Seriously... What's wrong with film critics?!

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

300 has get 89 % audience score, while 60 % from critics.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/300

As i know no other movie with a more simple story without surprising plots, i guess audience vote is meaningless, as high numbers in audience score are not equal to high quality movie.

[Cookiegod]

300 has get 89 % audience score, while 60 % from critics.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/300

As i know no other movie with a more simple story without surprising plots, i guess audience vote is meaningless, as high numbers in audience score are not equal to high quality movie.

I never claimed that audience ratings are indicative of the movie quality. I said it three times already in this thread and I'll say it again: The audience liking stupid things I'd get.

But I used to think that critics scores were indicative of the movie quality.

300 is from 2006. Jackass from 2002 is another example of this. That's pre-whatever our era is. Somehow the world has turned on its head in the last many years. Now it's suddenly the critics that like the dumbest things they can get.

I can fully get behind a statement that the Joker has its flaws. I do in general not like superhero movies. But somehow this movie is supposed to be that bad and TLJ perfection?!
I'm confident somewhere Roger Ebert is spinning in his grave uncontrollably.

[athanaric]

Do not you think that a portion of the population may have a very bad taste?

Even people with bad taste can enjoy a good movie, and even film critics can have bad taste.

Furthermore, you have never heard of a portion of the population, with a certain ideology (against pc, etc.) and very active in social networks, who feels animosity towards any academic figure and thinks they are more prepared than (i.e.) professional film critics (globally, not even a specific critic or webpage)?

Considering the numbers involved (check the count of critics reviews vs audience reviews) and other factors discussed above, I think it's fair to say that the audience reviewers are a far more diverse crowd in every possible way than the film critics.

[Love Mountain]

He said smugly, not realising the irony in his unique approach to defend a 95% approval rating for a lackluster movie.

Yet declaring a movie "lackluster" and undeserving of near universal critical praise is somehow not smug at all.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

I guess the 3. Joker movie in a short time is too much .

Plus Ledger, Leto, Phoenix played the Joker as sociopath.

Its nothing new.

[Common Soldier]

300 has get 89 % audience score, while 60 % from critics.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/300

As i know no other movie with a more simple story without surprising plots, i guess audience vote is meaningless, as high numbers in audience score are not equal to high quality movie.

What qualifies a movie as "high quality"? The visuals of 300 were very arresting, and even though historically, the movie was crap, I still found myself drawn to the movie and its story. Had the actors not been f" filmed mostly with a super-impositionchroma key technique, to help replicate the imagery of the original comic book" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(film)) the movie would not have worked. It would have been terrible as a strict live action film, but since it retained its "comic book" like quality, it worked.

Because films are by their very nature visual, and so are comic books, comic book movies often do very well. A movie that is visually based does not need a complicated plot to work. Movies purposes are to be entertaining, if an audience want to be strictly lectured or educated, they can read a text book. A good movie can just be entertaining, although a movie can sometimes be educational as well as entertaining, if if fails at entertaining, then it fails as a movie.

[Cookiegod]

Yet declaring a movie "lackluster" and undeserving of near universal critical praise is somehow not smug at all.

Yes, I don't think it's smug at all, and neither should you, unless you unironically and unequivocally seem to believe TLJ is better than Inception, various Tarantino movies such as Django, the Hateful Eight and Pulp Fiction (only 90% from top critics), both Blade Runner movies, most Nolan movies, heck, most movies by pretty much all the great film makers. But what am I saying. You thought "echo chamber" was a smart choice of words to defend a 95% rating. Because if there's one thing 95% aren't indicative of, it's an echo chamber.

I guess the 3. Joker movie in a short time is too much .

Plus Ledger, Leto, Phoenix played the Joker as sociopath.

Its nothing new.

Ah yeah sure. It's not like there's been a gazillion Star Wars franchise movies lately.
Or hey, the last fast and furious movie scores better than Joker. Or hey, 300, which you yourself give as a prime example for a stupid movie, got the same critics ratings as Joker.

I can go on and on. But I think I made my point.

Which can't be said of you two. What in the world can warrant such a discrepancy?! How on earth did TLJ deserve a better score than most masterpieces in the cinematic history. How on earth do you justify Joker being worse rated than Ghostbusters 2016?

And how do you two type with your blindfolds on?!

[Common Soldier]

Gotta disagree with the verbiage so far.

First unless somebody is slumming be honest some other guy is getting paid to review art or watch movies. It does mean at a minimum they can put together a more coherent 'post' than most people on the net, but let's be fair there is some jealousy here.

I have to disagree with that. The criticism of movie critics isn't based on jealousy, many of the amateurs I have read are as well spoken and a lot more insightful than these professional movie critics.

Second. Anyone persons view is going to be any one persons view. Period, end of story.

That is not the issue. It isn't just about one or two critics, on just one movie, but the majority of critics on a seemingly increasing number of movies that is the issue.

Third I liked it and they did not is not an argument. It bar talk. Diverging into the why they did not like for political reasons in bar talk with a couple beers or more.

it is when almost all the critics like a movie, and most of the audience disagrees, and we see this on movie after movie, not just one. You do have to wonder what is going on, when the critics consistently rate a movie as good the audience rate as bad and the reverse. Critics are supposed to be guides to the audience to let them know about whether the movie is worth the audience spending their money to see. If their judgement is consistently different from the audience, then they are worthless, and should be replaced, since they are no real help to the audience as a guide.

But as for serious reviews I see no particular lefty snow flack agenda here just board at seeing something already done but not as well or just punching buttons.

I do see some agenda on movies like Ad Astra of some apparently lefty snow flake agenda, I can't account for the almost universal praise of a movie the audience panned. I saw the movie, and it bad - science bad, the logic of the movie was bad, the space craft design was bad, pacing of the movie was slower than a snail, the characters not particularly likable, memorable, or interesting, Yet 84% of the critics loved the movie, while 55% of the audience hated the film. As usual, instead of admitting there might be something wrong with the critics, the difference is blamed on the audience, in what seems like is becoming a standard practice. When you point out the Emperor Has No Clothes, the critic defenders will insist the emperor has clothes and it is just you the audience who can't see it. Typical snow flake claptrap. The Emperor has no clothes, and TLJ

It is an issue when movie critics are consistently misjudging what the audience likes. While universally good reviews can help bring out an audience to a movie, suckering them in to seeing it once, poor reviews can turn away audiences. The fact that movies have succeeded despite poor reviews says a lot about how the movie really was, rather than just what the critics thought.

I understand that critics will often have different views than the general audience, since they see far more movies, and regularly may see multiple movies a week, while the general audience sees far fewer, and that is going to change the critics tastes. The critic may find a movie whose theme they have seen a hundred times before more boring than an audience that sees far fewer movies, and where the ideas seem fresh to them. But the late praising (or rejecting) of movies by critics seem far more than that.

(I am still angry about being suckered into seeing Ad Astra. My friend told me it was a bad movie, but I followed the critics, and instead wasted my money and a couple of hours of my life. I didn't realize the audience scores were so low, or I would have listened to my friend.)

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

You know, it's really amusing to see people complain about the SJW echo chamber by creating their own echo chamber.

What even is the echo chamber though?

That Joker was never intended to be "Alt-Right" propaganda and is actually a Leftist movie?
The whole point of Joker is that Arthur is oppressed by society and encourages other people to rise up against the Gotham elite and the rich Wayne family. Wayne is basically a stand in for Donald Trump.

I didn't even like the movie really. I thought it was okay as a movie, it did what it was trying to do quite well, but it wasn't really my thing, the performances and the story/escalation were well handled if anything.

But it wasn't racist, it wasn't Nazi propaganda and it wasn't even really about encouraging terrorism. It was about how Joker is mentally ill and was transformed into the Joker by an apathetic and oppressive society.

[Diamat]

I didn't read the movie as a political movie at all. I think it never tried to be. I think it's wrong to read either a left or right agenda into it. It's a piece of art precisely because it is political only in the secondary sense (i.e., what people read into it).

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

The movie was rather apolitical. But you could draw parallels between Wayne running for office and Donald Trump. As well as the cutting of social services as more or less political commentary. Since the movie is set in the 1980's it also has a strong anti-Reagan sort of feeling. Almost like it was a documentary about the social failings of the Reagan years.

[Love Mountain]

Yes, I don't think it's smug at all, and neither should you, unless you unironically and unequivocally seem to believe TLJ is better than Inception, various Tarantino movies such as Django, the Hateful Eight and Pulp Fiction (only 90% from top critics), both Blade Runner movies, most Nolan movies, heck, most movies by pretty much all the great film makers. But what am I saying.

I don't think a % rating from a review aggregator determines film ranking in an objective way. Otherwise all future film makers should be required to study Toy Story for at least half of their schooling since it holds an unbeatable 100% rating. But hey, if you want to judge the worth of a movie by its average review, be my guest. It seems to me that art, like most things, is subjective, and what might appeal to you, might not appeal to me. Similarly, what may be a hit today, may be a total flop in the future. As a simple example, Citizen Kane is hailed as the greatest movie of all time by even some sworn apolitical elitist reviewers. Yet I personally find Nolan films to be better crafted, better filmed, and more socially impactful. It's almost as if, there can be two entirely valid opinions.

You thought "echo chamber" was a smart choice of words to defend a 95% rating. Because if there's one thing 95% aren't indicative of, it's an echo chamber.

I thought "echo chamber" is an appropriate choice of words since all the right-wingers on TWC are all equally bothered by "leftist" cinephiles. Yet the 2nd review from The Guardian makes it a specific point that it doesn't think The Joker is an alt-right manifesto.

Is this movie really just the biggest-budget Ben Shapiro video? To what extent will misogynistic creeps “feel seen” in this film? Well, for most of its run time, it isn’t quite the alt-right manifesto some of the pre-release discourse suggested. It’s really just a drama about a mentally ill man with no friends who is targeted by bullies, lives with his mother, is ignored by the attractive woman down the hall and only finds purpose in mass murder.

Wait, I know that sounds like it is sympathy for the incel, but Fleck’s anger, for most of the movie, stays rooted in his own circumstances. He isn’t really railing against PC culture or how he’s owed anything, like a guy who won’t stop talking about Jordan Peterson. It’s more of a generic “My life sucks!” cry than an “Our life sucks, brothers!”

In the final reel, though, there is some angry monologuing, and some of those “Nobody cares!” talking points come through, but the writing is too vague and incoherent to really land a point.

Or the New Yorker

Skinny, twitchy and at times startlingly graceful — Phoenix is one of the modern screen’s underrated dancers — Arthur has a physical and psychological resemblance to Freddie Quell, the misfit drifter Phoenix played in “The Master.” But he also carries the burden of being a victimized Everyman in a parable that can’t get its story straight. Arthur’s uncontrollable laughter arises from a medical condition that is possibly the result of childhood abuse. His profound alienation also arises from social inequality, the decline of civility, political corruption, television, government bureaucracy and a slew of other causes. Rich people are awful. Poor people are awful. Joker’s embrace of radical evil becomes a kind of integrity.

Or something. It’s hard to say if the muddle “Joker” makes of itself arises from confusion or cowardice, but the result is less a depiction of nihilism than a story about nothing. The look and the sound — cinematography by Lawrence Sher, cello-heavy score by Hildur Gudnadottir — connote gravity and depth, but the movie is weightless and shallow. It isn’t any fun, and it can’t be taken seriously. Is that the joke?

Or Slate

Some critics thought Phillips’ portrait of the artist as a young murderer could be seen as an apologia for the violent ideology of the incel movement, and some family members of victims of the 2012 shooting in Aurora, Colorado, which took place at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, expressed similar concerns. Meanwhile, plenty of other reviewers suggested that, incitement to mass revolt aside, the movie was bombastic, unoriginal, and just plain bad.

In general, I try to steer clear of advance buzz to avoid exactly this kind of pre-release staking out of sides. But especially after Phillips—a director most associated with hit male-bonding comedies, from Old School and Road Trip to the Hangover series—went viral with an interview bemoaning the impossibility of making funny movies in these regrettably “woke” times, it was hard not to walk into Joker knowing something about it. I’d say I approached the film with equal parts squeamishness about the impending gore and curiosity about how Joaquin Phoenix, whom I’ve gradually come to regard as one of the best American actors working, would approach the role of an evil comic-book clown.

The grimy and relentlessly downbeat fable that finally unfolded on screen seemed too slight, aesthetically and morally, to bear the weight of all those months of debate. Joker is a bad movie, yes: It’s predictable, clichéd, deeply derivative of other, better movies, and overwritten to the point of self-parody. (If a feature-length sendup of Joker was made, it’s hard to imagine in what details it would differ from Joker itself.) The experience of sitting through it is highly unpleasant, but that unpleasantness has less to do with graphic violence—there are only one or two scenes that go hard, gore-wise—than with claustrophobia and boredom.

It's almost as if many reviewers found legitimate reasons to dislike the movie that has little to do with what the right-wing posters in this thread claim the reviewers didn't like. Sure there are reviews who will claim that "this is an incel movie". From places like the Salon or The Bubbling Blonde. Considering their audience, the do you expect? Tell you what, should I be outraegd about the wide tolerance of nazi ideology because of a positive Joker review on Stormfront? Absurd, and even the Salon only make a passing reference to the film.

To fit the theme of the film. The obsession over the SJW strawman is a bad joke and detracts from the fact that not everybody like the Joker.

What even is the echo chamber though?

That Joker was never intended to be "Alt-Right" propaganda and is actually a Leftist movie?
The whole point of Joker is that Arthur is oppressed by society and encourages other people to rise up against the Gotham elite and the rich Wayne family. Wayne is basically a stand in for Donald Trump.

I didn't even like the movie really. I thought it was okay as a movie, it did what it was trying to do quite well, but it wasn't really my thing, the performances and the story/escalation were well handled if anything.

But it wasn't racist, it wasn't Nazi propaganda and it wasn't even really about encouraging terrorism. It was about how Joker is mentally ill and was transformed into the Joker by an apathetic and oppressive society.

Even a cursory look through all the reviewers will quickly clear up that the reviewers were split on the movie due to legitimate reasons. Reasons that have little to do with allegations of racism, Nazi propaganda, or terrorism. That's why this thread is an echo chamber. I felt the exact same way when this Forum was covering The Last Jedi and The Force Awakens. If I were to listen to y'all, I would come away with the idea that the new Star Wars trilogy is successful because it panders to SJWs. Yet a read through the actual reviews will quickly dispel that notion.

This is coming from someone who liked The Joker, and didn't like the new trilogy. The only reasons I can even appreciate the new trilogy, is because I've watched, repeatedly, reviews and analyses that pointed out the merits of the new Star Wars films.

[mishkin]

Big BY THE WAY

You, great movie connoisseurs, are using as a battering ram against professional film critics (that great hive mind, isn't it?) a page (rotten tomatoes) whose methodology has been highly criticized and whose numbers you apparently don't understand.

This is why, for example, Annabelle: Creation currently has an RT score of 100% while Dunkirk is only on 93%. We liked Annabelle: Creation, it was good and scary. But in no world is it better than Dunkirk – and we're sure most of the critics who liked both films would agree. (From Digital Spy "The reviews site doesn't work like you think it does." Fell free to just google "how rotten tomatoes work").

If you want a minimum of seriousness in your numbers, I recommend metacritic, where Dunkirk will always have a better score than Annabel and no Blade Runner will never be surpassed by any Fast & Furious.

Edit:
An anecdote about Rotten tomatoes if I may. Last year, Twitter film critics were in love with a movie and delighted that it had the famous 100%. They also feared the arrival of the critic by a Top Critic famous for its cruelty. Indeed when this criticism arrived, the film lost its magical status. Thats Rotten Tomatoes. Great to boast if you achieve the 100%, but little else.

[Cookiegod]

I know how Rotten Tomatoes works. It is a binary choice, which makes their statistics an easy classification statistics. Does that allow for some discrepancies and inaccuracies? Sure. Does this allow for a 44% vs 95% discrepancy where the former movie is clearly the better one? Nope.

Since people here have quoted the New Yorker either without reading it fully or omitting the less pleasant part on purpose, which directly contradicts their claim, here:

Phoenix gyrates, on a steep flight of steps, to “Rock ’n’ Roll Part 2,” a 1972 hit by Gary Glitter. It used to be popular with sports teams, rousing the crowds at N.F.L. and N.H.L. games, before Glitter was convicted, in 1999, of possessing child pornography, and, seven years later, of sexually abusing minors, in Vietnam. Since then, understandably, the song has tumbled out of favor. Do you believe that the decision to revive it, for “Joker,” is anything but a studied choice, nicely crafted to offend? Please. I happen to dislike the film as heartily as anything I’ve seen in the past decade, but I realize, equally, that to vent any inordinate wrath toward it is to fall straight into its trap, for outrage merely proves that our attention has been snagged. Just ask the President of the United States.

In other words: He heartedly admits he's been triggered. He just thinks it's best to play it cool.

It's also beautiful to see statements like these:

all the right-wingers on TWC are all equally bothered by "leftist" cinephiles.

Yeah sure buddy. If people don't agree with you, they surely must be right-wing.

What is also interesting, is that the conservatives historically have been much more tolerant to art than the left, and less inclined to use it politically. Richard Wagner was in the context of his time a leftie. His operas called for revolution and "free love". Yet he received a lot of praise from the bourgeois.

Do I think a piece of art can be highly political and still brilliant? Absolutely. Do I have to agree with anything in the political message for me for me to acknowledge that it's good? Absolutely not.

And that's where one of the key differences between Sukiyama on one side and me on the other is. I can and do judge the work on its own merits. He on the other hand needs to assert on a regular basis that people disagreeing with him on movies must be "right wing". Be that as it may I really miss the times when the left cheered art such as that of Bertold Brecht and Heinrich & Thomas Mann, rather than whatever lackluster, heartless product a certain billion dollar corporate conglomerate focused on children throws at them.

[mishkin]

God, for a totally apolitical movie, its fans can't stop making references left and right.

[Cookiegod]

God, for a totally apolitical movie, its fans can't stop making references left and right.

Yeah, totally. Let's go back a page and find out who set that ball rolling.

Do not you think that a portion of the population may have a very bad taste? Furthermore, you have never heard of a portion of the population, with a certain ideology (against pc, etc.) and very active in social networks, who feels animosity towards any academic figure and thinks they are more prepared than (i.e.) professional film critics (globally, not even a specific critic or webpage)?

Whups? Didn't take you for a fan.

[mishkin]

Excuse me for pointing out a fact, "demonstrated" by your performance, among others.

[Cookiegod]

You successfully demonstrated the consequences of a stone thrown in a glass house.

Several people who did not find it deserving of the controversy and review bombing, such as me (enjoyed it), Oda (didn't like it that much) and others pointed out that this movie wasn't political.

You yourself admitted you didn't watch the movie, as did some others here. And yet all you wanted to do is make it political. Then, after having thrown the stones, you start accusing us of that. This is a nice catch-22 you made there.

Neither my "performance" nor that of Oda or most others here demonstrated any political affiliations whatsoever. Being anti-PC isn't a marker of right-wing, and it is wrong to make it that. Not least because you're handing them the monopoly over something that used to be the hallmark of the left in its golden days, when it embraced and defended pluralism.

[mishkin]

and you still don't deny that my statement is correct

[Cookiegod]

and you still don't deny that my statement is correct

I'm saying that your statement has as much validity as an arsonist complaining about all the fires he sets in the city.

If you accuse people of being right-wing, you choose that topic, irrespective of what the actual topic is. To then blame them for talking politics you really have to be special.