DVD Talk review of 'Battleship Potemkin'
 

I read DVD Savant's DVD review of Battleship Potemkin at http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=31288 and I'm surprised that what DVD Savant calls "arguably the most influential title before Orson Welles' Citizen Kane" gets only four out of five stars for content. Thinking perhaps that DVD Savant never gives higher than four stars for content I found that he'd done so in 269 reviews to date including for War of the Worlds (2005), Joe Versus the Volcano, The Parent Trap, Polyanna, Kramer v.Kramer, Ordinary People, Big Trouble in Little China, and the list goes on and on. How in anyone's book does Battleship Potemkin rate lower than titles such as these?

I don't think Savant bothers with stars himself. If you visit his reviews through his own portal, he never bothers. I suspect that some DVDTalk editor adds them later, guessing at how much Savant likes it. (And since Savant has a rather disconcerting but lovable habit of finding something to like out of just about any kind of picture, I imagine it must be a hard task for the editor.)

Frankly, I prefer Savant's method. Point-scale ratings for content are unreliable unless you have a very good sense of the reviewer's tastes. (A/V and extras ratings are a little more objective, though still problematic.)

I guess that makes sense in that within the review he calls the content "excellent" despite only four stars for content, whereas in the review for Kill, Baby, Kill he calls the content only "very good" but four and a half stars are assigned. Of course, this only further calls into question the rest of the ratings then. Why only a "recommended" when DVD Savant's own review lists the content, video and audio as excellent, and seems pleased with the extras?

Not to start a fight or anything, but I'd watch those three any day over Potemkin.

Influential, yes. Entertaining? Um......nyet.

Yeah, I'm aware based on your reviews that your tastes don't exactly run toward the classics of world cinema. Therefore, I wouldn't expect you to, nor wish you to, review a title like Battleship Potemkin. However, I'll will grant you that it was a bit of hyperbole on my part to question how anyone could hold titles such as those mentioned above in higher regard than Battleship Potemkin.

What the hey? I like world cinema! :)


But you're right: if push comes to shove, I'll pick Hollywood gloss over Russian montage. But it's all good.

Really?! I actually find Potemkin fairly entertaining. I mean, the Odessa Steps sequence is genuinely exciting, the film itself is pretty short and fast-paced, and it's probably Eisenstein's least didactic silent. I'd certainly take it over the sickly-sweet Pollyanna just about any day of the week.

Nope, the star assignments and final recommendation ratings are done by Glenn.

Really? Well, then, his tastes and standards are even more bizarre than I ever suspected....