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Cinematical Seven: Great movie critics
Filed under: Theatrical Reviews, MetaMetaCritic, Newsstand, Cinematical Seven
There are so many film critics. Some never seem to like anything, and some seem to like everything (*cough* Dittman *cough*). What you have to do when choosing a film critic is pick someone who you are comfortable with, someone who you find yourself reading over and over. Someone who seems to "get it," even if you don't agree with them all of the time. Here's are seven great film critics working today.
1. Roger Ebert: I'm not sure if everyone will agree with me on this, because some people see him as just "that thumbs guy" (as a local news show host here in Boston once said). But can you name another film critic who manages to not only be popular, but also has the film knowledge and the writing chops to back up that popularity? I don't always agree with him (three and a half stars for Anaconda?!), but I agree with him a lot. And I can't think of another film critic working today who loves film more than Roger Ebert. Even when I don't agree with him I can see where he's coming from. You don't get that with many critics. And that's why he's at #1.
What is the Place of Evil in Film?
Filed under: MetaMetaCritic, Newsstand
Roger Ebert, after giving a zero star review to Chaos,
received a letter from its producer and director in which they defended
their film, insisting that, "Real evil exists, and cannot be ignored,
sanitized or exploited. It needs to be shown just as it is." Ebert,
however, disagrees. In his mind, the lack of motivation or context
given the killer/torturer/evildoer in Chaos makes the
filmmakers irresponsible and, he suspects, motivated more by the
notoriety of scandal than the creation of a quality film.
Additionally, he is deeply troubled by what he calls "the absence of
any alternative" to the horrors depicted in the film. Granting the
possibility that the world really is as horrible as the filmmakers
suggest, Ebert insists that it is then their responsibility as artists
to offer an alternative; to give audiences a reason to hope.Whether you agree with Ebert or not, it's incredibly refreshing when a mainstream, thumbs up/thumbs down-type critic is allowed to take a moment to seriously consider the power and meaning of cinema. I expect this sort of thing from his fellow Chicagoan Jonathan Rosenbaum, perhaps, but certainly not from Ebert. Has anyone around here seen Chaos? What do you think?
Ebert Hates
Filed under: Theatrical Reviews, MetaMetaCritic, Politics
So, Roger Ebert really, really hated Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. While I’ve always had issues with Ebert, I think it’s safe to say he
got this one right. What’s to be celebrated here, though, is not that
he didn’t like the movie-- instead, let’s talk about how he didn’t
like it, and the magnificence with which he expressed his displeasure.
Suffice to say that the review ends this way: “Speaking in my official
capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.”
Oh, snap!As a special, grumpy bonus, Ebert has used this occasion to put together an extensive list of his most-hated films, each complete with a teaser paragraph and a link to the entire review. Whether you agree with him or not, the list is a stunning litany of irritation, confusion, and outright disgust. (And please don’t click that link if criticism of Flashdance makes you cry.) While I wonder what The Usual Suspects is doing sharing space with the well-known attack-tree masterpiece The Guardian, I did laugh out loud at the resignation in Ebert's review of the former: "To the degree that I do understand, I don't care."
Getting Women Right
Filed under: MetaMetaCritic, Newsstand, Angelina Jolie, Politics
There’s a fascinating piece up at Alternet in which Sheerly Avni examines the representation of women (I know, yawn) in Hollywood. She has no time for your chick flicks, your weepies, or even your Angelina Jolie-style action flicks. Instead of being constantly “empowered, encouraged, affirmed and celebrated,” Avni would rather see films in which she finds herself in the characters on screen. After all, as hot as Angelina is, there just aren’t many of us who can look at Lara Croft and go, “That is so me -- I kicked an evildoer off a cliff just the other day! And boy, sister, did I look good doing it.” Though many feminist critics would still say that it’s virtually impossible for female audiences to safely identify with women on screen, Avni is able to come up with ten films that, for her, contain female characters with whom she can identify; women who seem “real.” What’s great about her list is that it’s totally insane-- who would have thought Adam’s Rib, Batman Returns, and Fight Club would ever be on any kind of list together, least of all one about valid female characters?Since reading the article, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with my own list. Now I’m just depressed, because I honestly can’t come up with a single freaking movie in which I looked at a female character on screen and just said, “Girl, I know.” I mean, I love Nora Charles more than maybe any other woman in the movies, but do I identify with her? No. She’s who I want to be, not who I am. I love Brigitte Bardot in Contempt because she’s a goddess, not because she’s me. Help me out -- what films would be on your list?
MetaMetaCritic: Me and You and Everyone We Know
Filed under: MetaMetaCritic
A.O. Scott loves Me and You and Everyone We Know, and pleads, "I like [this film] very much, and I hope you will, too." It's an authentic wish that everyone could see the good in something that many won't bother to see the good in. (Plus it makes you feel a weird, nebulous guilt about a bad thing you haven't even done yet.) But Scott's wish is deserved: July has pulled off the merging of installation art and cinema with aplomb, and the result is "touching, ... funny, [and] borderline creepy."
MetaMetaCritic: Lords of Dogtown - gravitas, but no fun
Filed under: Sports, New Releases, Sony, MetaMetaCritic
Just when you thought publication bias was a thing of the past (ha ha) Entertainment Weekly goes ahead and gives Lords of Dogtown a suspicious looking A+, when just about everyone else thinks the film suffers from clichéd melodrama and "inept storytelling." So I did my research: according to Metacritic, out of over a total of 2109 reviews, Entertainment Weekly gave consistently higher scores a whopping 66 percent of the time. And we're not just talking a point here, a point there. In the case of Dogtown, they're a full 15 points ahead of the next best review: Rolling Stone's 75, based on "crazy-cool board action." (I did my own research on Rolling Stone. They give higher scores 57 percent of the time.)
Now that we know what we're dealing with, let's take a look at Lords of Dogtown.
MetaMeta Critic: Dominion / Exorcist: The Beginning
Filed under: Horror, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews, MetaMetaCritic
Why make a prequel? To cash in on a film franchise, of course. But what happens when that franchise is over 30 years old, and child star Linda Blair has grown from a pea-soup spewing child into a career cameo? In the case of The Exorcist, you get not one, but two competing versions of the same film, with the same actors, the same shots, and completely opposing motives. Gus Van Sant replayed Psycho shot-by-shot, in homage to the original. In a weird twist, we've got Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, and The Exorcist: The Beginning, redundant homage unto themselves, which collectively go under the name Exorcist: The Prequel.
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