Movies Are Silly!

Welcome back stalwart readers. Had a bit of a hiatus there, huh? I know you all miss my semi-meta rantings and ravings on the subject of movies and movie-makers so this installment will be the most meta yet! If you already like my criticism of film as a general art form wait until you hear my criticism of critics!

 

Movie Critics

 

I realize criticizing critics’ criticism, while a pretty good tongue twister, is a bit ironic for me to do here (“ironic” being more palatable than “hypocritical”). However, I must stress here that I HATE movie critics. Yes, I’m aware what I do here is a form of criticism. Yes, I’m aware that what many of my colleagues here on yourpopfilter do is 100% considered to be “movie criticism”. I don’t care. I HATE THEM.

To criticize is to place yourself in an almost superior position to the work and artist you are reviewing. You look down from on high and pass judgement on what you see. It’s a heady feeling and if you’re doing it in front of a large audience it must be all the more intoxicating. But honestly, what gives you the right? What credentials qualify you to rate films and write your thoughts on them in a widely-read publication? The ability to write sentences so densely packed with excessive vocabulary and flowery aplomb they are nigh-unreadable? While that helps the answer is more like: a general knowledge of film theory and history, a background in journalism and hopefully at least a mild interest in movies. In other words if you are a first-year journalism student and you like movies then congratulations; you’ve got what it takes to be a movie critic.

Further still, what gives you the right to make objective pronouncements on something that is by nature subjective? I’ve touched on this point a few times so I’m not going to harp on it overmuch but it’s highly relevant to the subject at hand. Was The Godfather Part II better than Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen? Yes, it most certainly was. Why? Well….. Listen, if you liked Transformers, good for you. Plenty of people love those movies because they find them entertaining. What does it matter what I think? I might know a little more than you about how movies get made, I might have seen more movies than you and can name more actors and directors but none of that matters once you’re sitting in that seat. All that matters is that you get what YOU want out of the experience. And I don’t know what you want, I only know what I want.

I get it, movies are “expensive”. It’s complained about so often to do so is now cliché. So you want to know what you’re getting into before you shell out your hard-earned bucks for a ticket and some salty snacks. If this is the only reason movie critics exist, however, what on earth gives them (…us) the right to be so pompous? Why are movie critics so self-important if they are the equivalent of an amazon.com product review? They pick a number of stars and then write some words to justify their choice; the only difference is a product review might actually be objective.

Speaking of which, who came up with the “4 star” system? When you include half-stars it is essentially a numerical value assigned to the movie, the maximum score being 8. Translated into a more traditional, intuitive and sensical “out of 100” system this means a movie that got 3 ½ stars got an 87.5; what is generally considered an “excellent” score is actually a “sorta ok” score. This is like a shitty test written by a lazy teacher which only consists of 8 questions so if you answer just two of them wrong you get a miserably bad score. It’s a highly inefficient and uninformative way of rating things and for some reason it is the standard for movie critics.

We need them though (“we” need “them”, huh?). They are part of the process for judging and evaluating a movie. For a movie to be “good” it has to get “good reviews” and only “good” movies get awards. Someone has to step up to the plate and tell us what’s “good” or no one would know what movies deserve to get what awards and we like giving awards, especially to things we enjoy, such as movies. Seriously though, the knowledge that a movie is going to be judged and written about by numerous, different-minded people keeps film-makers on their toes. It keeps them working harder and in order for good film to get made those people have to work hard. I just wish we could accomplish this without sounding like assholes.

 

-SB

 

RIP Roger Ebert (1942-2013)