# reading movie reviews= pretentious??



## Daveman (May 16, 2010)

I admit it. Sometimes I read reviews of movies. A lot of times it's after I've seen the movie, and I compare my own thoughts. Sometimes I just glance at an overview online of what most critics are saying before I spend what little money I have in the theater. When people find out that I read reviews, they automatically assume that I am a phony and that I just like what the critics like. I "confirm" an illusory correlation of theirs by actually liking a movie that's getting "thumbs up" from everybody. Is it not possible that maybe...just maybe...it's because the movie is actually good??

I suppose the only way to prove that I'm not pretentious is to pretend to like movies like Transformers 2, but I have reasons for not liking it. So did the critics and anyone who actually likes for films to have some sort of substance and gets tired of random crude humor mixed between redunant explosions of giant robots with a "plot" that doesn't make a lot of sense and doesn't care to. I saw enough dog humping "jokes" in that one movie than I'll ever care to again!


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## HannibalLecter (Apr 18, 2010)

Almost always do I agree with Ebert.


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## cdeuterian (Apr 28, 2010)

dsv2e said:


> ...the only way to prove that I'm not pretentious is to pretend to like...


Hmm fascinating paradox here.

I enjoy reading movie reviews from time to time. They might be considered a genre of quasi-literature.

Your associates are silly. If anything most people find critics opinions to be reliable which is why aggregate rating websites like Rottentomatoes are useful and popular.


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## Daveman (May 16, 2010)

cdeuterian said:


> Your associates are silly. If anything most people find critics opinions to be reliable which is why aggregate rating websites like Rottentomatoes are useful and popular.


I wouldn't go so far as to say _most people_. Sites like Rottentomatoes and Imdb are popular with certain types of people, but I'm very skeptical of that being a majority of people.

But hey, I'm from the Southern part of the United States. Most people I know value "common sense" so much more than "book smarts" that they don't read. I'm a weirdo in these parts.

Damn silly associates! :crazy:


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## Sweetish (Dec 17, 2009)

I like to find out what other people are thinking, in case my perspective and perceptions are too limited for me to gain all that I could from only watching the movie (I tend to read reviews only after already having seen a film) or from only watching the trailer and/or from only hearing what random people say about it. Watching spill.com video reviews of films can be very entertaining for that reason, and some times my S.O. will ask me if we should watch the spill.com review before seeing something that we're not enthusiastically sure we want to spend our leisure money on seeing in a theater.

People can have all the opinions that they like, opinions are not infallible, however, and people should remember there are 6.5 billion opinions out there which aren't all the same (_*GaSp* oh noes- not that!_). >_>

I recently saw The Reader on cable, and honestly, that is a film I couldn't have gained anything from just going by hearing what other people thought of it; to get my own personal understanding I had to watch it with my own two eyes, without anyone else around whose bias could ruin the experience for me.

When my S.O. reads Ebert's reviews and shares them with me, there are times when we are genuinely surprised by his thoughts, wondering if there could be much more to them that he isn't divulging- or that, perhaps, there are influences upon his opinions which arise due to changes in his personal circumstances ...or even affected by a fluctuating social climate for what's currently perceived as "acceptable" or politically correct. It's always fun food for thought. I love film and the motion picture industry, in general. Reading reviews is a way for me to look for potential trends in social attitudes toward film and possible progressive thinking manifested within the medium since it can reach such a large audience. I want to know if the message that the writer/producer/director intended to portray is faithful to source material and if it manages to please/displease its intended audience or even appeals to people outside of that target audience- most importantly, I want to know why and how. Knowing if people have gotten the right message from a film and/or intended entertainment value shapes how scripts are written and what budgets are allotted for certain genres as well as creative technologies used to best translate an idea from paper to the screen; This is why reading what experience people have taken away from watching something is important as, to me, reading reviews is not an activity I view as pretentious but rather highly insightful and of great value.


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## Valdyr (May 25, 2010)

I guess one could say that I take the view of a pragmatist on movie reviews. While I would never follow a review dogmatically (always good to read many reviews), I usually go by what movies have an overall good critical _consensus_. Are there times when I disagree with the consensus? Of course. But more often than not it stops me from wasting my money.


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## Lucem (Dec 2, 2009)

I read reviews but I hated No Country For Old Men...go figure


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## trondor (May 24, 2010)

On one hand, I want to know what the movie is about and if it is worth my money or fit my mood. On the other hand I don't want a review to destroy my experience.

If a movie is good, I usually read several reviews afterwards.

I do glimpse over the review section of the newspaper, and if something seems to stand out I might see it.


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## Lady K (Oct 13, 2009)

If you like a movie, you like a movie. If you read reviews you read reviews. Just because you haven't come across a review you don't agree with yet doesn't mean you won't.

Aside from that, I think it's silly of you to care if people think you only like a movie because of the reviews. You may not feel like you like movies because other people have validated them for you, but it sounds like you need to be validated in other ways, so really, what's the difference?


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## Azura Nova (Mar 23, 2009)

I understand how you feel; I used to not really care about what I was watching but my sister introduced me to Rotten Tomaoes one day and then I started getting into ''trouble'' with my friends. I no longer wanted to go to stupid comedies or bad horror flicks and I was soon dubbed a '' Movie snob''but is it so wrong not to want to pay for something you won't like? Now, I don't really look at reviews unless I'm unsure about a movie. If I'm interested in a movie, I stay away from reviews because I don't want my judgement to be affected. Screw your friends if they call you a snob, you like what you like and that's it.


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## Lemmy Caution (Jun 12, 2010)

I enjoy reading Jonathan Rosenbaums' reviews. I also like reading Ebert, mostly because I like the way he writes, but I don't really agree with him too often.


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## Daveman (May 16, 2010)

Lady K said:


> Aside from that, I think it's silly of you to care if people think you only like a movie because of the reviews. You may not feel like you like movies because other people have validated them for you, but it sounds like you need to be validated in other ways, so really, what's the difference?


 
I think you misunderstand my tone. It's not that I spend all day crying that friends and family think I'm pretentious. I'm a little bit annoyed, yes, but it really isn't that big of a deal. I came on here to discuss the "issue", but I'm mostly interested if other people have experienced this.


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## Sweetish (Dec 17, 2009)

Some movie trailers manage to pass off utter shit as something watchable... while others can make a really good movie seem like it couldn't ever be more than unwatchable shit... Trailers often aren't a fair summation of a movie's appeal to particular viewers and the same can apply to movie reviews, which is why they should be considered with an edge of skepticism and weighed for intent.

I mistakenly thought that the film Daybreakers would be awesome simply because the trailer was so good and the concept seemed refreshingly original for a vampire movie. I didn't read any reviews before watching it as a rental on Blu-ray (ugh!), or else I would have known beforehand how it was just going to be an awful B-grade, craptastical, unfunny gorefest of brain-coma inducing, dead-before-it-left-the-actors'-lips dialogue and dead-before-it-was-penned-to-script plot. Some people find that shit entertaining; I, however, don't.

Reading the Rotten Tomatoes review only _after_ seeing that film made me feel like too many people let this shitfest off the hook for being an insult to the intelligence of every person who bothered paying money to watch it, but still, the warning would have saved me some unnecessary viewing displeasure. Knowing that something is gonna suck, I can at least get drunk, not give a shit, and try to laugh- which, sadly, didn't work for me when I watched Transformers 1 & 2 when I anticipated the inevitable suckage from far, far away long before seeing it play out in front of me... I don't like paying money to film production companies for a product that's disappointing- every ticket purchased adds up to the cha-ching $$ profit numbers for them which influence their decisions about what people will pay good money to see and thus what scripts the major movie studios will buy and how much funding they'll provide. Movie goers should take this power of consumer awareness and consumer demand into their hands more often.

It's good to look at anything from an objective or even an opposing viewpoint. Giving anything its due and fair consideration hardly makes someone a snob. There's nothing sadder to me than an audience with tunnel vision who just want to be entertained in a politically correct way that's "popular" and even then they'll instantly condone a film which they'd otherwise loathe in another time period. If anything, the ignorant masses are the ones who are the real snobs because they assume that their opinion is the only one that counts for anything, even if/when severely limited or entirely oblivious to context. People really should better understand the trends they're unconsciously setting rather than think nothing of it.


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## Lady K (Oct 13, 2009)

dsv2e said:


> I think you misunderstand my tone. It's not that I spend all day crying that friends and family think I'm pretentious. I'm a little bit annoyed, yes, but it really isn't that big of a deal. I came on here to discuss the "issue", but I'm mostly interested if other people have experienced this.


Ah, alright, just looking for common ground amongst members. I gotcha.

I've never really experienced this. I read reviews here and there if I'm bored, but I usually try not to.  I will see a movie if it's something I'm interested in. Most of the time I can find something to like in any movie, even if it's a bad movie overall. I think most movies have something of value, so I generally never agree with critics anyways.


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