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Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

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Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#341

Post by wolverine876 »

chrismeller wrote: post #144
nemothekid wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any movie that does well with critics or at a film festival has “a strong message” or “teaches us something”. If you find that every time you watch a film festival movie you are being lectured too, I think it has more to do with your wife's film choices, not the indie circuit. Nicolas Cage's Pig was a very well received movie at plenty of film festivals last year, and it's just about a chef searching for a pig.

Yes, I’m sure there is a movie here and there. Honestly, I don’t care enough to even compare the list anymore, that’s how we came up with the rule. Edit: and I think we’ll all try to forgive you for recommending anything with Nicholas Cage…

> Yes, I’m sure there is a movie here and there.

It's not here and there. Almost no art film lectures or has a strong message. It wouldn't be an art film if it did, in most cases, and art films are known for subtlety and conveying sophisticated emotion.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#342

Post by dtx1 »

We can pretty much pinpoint the movie where critics lost it: Black Panther. They loved it because it was catering to the woke crowd and it was hyped as the best movie ever when in reality it was a mediocre meandering mess with CGI below the first sony spiderman movies and a storyline so filled with borderline racist cliches that i was genuinely suprised to find it was written by a black director and not the KKK.

I mean for gods sake they decide their government by a ritual fight? And one of the tribes is literally introduced by making ape noises? [1] And the villain? Suspiciously looks and talks A LOT like Malcolm X [2][3].

Somehow that racist caricature of a movie became the woke version of Iron Man and Critics ate it up.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frHiTbjW4AE [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyY_tjhFNBg [3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X#/media/Datei:Malcolm...

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#343

Post by WalterBright »

wolverine876 wrote: post #334
WalterBright wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw "Enter the Dragon" as a teen and liked it a lot. I rewatched it recently and had a hard time thinking of anything good about it :-/ I've turned into my dad. As a teen, I begged him to see a movie I thought was great. We went to see it, and on the way out I was like "well? what do you think?" He thought for a while, and came up with a rather lame compliment he'd obviously struggled to come up with. Watching that…

I had the reverse experience, in a way: As a teen I though it was just fair. I thought the fight scenes - the reason we saw the film, of course - were gimmicky, repetitive, and unconvincing, and thought the same of other kung fu films. The rest of the movie was odd and boring. It was heretical and I kept that opinion to myself. I saw it again in the last few years and while for me the rest of the movie was awful, the…

Lee trained as a competitive ballroom dancer before he pivoted to martial arts. The two actually have a lot in common, though the purposes are quite different!

I agree that Lee's grace and style are fun to watch. It's also painfully obvious that he way outclassed his opponents in the movie, sort of like Fred Astaire dancing with a football player. I suspect that his ballroom training was the secret sauce that put his martial arts at an elegant level that the other martial arts practitioners couldn't match.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#345

Post by ahartmetz »

michaelbrave wrote: post #286
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that games used to be FAR more punishing than they are today. Give an 8 year old (or hell, a 16 year old for that matter) Super Mario Bros. Watch their reaction when they get to World 1-3 or something and then lose all of their lives and realize that the game doesn't care, they have to start ALL the way from the beginning. Compare that to Elden Ring, which has difficult boss fights but otherwise is…

Most early console games had a heritage from arcades, which made more money if it was difficult but teased the chance of progress. So higher difficulty was more profitable, then when ported to console or when the same game designer designed for console it inhereted some of that. It was also more niche to be a gamer then, and those who did leaned more hardcore.

Difficulty was also a way to make a game take long to finish without taking too much storage (and/or time to create levels and art assets).

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#346

Post by wolverine876 »

WalterBright wrote: post #343
wolverine876 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the reverse experience, in a way: As a teen I though it was just fair. I thought the fight scenes - the reason we saw the film, of course - were gimmicky, repetitive, and unconvincing, and thought the same of other kung fu films. The rest of the movie was odd and boring. It was heretical and I kept that opinion to myself. I saw it again in the last few years and while for me the rest of the movie was awful, the…

Lee trained as a competitive ballroom dancer before he pivoted to martial arts. The two actually have a lot in common, though the purposes are quite different! I agree that Lee's grace and style are fun to watch. It's also painfully obvious that he way outclassed his opponents in the movie, sort of like Fred Astaire dancing with a football player. I suspect that his ballroom training was the secret sauce that put his…

> It's also painfully obvious that he way outclassed his opponents in the movie, sort of like Fred Astaire dancing with a football player

Yes; the others occupied far too much of the screen time, which was very frustrating! It was like going to see Jimi Hendrix and hearing mostly bass and drum breaks. It's a vehicle for Lee; almost everything else in the movie sucks anyway; just find excuses to put Lee on the screen doing something!

But for me, I'd add to grace and style: The power of the emotion he could convey just through his body was incredible. I don't have a great appreciation for dance, but I've seen a couple best-in-the-world level dancers do something similar.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#347

Post by ComradePhil »

The problem is worse than that. Platforms like Netflix have removed user reviews. Even Imdb removes ratings when it doesn't please their friends. There is less and less ways to find out what other people like you think about the produced content anymore.

This is of course easily solved by removing movie is watching as a thing, which has already been happening for a long time.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#348

Post by OneLeggedCat »

bananamerica wrote: post #219
cwkoss wrote: post #186

Critic 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…

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…

God I miss Ebert. It's not that I agreed with him always. It's that I knew where he stood, and I found his writing entertaining. As my familiarity of him grew over the years (decades!), I could accurately guess whether or not I would like a movie based on his review, whether he liked it or not. He's been hard to replace for me.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#349

Post by switchbak »

CrispinS wrote: post #304
switchbak wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's times when I want to know the inside-baseball angle of a film, that can be really interesting, but those times are rare for me (and most people, I'd wager). When critics diverge so far from the role of answering the question "what's a movie I would enjoy" then no, they're not doing their job. I'm not sure exactly what job they're doing now, but I'd say by and large they aren't doing anything I'm interested in…

> When critics diverge so far from the role of answering the question "what's a movie I would enjoy" then no, they're not doing their job. There's no critic that can predict what you'll like, since tastes in films differ so much. I have a friend I don't discuss movies with much, because we disagree on pretty much every single one we've both seen; it's literally impossible for a single critic to directly tell us both…

Critics can most certainly put themselves in the position of relating to common folks, and that was a big part of what Siskel and Ebert both did.

Just cause someone might not know my specific tastes isn't a reason that everyone should have to be recommended videos that most people will predictably not enjoy.

That's like saying since there's no way I'd know what music you might like, then you should listen to King Crimson since it's highly respected in prog Rock circles. Yes, sure, and most people would hate it.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#350

Post by klodolph »

wccrawford wrote: post #73
klodolph wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it seems obvious to me, but that might be because I took a statistics class in college. (Not “obvious in retrospect”—I’ve had a number of personal discussions with people where we talk about the difference between critic & user scores on Metacritic.)

You also don't have any emotional or financial investment in the situation, though. ;)

I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
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