great TV shows get canceled in lieu of some new reality piece of crap because it gets ratings. The Black Eyed Peas and Hannah Montana top the music charts. The real problem aren't erudite critics who live for obscure art films. The problem is people shelling out big bucks to go see crappy movies. The more money they make, the more bad films get made.
Outside of "message" movies, which can be instruments of change, movies don't have merits. Movies are art, and art is subjective. To some people, Alvin and the Chipmunks is a better movie than No Country for Old Men. The measure of a movie is how much the viewer enjoys it. To me, the best movie ever is The Empire Strikes Back. To some people it is Citizen Kane, or the Godfather, or Barney's whatever. No one is right or wrong, and none of those are objectively better than the others. The best awards are things voted on by the fans, I guess the People's Choice awards because they recognize the purpose of the movies is mostly to entertain, and a fan poll is a measure of how successful they were.
I saw Lions for Lambs and while the pacing made the movie seemed longer than it actually was, I thought it was a decent message piece. It's not typical Hollywood, and all the better.
That's not a bad question. Though I'm not sure 'purpose' may be the right word, but I see what you are trying to say. I'm not even talking about 'better movie'. What I mean by merits is more than that: more like all aspects of a movie. I'm talking more being able to understand those aspects. It seems a lot of time people just barely glance the surface before crying out 'it sucks', 'boring!', etc. Or on the flip side, seem completely unable to just enjoy a good, loud popcorn movie. It is always one extreme or the other. I consider that unfortunate. Ok, I was right. Good show.
If all you give is candy . .. then that is all they will eat not only that. . but that is all they will know to eat movies are about making MONEY and How much money you make is generally your Award It will tell you the difference more than even a PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD FOR INSTANCE ShawShank - Great movie. . cause I can watch it over and over but Serenity is the same. .. another Great Movie that none of the critics would say was OSCAR WORTHY . . but it had everything I like in a movie Why is it not OSCAR WORTHY? well it is sci fi . .so it is automatically kicked out These two did not make as much money as Titanic Which are the greater movies? . . . My point is. . . people voted with their dollars so most folx would say Titanic All of these are opinions. . .and Award shows are nothing more than people saying. . MY OPINION IS BETTER THAN YOUR OPINION Rocket River
No one is going to remember that, because it's not true. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lions_for_lambs/ This was meant to be ironic, I hope... You're writing "in character" right now. You have to be, if not...
Except that the opinions of those in "the industry" are more important than yours or anyone in the general public...when it comes to film. They have studied and worked it in for years and obviously know more about film than you do. What do you think a professional football player is going to appreciate more, an award from fans or an award from coaches, teammates, and opponents? Which group of people is probably going to make the better choice?
BTW, for humorous film reviews, try Mr. Cranky. He rates movies by how bad they are, not how good. According to him, there are no good movies.
Not lately. Sure, if a big budget blockbuster is a billion dollar juggernaut on the level of Titanic or Return of the King, the Academy can't ignore it(as much as they might want to). But there is the occasional blockbuster that also happens to be a great film, and more often than not, the Oscar voters overlook it in favor of some pretentious crapfest that no one will remember in five years(I'm looking at you, Crash!). Ratatouille deserves a Best Picture nod. If there's any sense among the Academy members, it'll get one. But does anyone truly believe that'll happen? No, they'll relegate it to the Best Animated Feature category and give the nomination to something maybe a dozen people saw and isn't anywhere near as good. Someone earlier mentioned The Empire Strikes Back. You know what won Best Picture the year that movie came out? Ordinary People. Empire didn't even get nominated. And Raging Bull which did, lost. It's amazing to me that every year people point out how the Academy blows it by picking the wrong Best Picture winners, and every year they keep nominating the same crap.
Some of you (*cough* Nero! *cough*) are sounding at least as bad as the critics you're, uh, criticizing. For the record, Michael Clayton is a very good movie, and George Clooney was excellent in it. If he gets a Best Actor nomination, he will have deserved it. Never mind his political leanings (God, I just hate those Hollywood do-gooder "save-Sudan" liberals, hunh? all they want is attention for themselves, anyway; right? right?). And No Country for Old Men is a great movie. But it's very quiet (except for occasional gunfire, but no music, etc), and character-driven, and that won't pack'em in. But it is true about film and book critics. I won't bother with the Sunday New York Times Book Review. Seems the critics just want to show off the fact they can put sentences together; and when they throw in a French term, well, hey, I wish I could speak the language, but I do speak a foreign language, but I wouldn't feel the need to throw it into my English-language article. Because, porra, that would be talking a lot of sacanagem, right?
the article is written by one of the elitist movie critics BTW. I thought I saw someone criticize the article, I thought that was rather funny
Oh now.. just half-serious. Roughly. And actually, the previews for Michael Clayton halfway looked decent. When it comes out on HBO in a month or so, it may be worth a look. But that opens up a whole other kettle of fish, in that the day you ever see me pay even one penny to see a Clooney movie will be the day after I die. I know this is a thread about movie critics and not politics, so I am not going to get into it. The only point I have been trying to make is that when I have compared my own tastes in entertainment, specifically movies, to the apparent tastes of the 'critics' it has been extremely rare the last several years that I have even SEEN any of the nominated films, much less even had any interest in seeing them. And hey, I love movies, I love going to the movies. So I don't know exactly what happened. At some point, a lot of the movies that were being made stopped trying to be entertaining as their number one priority, and instead placed a higher priority on trying to be 'socially conscious', to deal with 'important issues', or to show how our perception of our own history is all wrong and we have really been the bad guys all along. Whatever. Give me Romancing the Stone, give me A Fish Called Wanda, give me Raiders of the Lost Ark, give me Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, give me BladeRunner, give me Princess Bride, give me Top Gun, give me anything by Parker and Stone, give me Raising Arizona, give me Independance Day, give me The Whole Nine Yards, give me Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, give me Wedding Crashers, Superbad, 40-Year-Old Virgin, give me Ghost, give me Beaches, give me Little Shop of Horrors, give me any Christopher Guest movie, give me Shaun of the Dead, give me Stephen Chow, give me Crouching Tiger, give me Matrix (not so much the sequels), give me Das Boot, give me Zatoichi, give me Forrest Gump, Jurassic Park, Alien, Aliens, give me Peter Jackson, give me Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles and High Anxiety, give me Jaws, give me Terminators, give me The Sixth Sense... this list can go on for pages and pages. But I am never going to apologize for having zero interest in suffering through two hours of misery created by miserable people whose only desire in life is to make other people as miserable as they are, and whose boots are licked by kool-aid drinkers and critics whose self-worth is apparently inversely proportional to the obscurity of the people and films they praise. I'll watch the movies which appeal to me, and they can keep all their Babels, Lions for Lambs, Redacted, There Will Be Blood, Rendition, Persepolis, Kite Runner, War, No End in Sight, Crash, Traffic, blah blah blah ad nauseum. Now I would be the first person to completely agree that this is all 100% a reflection of each individual's opinions and tastes. And I realize that there are some people out there to whom that latter type of film is appealing. I am not one of them. And I am not saying that those movies should not be MADE - they should make anything they want to make. But why do they get to corner the market for praise? But when was the last time a movie won an award for simply being the most ENTERTAINING movie of the year? That's all I am really saying.
Worst movie I ever saw was a "critic's darling". It was something called "Metropolitan" and the critics loved it, I kept waiting for something to happen...nothing ever did, it just droned on and on. Everyone has preferences and thats more than o.k, a lot of movies that would never be considered Oscar fodder have spoke to me on a personal level and I consider the 7 bucks I invested in seeing them money well spent. I act as a hobby, so naturally I tend to be a little more interested in movies which emphasize dialog instead of special effects, cause thats sorta what I do. I also prefer "snappy" dialog to "superrealistic" dialog. Saying "Hey man how's it going" "Eh..." is fine in real life, but I am not interested in seeing it on screen. But just assuming something is gonna be pretentious and over your head without seeing it seems a little shortsighted. No Country for Old Men has a lot of action, quite a bit of violence. Nothing about it except possibly the length would seem to make it beyond the "grasp" of Joe Sixpack. For the record I am not going to see the new National Treasure movie, cause I didn't like the other one, but I'll see most of the big blockbusters when they come out.
I can understand your criticisms somewhat. The Oscars tends to pick "socially conscious" films that deal with their issues rather ham-fistedly. Both Babel and Crash were pretty simplistic in their handling of complex issues and had some major flaws as works of art (Crash especially). And even though you've portrayed it as a critical darling, Lions For Lambs got pretty tepid reviews - most critics found it clumsy and preachy. But I don't get why you'd think Michael Clayton is more about issues than entertainment. Although the plot centers around corporate malfeasance, the movie doesn't give any indication that its corporate bad guys are symbol for all big business. It's definitely more character driven than your average popcorn flick, but it's still a classic thriller. Just because Clooney's in it doesn't make it an "issue" film. I think Rokkit nailed it - critics watch and study so many films that they tend to be most enthusiastic about the ones that offer something fresh or unique (even if the film has flaws that would otherwise turn off the average viewer). There's no point in trying to rate the film's "entertainment quotient" because that's truly a subjective matter. It's like trying to say "basketball is more entertaining than football" or "rock music is more entertaining than R&B."
What bothers me(and I think Nero as well) is that when it comes to award season, a lot of great movies get disqualified by critics and voters simply because they fall into the categories of "popcorn movies" or "crowd pleasers". I mean, what's the last summer crowd pleaser that got a Best Picture nod? The Fugitive from '93? How about the genres of comedy, sci-fi, fantasy, and action? Those films are almost completely dismissed regardless of how great they are.
The best Movie Critic is yourself. Because, nobody knows what type of movies you like except for you.
I thought this needed to be pointed out again because you may have overlooked it, Nero. If you don't want to click the link, Lions For Lambs got a 27% overall rating and 18% from the cream of the crop critics. And that line about miserable movies by miserable people etc isn't even original, did you get than in an email or something? Even after this movie failed, do you really think Robert Redford is miserable? Is George Clooney miserable, with is millions upon millions of dollars and women fawning over him left and right? I'm assuming you don't like him because he's an outspoken liberal. Maybe that's why you don't want to see There Will Be Blood, because it's about the evil people do for oil/money/power. Movies can be art, and art is a reflection of the beliefs of the people making it. If you don't want to see something because of the politics of the filmakers, that's fine, but don't say that they are miserable people trying to make others miserable. Some of us like to think about things just as much as we like watching ***** get blown up while somebody runs away in slow motion. I don't know what the point of this article was, the awards being handed out right now are the ones the critics vote for, while the Golden Globes are the foreign Hollywood Press (who???) and the Oscars are the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences, which no critics are members of. The opinions of critics ebb and flow just like the general public. We love war movies, but you'll notice that movies about wars we're still fighting haven't been popular, even The Kingdom which was basically about getting bloody revenge against evil terrorists didn't make much money because the War and Terror is on the 24 hour news all day. So if the mood of critics has gone into the extremes of pretentiousness, that's just the way things are this year. IMHO, this is the result of sequel fatigue this year, might not have been a problem if movies like Spiderman 3 and POTC 3 had been better.
