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I apply both of these to all movies in tandem. A movie can be both “enjoyable to watch” and “having artistic merit” to varying degrees.
I really dislike when critics and audiences are unable to separate them. There are real, professional critics who seem to only judge movies by how much they enjoyed them, and I think that’s fucked. Then there’s others who seem to care exclusively about the perceived level of artistry - and usually they only like movies with a narrow range of themes and tones.
I’d call myself a cinaphile, a term I had not known till recent. I couldn’t call myself a film critic, or a film buff.
It’s all about intent.
If a film is trying to be a pseudo-intellectual fuck-fest and fails to do so it should be called out on it. Shutter Island I think tries it and fails. It’s like Scorsese saw Memento, thought “I can do that”, but he couldn’t.
If a film is just dumb fun like M3GAN, then that’s OK. More than fine. The worst thing you can do there is be boring. Michael Bay made robots fighting boring. Colin Trevorrow made dinosaurs boring. If you’re going to be dumb then at least be fun.
Hell, even Tron Ares is OK if you go into it expecting a two hour long music video. If you go into it expecting good acting, a script, a story, or anything other than Trent Reznor assaulting your eardrums to a light show, you’re going to be disappointed.
You know what film failed to challenge even a second grade understanding of anything? Blues Brothers. You know what film really nails being two solid hours of entertainment? Blues Brothers.
At no point in either movie do you ever wonder what is going to happen to the protagonist, how they’re going to get out of a predicament, or think about the world we live in. Even if you wanted to, you wouldn’t, because you’re jamming out to Aretha Franklin absolutely killing it.
I love dark introspective movies with layers of nuance that make me stare in to infinity for a while had thinking about what I saw. I also love dumb fun entertainment. There’s a wide gap between those two extremes where quality just falls in to a mediocre valley of boring. And right at the middle there’s another peak where truly rare films manage to strike a balance between stupid fun and introspective. It’s like horseshoes, close counts because you almost never hit the peg. Mandy comes to mind. So does the first Iron Man.
Totally agree but I don’t find stupid movies ‘fun’.
There are movies that are purposefully wacky, nonsensical, not scientific or just silly and I can’t enjoy them. Snowpiercer is a great example. This movie made 0 sense but it wasn’t trying to be a proper sci-fi. I was about the message and it was nicely delivered.
Then you have movies that are trying to be smart and failing badly like for example Interstellar. It’s a “smart” movie for not so smart people. I hate those.
And they you have purely stupid movies like all the Marverls, fast and furious and so on. Nothing makes sense but everyone pretends it does. If you are able to turn off thinking for couple hours and enjoy it - good for you. I can’t.
Honestly, I like Interstellar for its depictions of the failings of humans, more than for its depictions of scientific ideas.
But maybe that’s because I am already more science-minded and expect mainstream movie science to be garbage.
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Kpop demon hunters
It’s basically the perfect dumb fun movie. Except I really like the theme of Rumi dealing with her inner nature.
Gourmet vs Gourmand
Life’s better when you can enjoy complex things for their complexity and simple things for their simplicity =)
Bingo. I always try to think “What is it trying to be and can I take enjoyment from that?”
I’ll even enjoy a “bad” movie if it seems like everyone involved was having a blast making it. I just shift my perspective to “What if this were my friends from highschool showing me a movie they made?” and I end up being a lot less judgy.
Life’s too short to be too picky to be entertained.
Incorporating both is the better perspective. Don’t let examining media critically stop you from liking what you like.
The same goes the other way around: don’t let your enjoyment of something stop you from examining it critically, or, worse, (try to) stop others from doing so - which happens quite often, unfortunately.
Had a friend say this exact thing recently, completely baffled me. I didn’t like the movie we watched and was pointing things out, he was agreeing with most of it until he said something like: “yeah but overall I enjoyed the movie so I shouldn’t complain about it.”
I used to be a huge turd for years thinking “these plebians liking will Farrell movies are so dumb, it’s a horrible movie with no plot”.
Turns out you can enjoy two different things completely fine in life. I was just being an arrogant fuckwit
I still find all the roles he plays completely insufferable. If I stumble upon a movie and find out he is in it, he probably has non-negligible screen time, and that’s almost a no for the movie.
This is valid but I still hate watching Elf
All the positive reviews have a suspiciously similar, gushing writing style.
Hmm.
I mean, not a single other current movie/show on their front page has 99% audience score.
Even if Melanoma was secretly good and “the critics were trying to bury it” they would be suspicious.
It’ll be a shit load of bots, and then the same reactionary people that make everything politically partisan and mass review bomb anything “woke”
People that didn’t see it and don’t care about “how well it does” won’t review it at all, so there’s no counter votes because… Literally no one seeing it.
Russian and Israeli bots
It depends entirely on the movie.
Like one of my all time favourite movies is Pacific Rim, because it’s goal is simply to be a bad ass and fun movie where robots fight giant monsters and it succeeds at that incredible.
It doesn’t pretend there’s some big important ehtic dilemma or it’s characters are particularly deep or go through big arcs, but it doesn’t ignore any of that either, it gives just another character to make the film work and be good without distracting from the robots.
But then on the other hand a film like good will hunting has no giant monsters but has a great character arc that is the driving force of the movie and is also good.
As I said of Pacific Rim in another comment:
A giant robot hits a giant monster with a boat, it doesn’t get better than that!
But then another personal favorite of mine is 12 Angry Men. Black & white, most of the movie takes place in a single room, but still fantastic
I just took my wife to see The Housemaid this weekend. On one hand, the plot was kind of forced and it had to do a lot of voice overs to explain what was going on. On the other hand it had Sydney Sweeney’s tits in it. 5 stars.
Fuck Sydney Sweeney. There are billions of sets of tits, find some that don’t belong to a MAGA eugenicist, please.
I’m going to be honest, the number one way to get a good rating from me is to put a giant monster in your movie and have it fight other giant monsters OR a giant robot.
My number one complaint about movies with kaiju and/or mecha, which can prevent them from getting five stars, is that there are usually too many scenes with people talking and advancing the plot, and not enough scenes of wanton destruction where the kaiju/mecha are brawling.
The best way to get a shitty review out of me is to make fight scenes and not care about what you studied in high-school kinematics.
Stop a character mid-air without stopping time ->-1.
It was not for quick-time dialogue event, but just randomly stopped the character in air ->-5.That’s why Pacific Rim ranks so high in my book
A giant robot hits a giant monster with a boat, it doesn’t get better than that!
If you want high star rating from me, make a science fiction movie and make space silent and soundless, as it should be. Bonus points if the people in the spaceship don’t magically stick to the floor.
Even more points if it doesn’t just follow the “Aliens” formula with some stupid variations on the theme.
I used to have a higher bar, but shit has gotten so bad I can’t even. I don’t even know where to begin. I just want ONE good thing, is that too much to hope for???
How many stars does 2001: Space Odyssey get from you?
Yes.
i think a film’s quality is multidimensional and shouldn’t be reduced to a single number.
so i literally don’t rate films unless all aspects of it are consistently good or bad.
Neither perspective is good if they are to be applied generalized. There are flawed movies I enjoy, there are supposedly perfect movies I don’t enjoy. There are movies I enjoy because they challenge me and movies I don’t enjoy because they don’t. There are a lot of movies that I’ve already seen even on a first watch (looking at you, Marvel after Phase III) and dislike because of that and there are movies I watch because I’ve seen them before.
Often (not always, remember we try not to generalize) it comes down to what is expected, what is delivered and when there is something delivered you didn’t expect, how well was the twist executed.
Having craftsmanship be a factor in one’s rating of a movie is equally valid as how much you enjoyed it, as may be individual factors like historical plausibility, scientific accuracy or fidelity to the source material, if those things apply.
That’s why I prefer to talk about movies instead of assign numerical ratings.
One thought I’d like to add is, not all art is meant to be “enjoyed”, and there’s value in art that invokes unpleasant, even painful experiences.
In a way, it’s the opposite of the meme, something that can be worthwhile yet painful if it “lands”, and boring/tedious and bland otherwise. Though I also know some songs that cover bleak topics that hit me personally, but are also absolute bangers, so those aren’t mutually exclusive either.
I totally share that perspective. My controversial example is always fury road because it fits those criteria so well. It delivers exactly what it says on the tin. If you come expecting something else you’re gonna have a lousy time. But if you come excited about what it has to deliver, you’ll start noticing that it is engineered to near perfection with that one objective in mind.
One is not a cinephile, and the other is a fantastic exaggeration of what a cinephile is.
“This comment lacked perspective and nuance. A dreadful affair, 0/10.”
vs
“Hehe true.”
I think people should rate things consistently, and both of those criteria in the post are fairly subjective. Like, they could both vary based on your mood.
Here’s my 3-star rating system, which is less subjective:
*** I would happily watch this movie again, or I have already enjoyed it multiple times.
** It wasn’t bad, but I don’t see myself watching it again.
* I would refuse to watch this again, or I turned it off because I couldn’t watch it once.
Of course, it’s not perfect. Movies like Dear Zachary would be forced to be 2 stars. But for the most part, since star reviews are to help people decide what to watch, if the criteria is whether or not people would want to watch it a lot, I think the intentions line up with the implementation better.
I’m a fan of:
** - Watch
-
- Dont watch
-
Good system. I really like the practical call to action.
- must watch
- watch
- don’t watch
You could even extend it with half stars to a 6 star system equivalent.
Lots of rating systems gain an inflation of the hightest grades.
