Film critics were never in sync with audiences. Film critics have completely different ranking criteria compared to viewing audiences. This has never not been true.
Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
251–260 of 421 posts
Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
#252I've filtered myself out of the 'audience' because there's nothing coming out that is of interest at all.
Perhaps the audience is becoming more and more biased, and of a particular kind of person.
Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
#253Critic reviews are prescriptive: what they think the masses should watch. User reviews are retrospective: how much did they actually enjoy watching the movie. I think there has always been a fundamental disconnect, in that critics think the masses should be watching 'smarter', 'more artistic' or, less flatteringly, more pretentious movies. The world has become a lot more political over the past couple decades. I woul…
Except users who don't watch the movie don't rate it. So they're self-selected. Critics are not.
Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a film major. I wrote about film on print for quite a while. This was not in the US. I did want to prescribe, but not to the masses. To other crítics, to the pedantic purists that thought Bruce Lee was unimportant and Spielberg formulaic and uninspired, and that unless your name is David Lynch anything American is worse by default. People who thought anything with emotion was trash for the masses. And I was there…
That’s an interesting take on the remake I hadn’t considered before. But as someone without an artsy bone in my body, I wish something other than superhero movies could be made
Americans today are so sharply divided in what they consider to be acceptable beliefs and values that to create films with broad appeal, most filmmakers (and those who pay them) either (a) go out on a limb to promote their own values, or (b) resort to known-good tropes and remakes.
Perhaps no one wants to write a beautiful, thoughtful, non-politically charged screenplay anymore. Or maybe doing so would itself be seen as a political statement?
Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
#255The people who leave IMDB reviews are probably also pretty far away from the average audience - only a small set of people post reviews their and there’s probably a lot of sampling bias towards film nerds.
Really? I would say user reviews on Rotten Tomatoes skews more towards film nerds and IMDb is the more everyday sort of person. Between the two platforms there's a disconnect in users' preferences.
I’d agree, but I think both are very far away from the typical person, who does not post online reviews at all. Maybe the difference isn’t film nerd vs. not, but I’d wager there’s a big difference between an IMDB reviewer and a randomly sampled person.
Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
#256So the main takeaway here for me is that more low budget (“indie” or “film festival”, my terms) movies are getting to theaters and being loved by critics, but people hate them. My wife and I have a rule in our household. Anything that was awarded at a film festival (Sundance in particular) I will not watch with her. This analysis backs up the feelings I’ve had that lead to that agreement… Any movie that does well wit…
What sorts of films don't lecture?
Generally, popular films outside of documentaries don't lecture. It may be that you feel insecure and talked down to? Do you feel that way in normal human conversation?
Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
#257No, I don't think so. I think they get it largely right. How many reviews of movies have you seen from a senior, experienced reviewer got a film really totally wrong? I don't mean "hated a movie that genre fans will like", or "dunked on a trashy movie", because in almost all cases those reviews acknowledge their biases and even the people who like that sort of thing will get the picture. I mean: really wrong. In rece…
Movie critics tend to give mediocre movies a bump when they like the message or think it otherwise is politically desirable. Similarly, critics tend to downplay movies that have a more... blue collar?... appeal, no matter the artistry or purpose of the film. For instance, Taken gets 59% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes. It was a hugely important and impactful film. It basically spawned/revived a whole subgenre of acti…
> For instance, Taken gets 59% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes. It was a hugely important and impactful film. It basically spawned/revived a whole subgenre of action film.
A fair number of critics looked down on that film because it is casually chauvinistic, nasty and bigoted. (I absolutely loathe it. Want to see how that film could have been? Watch Man On Fire.)
I don't know whether you can support your "politically desirable" assertion with meaningful data -- not to say that you might not be right, but more to say that I don't know what shape that data would have.
But I'd be interested to hear a couple of examples anyway.
Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
#258This one never has:
Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
#259Film critic reviews are the Hacker News of the film world: nerds nerding out.
I once went out with a woman who was highly steeped in film criticism and such. I think she volunteered as dramaturg at a theater company or something like that. We watched "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" together, and I thought it was the most dismal, dispiriting, horrible movie I'd ever seen. Afterward she opened my eyes to how a critic would interpret it, the symbolism, the cultural currents, etc. I hadn't picked up on any of that. I still hate that movie. But I guess I can see a bit better how, if you're in on it, it can be fun to pick things apart in that certain way. It's like a secret language that only you and a few others speak. There's nothing quite like speaking your native tongue when living in a foreign land.
I think a lot of the professional critics are like that. We don't speak their secret language. We commoners are the foreign land they must survive in. They're having a conversation among themselves. It's not for us.
At least, that's what it's become.
Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
#260The best critic is Critical Drinker on YouTube
Begs the question as to how much Mr Plinkett changed the review landscape? Long form anal sis including the meta, the craft, and how the soup was made. Throw in every frames a painting as maybe another OG. Going beyond is it good or bad x/10 to something else entirely. 6 hour review of the 2 hour phantom menace. Or in efap, what it means to pan right or left. Flexing the knowledge of a critic and thereby proving the worth of film studies, often maligned as useless, allowing us to see through their eyes. Trusting the audience and giving them tools to be a critic themselves.
“You might not have noticed, but your brain did”
Now there’s mauler, critical drinker, er, to name a few. Going beyond entertainment, long form analysis of politics and more. Go beyond the press release and the status quo.
I’m conflating a lot of things here purely because it would be funny if mr plinkett could be shown to have revolutionised the world in ways the “pretentious snob” could only dream.