pdinosaur

I was reading the reviews for Unleashed on rottentomatoes.com and i saw this from the village voice:

"Missing from Unleashed is every hallmark of good filmmaking."
-- Benjamin Strong, VILLAGE VOICE

I get the impression sometimes that some film critics aren't noteworthy because they have 'good' taste in film, but because they have the ability to write reviews of movies that either brazenly or oh so cleverly praise/destroy a movie.

at some point, shouldn't this affect your credibility? i mean, come on. if Unleashed goes the entire movie without a stage hand walking across the screen or a boom peeking in the frame, there's at least one hallmark of good filmmaking in Unleashed.

Maybe every once in a while, a gigli or a plan 9 comes along that's just so fundamentally bad that outlandish critiques are justified. but it seems every movie is either the 'i'd rather get a bikini wax than have to sit thru another showing of house of wax' or 'my reverence for titanic will go on and on'

can't a 'eh, it's not bad' be sufficient, even if it doesn't catch the eye?

jaeufraser

A lot of critics write like you say, stating their opinion and having most movies be in the "eh" category anyway. But, truth be told, the outlandish, "best movie of the year!" or "this movie sucked more then a french whore!" type critics get quoted more, and get more attention. But it's also easy to figure out who these dolts are and just flat out ignore them.

PopcornTreeCt

You have to understand how much crap Hollywood puts out. Critics, I think, rip on bad movies more than usual in an attempt to get Hollywood to make better movies. But unfortunately, Hollywood runs on money not praise. I believe critics should be harsher because Hollywood churns out crap week after week. I've seen a whopping 2 movies this year. Usually there's only about 4 or 5 movies that I thoroughly enjoy a year. Hollywood needs to make better movies, plain and simple.

marty888

You think that would be a "hallmark of good filmmaking"?

That's like saying that any restaurant that doesn't give you food poisoning has a "hallmark of good cooking."

DVD King

It's best to take the majority of reviews on rotten tomatoes with a grain of salt. They'll either bash or praise movies for attention--people are much more drawn to the critics that are quoted with big long clever metaphors than the ones who simply give a rational opinion on the film. It makes them all seem egocentric but its what works.

Jay G.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole

Tscott

Didn't you hear? Everyone who's ever posted on the Internet has ganged up and killed Hyperbole.

Terrell

Exactly! Because if it didn't run on money, there wouldn't be any films. Make good films to make good money. That's the way it should be. That's how it works. It just so happens that there not a lot of talent to go around in Hollywood.

Mr. Salty

No, that's a hallmark of competent filmmaking. Competent ≠ good.

pdinosaur

wouldn't good filmmaking mandate competent filmmaking? competency seems like a hallmark of good filmmaking to me.


yes, yes it is.

cactusoly

A lot of film critics are just wannabe filmakers who never had the talent to get into film in the first place. A lot of it is resentment.

Jason

Critics are frustrated flimmakers who think they could do a better job.

Josh H

Yep, everyone nailed it on the head. They're just quote whores hoping to get there names in ads, magazine covers, dvd covers with the overly positive quotes, and just to draw attention to themselves with the negative ones.

scott shelton

Um, sure...

Josh H

You're right that's how it should be, however it's definitely not how it works.

Plenty of good films don't make much money, and plenty of crap makes a ton of money. Hype, marketing and star power determine ticket sales more than quality in the US.

DonnachaOne

Well, I know it's VERY true with teh internet... the more outlandish and cutting a critic is, the more people seem to read him/her. There's tons of critics out there, all very similar, so a lot try to outdo someone else with their sarcasm or 'wit'. Usually this means blasting a film with an apparently-original jet of vitriol.

Dr. DVD

One critic I used to like but have grown to loathe over the past two years or so is Peter Travers from Rolling Stone. He used to give well written reviews, now he seems to have his mind made up ahead of time as to what he will think of a movie and proceeds to either shill endlessly for it or bash it into oblivion. The problem is he never really tells you why it sucks or rocks, just how much it sucks or rocks.

KurtR

Film critics are bitter and rude because theyre mostly just pissed they could never make it in the biz as a filmmaker, ie. Roger Ebert

Count Dooku

The full sentence is:

Missing from Unleashed is every hallmark of good filmmaking, but its most glaring omission is a cliché: Morgan Freeman's trademark voice-over.

QuiGonJosh

Because their pathetic people who wished that they were able to make a movie and they piss on anything that isn't some little artsy fartsy or foreign film.

Fuck you critics!

Mr. Salty

Yet there are thousands of examples of countless critics giving positive reviews to movies that never would be mistaken for "little artsy fartsy or foreign" films. So you might have a point if it weren't for the fact that it's provably wrong.

The biggest difference between professional movie critics and those of us who come to Internet message boards like DVD Talk to spout off our opinions is that movie critics are smart enough to have figured out how to get paid for it.

Nick Danger

When a negative review of a bad movie has one sentence that can sound like a positive review, it will be taken out of context and reprinted in advertisements. High-profile reviewers have to avoid including that one positive sentence. As a consequence, every negative review ends up looking like 'the worst movie since Robot Monster from Space'.

QuiGonJosh

Okay, how about this: The majority of professional critics are stuck-up, pompus, jackasses. That work for ya?

pdinosaur

if someone at the people's choice awards was smart enough, they'd be exploiting the fact that the oscars are seemingly degrading into a 'my movie's more artsy than yours' award show joke.

freudguy

film critics, why are they so rude?

Because they have small penises. You show me a guy that says "Greatest movie of the year" or "Worst effort of a film ever put on celluloid" and I'll show you a guy with a teeny weeny peeny.

Meanwhile, a critic merely says it was "ok" or "kinda dull". He's hung like a bull.

Wow, I think this is the BEST THREAD EVER! Uh, I mean this thread is kinda interesting.