2013 at the movies - what is upcoming

Vexer6 wrote:

Somehow the trailers for that film just don't excite me that much, I am looking forward to Riddick though.

Neither of those statements surprise me in the slightest.  

The first "Riddick" movie (aka "Pitch Black") was enough for me.

No Riddick movies is the perfect amount for me  

I have also never seen any of the Fast & Furious films, car chases do very little for me. Unless....

I've seen one of the "Fast & Furious" flicks -- I have no idea which one it was now -- at my brother in law's house a couple of years ago. It was entertaining enough but it didn't ignite a burning desire to catch up on the ones I'd missed, or start watching new installments as they appear....

I'm actually looking forward to Riddick--Twohy is a competent director (although I hear his last was a big misstep) who prefers to keep CGI and big-budget FX at a minimum. That combined with a fairly restrained hand make for some fairly unique genre films. Even Chronicles of Riddick--which did not deserve the critical beating it received--kept things toned to moderation while being a thrilling action movie.

As for Gravity, that's the movie I'm looking forward to as well. Cuaron is a genius (save for Harry Potter 3 which really didn't showcase his style) and Children of Men is in my top 10. That movie was nothing less than perfect sci-fi with an important message and masterful filmmaking. And most of you probably know by now that if a movie is set in space, I'll be there to see it. Okay unless Michael Bay directs.

I quite enjoy most of Michael Bay's films, I liked but did not love Children Of Men(I was dissapointed at how underrused Julianne Moore was, and the narrative felt too unfocused at times)

Vexer6 wrote:

I quite enjoy most of Michael Bay's films, I liked but did not love Children Of Men(I was dissapointed at how underrused Julianne Moore was, and the narrative felt too unfocused at times)

I hear ya about Children of Men; Cuaron was just going for the unconventional in eliminating the A-list fairly quickly. We all expect the bigger names to survive most of the movie, and it's a shock here when they die early on. Interestingly enough, Moore was originally cast as the pregnant woman.

As for the narrative, it can again be argued that it was more the unconventional structure of the story than a lack of focus on story flow. Cuaron has always enjoyed being an cinematic iconoclast so fitting everything together for complete coherency probably wasn't a priority of his.

It's also funny putting Michael Bay's name next to Alfonso Cuaron: compare the final minutes of mayhem in Transformers to the single, unbroken take of the several-minute shot of Clive Owens' character fleeing the camp.

corplhicks wrote:

Vexer6 wrote:

I quite enjoy most of Michael Bay's films, I liked but did not love Children Of Men(I was dissapointed at how underrused Julianne Moore was, and the narrative felt too unfocused at times)

I hear ya about Children of Men; Cuaron was just going for the unconventional in eliminating the A-list fairly quickly. We all expect the bigger names to survive most of the movie, and it's a shock here when they die early on. Interestingly enough, Moore was originally cast as the pregnant woman.

As for the narrative, it can again be argued that it was more the unconventional structure of the story than a lack of focus on story flow. Cuaron has always enjoyed being an cinematic iconoclast so fitting everything together for complete coherency probably wasn't a priority of his.

It's also funny putting Michael Bay's name next to Alfonso Cuaron: compare the final minutes of mayhem in Transformers to the single, unbroken take of the several-minute shot of Clive Owens' character fleeing the camp.

I would've prefered it if Moore had played the pregnant woman, the actress that played her in the film seemed rather inexperienced at times.

I wasn't trying to compare Bay and Cuaron at all, I personally like both of they're directing styles.

I don't think Gravity looks bad or anything, but I sometimes get what you call "hype aversion" when a bunch of critics start praising a film that I think only looks OK. I might see Gravity on DVD, but I don't feel an overwhelming desire to pay to see it in a theater.

Vexer6 wrote:

I wasn't trying to compare Bay and Cuaron at all, I personally like both of they're directing styles.  

I didn't think you were; I actually did in my own post, albeit tongue-in-cheek.  

Vexer6 wrote:

I don't think Gravity looks bad or anything, but I sometimes get what you call "hype aversion" when a bunch of critics start praising a film that I think only looks OK. I might see Gravity on DVD, but I don't feel an overwhelming desire to pay to see it in a theater.

The critics have seen the entire film and have based their opinions on that. You've seen a trailer.

S.D. wrote:

Vexer6 wrote:

I don't think Gravity looks bad or anything, but I sometimes get what you call "hype aversion" when a bunch of critics start praising a film that I think only looks OK. I might see Gravity on DVD, but I don't feel an overwhelming desire to pay to see it in a theater.

The critics have seen the entire film and have based their opinions on that.  You've seen a trailer.

Duh, what i'm saying is that in the past i've been dissapointed by films that critics went nuts over, so it's hard for me not to get a little apprehensive. I'm not going to blindly go see a film just because critics say it's good.

I've always enjoyed critics for a great portion of my life. I've learned a hell of a lot about movie history and filmmaking in general just by reading their stuff. Some can be a bit too harsh--Rex Reed--and some too forgiving--Pete Travers--but a lot of them are fairly balanced and highly informative. And I certainly don't blindly follow their opinion. At times I will see a movie before receiving any word at all from the press. What's crazy is, every time I've done so, I'll read a couple reviews that reflect exactly what I was thinking the entire movie.

Another thing to remember is that cinema is a broad entity, and critics are usually well-versed and educated about it all, so for the most part their academic word can be trusted. It only gets iffy with Oscar material where a movie could be overpraised for the sake of kickbacks or pulpit-speak, but thankfully there's been a lot less of that over the years.

Currently my favorites are James Berardinelli, Jim Emerson, and a little-known genre critic from Canada named Richard Scheib (great stuff and fun for sci-fi/horror/fantasy fans, http://www.moria.co.nz/). Their use of sound logic and inductive deconstruction is amazing (although I feel Berardenelli's pieces are a bit short). Of course, Roger Ebert was a god amongst men.

Everyone really should realize that we are all critics of any body of work, so why criticize the critic for merely being a critic.

I also enjoy reading Todd McCarthy from the Hollywood Reporter. I don't really focus on critics that much prior to seeing a film, but as soon I get finished watching one I'll head to IMDB and start reading reviews from the major publications just to get an idea of how my experience lined up.

The only times I'll let reviews influence my judgement on seeing something is if the consensus opinion is really bad, in that case sometime I'll skip the theatrical release and catch it later on DVD.

S.D. wrote:

I also enjoy reading Todd McCarthy from the Hollywood Reporter.  I don't really focus on critics that much prior to seeing a film, but as soon I get finished watching one I'll head to IMDB and start reading reviews from the major publications just to get an idea of how my experience lined up.  

The only times I'll let reviews influence my judgement on seeing something is if the consensus opinion is really bad, in that case sometime I'll skip the theatrical release and catch it later on DVD.

Todd's amazing; too bad about the whole ordeal with Variety. He has a great book on Howard Hawks that I would recommend to everyone in love with classic cinema.

I don't care what the critical consensus on a film is, if it looks appealing enough to me, I will see it regardless of how positive or negative the reception is. One film i'm glad I ignored the negative reviews for this year is R.I.P.D., it was a pretty fun film and definitely did not deserve all the hatred it got from critics.

I'm 50/50 on Todd, some of his reviews are interesting, others come across as poorly written.

Rex Reed however is THE single worst critic of all time, he's just a nasty piece of work who seems to hate his job and hate movies in general(James Berardinelli, another critic who I respect, met Reed in person and said that he was very unpleasant to be around)

I miss Roger Ebert.

Fat Freddy wrote:

I miss Roger Ebert.

Me too. A little bit of academic film criticism died with him; it hasn't been the same.

The new Ebert website is also horrid, just tasteless. Everything is blown up and oversaturated with opinions and editorials. Of course, the critics write decent reviews but I have no idea who over half of them are. His older site was well-designed, a fine and simple (read: fast) place.

As far as I'm concerned, critics aren't usually worth my time. IMO, a critic is not a movie lover. They see movies so they can find something wrong with it. If you go into something expecting to dislike it, you can usually find something to make it so. Movie (and many times music) critics don't even like the genre of movie they're reviewing. You have someone who loves drama and/or pretentious messages in movies reviewing an action movie. Of course they aren't going to give it a good review. Many movies I enjoy are panned by critics while the ones critics love I often find vomit inducing. For instance, someone mentioned Children Of Men. I remember wanting my time back after seeing that one, yet the critics loved it. Yet, one of my favorite movies of all time, Dune was (back in the day) torn to pieces by critics.

Over the years I've discovered that people who claim they "hate" critics or "always disagree" with critics usually have rather bad taste in movies to begin with.

DallasBlack wrote:

As far as I'm concerned, critics aren't usually worth my time. IMO, a critic is not a movie lover. They see movies so they can find something wrong with it. If you go into something expecting to dislike it, you can usually find something to make it so. Movie (and many times music) critics don't even like the genre of movie they're reviewing. You have someone who loves drama and/or pretentious messages in movies reviewing an action movie. Of course they aren't going to give it a good review. Many movies I enjoy are panned by critics while the ones critics love I often find vomit inducing. For instance, someone mentioned Children Of Men. I remember wanting my time back after seeing that one, yet the critics loved it. Yet, one of my favorite movies of all time, Dune was (back in the day) torn to pieces by critics.

MISCONCEPTION ALERT

Seriously, a good critic would never disregard a film from a genre he or she doesn't prefer. Also a good critic transcends genre and has a keen eye for the composition of movies. That's why The Avengers got good to great marks from so many of them, even those that weren't keen on comic book movies. A critic isn't a grumpy old man in the balcony contriving nitpicks for the sake of pretension. A critic simply lives up to his or her title: they critically observe a film's strengths and weaknesses from multiple angles and report on them to the general public. They also admit when their expectations are wrong. Most of them admit their job is purely relative and don't hold to their opinion as fact. Yes, there are a few assholes, but it's rare.

It's important to realize that the craft of a film has criterion that can either make it or break it, just like a novel or anything with a story attached to it. With Children of Men and Dune, one has that criterion and the other doesn't. In other words, Children of Men was simply a well-made movie, while Dune was not (even Lynch has disowned it), and that's coming from someone who loves both movies. While Dune was a good-looking film with massive FX work, it couldn't properly communicate the book's thematic material--let alone the exclusive employment of internal monologue--to an audience unfamiliar with Herbert's work. That's why the movie tanked at the BO, and critics had good points about why it failed (to be fair, some critics enjoyed it as much as I did, and this review is the most level-headed I've found). Children of Men, on the other hand, may not have aligned to your preference in style and what have you, but contains unconventional filmmaking methods that augment the story and central ideas, i.e. long, uncut takes, the thought of society's handling of a purely adult population, the juxtaposition of violence and conception, etc. I saw that movie before reading reviews, and when I did read them all the positives ran parallel to my opinion of the film. Good or bad to someone, it was well-crafted.

Critics are good, knowledgeable people. And like I said, we listen to each others' recommendations for film and music, and our opinions make us critics on the same level as the professionals.

And critics are certainly movie lovers. Otherwise they wouldn't spend their entire lifetime sitting in front of a theater screen in the first place.

^^^

Excellent post.

S.D. wrote:

Over the years I've discovered that people who claim they "hate" critics or "always disagree" with critics usually have rather bad taste in movies to begin with.

I don't feel I have bad taste, but again taste is subjective. Who's to say you have good taste in movies? Just you and others who agree with you. Doesn't make my opinion any less valuable than yours as I can find just as many people who will agree with me.

As for critics, I just don't care what critics think most of the time as a movie has to appeal to me in order for me to find it good. Most of the time they have a different criteria for what makes a movie good than I do so what is the point of listening to what they have to say. Many critics are intellectuals and IMO, I find a large amount of people like that to be pretentious know it alls who feel their opinion is more valid because they have some fancy college degree. They have such a air of superiority that they lose touch with the regular movie goer. So many are wrapped up in the technical aspects or whether or not there is some sort of message or controversy that they have forgotten how to just sit back and enjoy a movie. Sure, not all are like that, I'm sure many still know how to enjoy a movie, but most critics I've read in the past (I stopped reading critics opinions many years ago) have done nothing to change my opinion of them.

You guys like reading critics review for movies, fine for you. If I want to hear opinions on movies, I prefer listening to regular people who, like me, go to movies to escape reality and have a good time, not to nitpick every little detail. I understand it's their job, but I frankly don't care what they have to say. In the end, the only opinion that really matters is mine.

I think I just opened up a can of worms. Let the negative feedback begin.

DallasBlack wrote:

Many critics are intellectuals and IMO, I find a large amount of people like that to be pretentious know it alls who feel their opinion is more valid because they have some fancy college degree. T

Just because you don't comprehend something doesn't mean it's pretentious.

Also, many critics have masters degrees in film, so they DO know more about films than you do, that's why they get paid for their opinions.

Agreed, there are a few critics today who I respect, I may disagree with them at times, but usually they give pretty good reasons for why they gave a film the rating they did. But it seems the majority of them are intent on hating certain films from the beginning and their biases are rather off-putting, all that aside, I just simply cannot relate to most critics. I don't care if a critic technically knows more about film, that dosen't automatically mean their opinions are the only ones that are correct.

Quote :

Over the years I've discovered that people who claim they "hate" critics or "always disagree" with critics usually have rather bad taste in movies to begin with.

i.e. "Say Wut? Kin ya be-LIEVE that snooty upper crust feller what reviews movies for the paper DIDN'T like that Adam Sandler movie... where he plays himself AND his own sister! I don't care WHO ya are, that's funny right there!"