351–360 of 421 posts
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I don't want a critic to tell me what I SHOULD be watching. I rely on them to tell me what I will like. I can't watch every movie, the movie critic is meant to be a filter. Historically movie critics judged a film based on its relative value. That's why you see a positive review on a cheesy rom-com and a negative review on a more ambitious flawed work of art. The rom-com review is viewed in the context of other rom-c…
But telling a person what they will like is a much more personalized endeavor suited for automated recommendation systems. Any random person could like objectively bad movies. But a critic can only recommend things objectively good. That means they can only try to filter out good movies, which are movies you should watch but may not like because your tastes are not objectively universal.
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I disagree that critic reviews are inherently prescriptive. Major blockbusters rely on cliches for the same reason that supermarket chains spend ridiculous amounts of money trying to get every store to look and feel the same: people find familiarity comforting. But to people who watch thousands upon thousands of movies this gets astoundingly boring. Take any hobby. Literally any one of them. The people who are really…
If I am getting your point, you are basically positing that critics are inherently disconnected for different reasons and we should see them as some fringe freaks more than anything ? PS: to put it out there, there’s people working at beer makers tasting beer samples every single day to check it is exactly the right taste. Ideally every day it has the same taste, if it differs they’ll do what’s needed to bring it bac…
They are writing for different audiences. That does not make them "freaks".
And their audience is more biased toward a.) those more deeply interested in movies b.) those seeking out of mainstream weirder things. People only casually interested in movies wont regularly read reviews. They read review once in a while if curious, but have no reason to read on regular. And people not seeking can find new movies by looking at local cinema program.
And also, if critics and mass were "connected" in the sense of "producing exact same score and commentary", there would be zero reason to pay critics. You would just go to aggregated mass score for that for free.
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I don't want a critic to tell me what I SHOULD be watching. I rely on them to tell me what I will like. I can't watch every movie, the movie critic is meant to be a filter. Historically movie critics judged a film based on its relative value. That's why you see a positive review on a cheesy rom-com and a negative review on a more ambitious flawed work of art. The rom-com review is viewed in the context of other rom-c…
But telling a person what they will like is a much more personalized endeavor suited for automated recommendation systems. Any random person could like objectively bad movies. But a critic can only recommend things objectively good. That means they can only try to filter out good movies, which are movies you should watch but may not like because your tastes are not objectively universal.
Realistically, current automated recommendation systems all sux.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree that critic reviews are inherently prescriptive. Major blockbusters rely on cliches for the same reason that supermarket chains spend ridiculous amounts of money trying to get every store to look and feel the same: people find familiarity comforting. But to people who watch thousands upon thousands of movies this gets astoundingly boring. Take any hobby. Literally any one of them. The people who are really…
> Why do people die from erotic self-asphyxiation? Because we have a compulsion to escalate and to push things further. We need novelty. We need new stuff. We go mad if it's just the same thing over and over. At least that's true for most of us. Not everyone takes it all that far, but when you invest a significant amount of time doing one thing in particular, you're always going to want to take it to greater heights.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree that critic reviews are inherently prescriptive. Major blockbusters rely on cliches for the same reason that supermarket chains spend ridiculous amounts of money trying to get every store to look and feel the same: people find familiarity comforting. But to people who watch thousands upon thousands of movies this gets astoundingly boring. Take any hobby. Literally any one of them. The people who are really…
> But to people who watch thousands upon thousands of movies this gets astoundingly boring. I would say that there's so many different ways to appreciate films, so many different types of audiences, and such wildly different intentions behind the films and the critics who write about them. It seems reductive and a bit misguided, to me, for someone to write an article about the divergence between metascore and imdb ra…
But if I want to quickly decide if a movie is worth watching, looking up its IMDB score is a blunt but fairly decent instrument. I'm not going to read reviews of 10 movies, usually.
Personally, I most enjoy watching reviews after I've seen a movie anyway, to get a critic's take on the movie I enjoyed (or didn't).
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…
60% of the viewers loose interest after episode 3, 40% of the viewers skip through the fight scene, 80% of the viewers watch the movie in one go...
It's a pitty Netflix knows this but still recommend movies I already watched or don't like.
So the question is: on whose behalf are reviews written?
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But telling a person what they will like is a much more personalized endeavor suited for automated recommendation systems. Any random person could like objectively bad movies. But a critic can only recommend things objectively good. That means they can only try to filter out good movies, which are movies you should watch but may not like because your tastes are not objectively universal.
Critics are not qualified to tell me what I should watch towards developing my own character. The disconnect between what they push as best and what audiences like as good, illustrates the postmodern critic's lack of relevance. Critics are pushers of entitled cynicism and ideology, not meaningful content.
> Critics are not qualified to tell me what I should watch towards developing my own character.
Well yes since everyone is different critics can never satisfy that for everyone.