Criticwire Survey: 35MM Exhibition

Q: In a post at RogerEbert.com, Aaron Aradillas decried the fetishization of 35mm film exhibition, which he argued "creates divisions where there really shouldn’t be." How important is it to you to that movie shot on film be seen the same way, and given that that 35mm screenings are increasingly rare in most parts of the country, is it possible the stance that you haven't "really" seen a movie until you've seen it on celluloid does more harm than good?

I actually worked at one of the first movie theaters in Canada to have a digital projector – and we would literally get people drive for a few hours to see movie projected that way – which I guess made some sense when we were one of the only places capable of projecting Attack of the Clones the way Lucas intended it to be – but no sense at all for most movies – which at the time were still mostly shot on film. From then one, I’ve always been of the opinion that a film should be shown on the format it was made – film for film, digital for digital. Which means the vast, vast majority of modern films should be shown digitally, because that is how the filmmakers made the films, and intended them to be shown. I will make the effort to see films shot on film projected that way – I did with The Master back in 2012 – but the sad truth is that it really isn’t an option most of the time. I may well have to see Inherent Vice digitally projected – and the chances are Quentin Tarantino’s 70MM film set for next year, The Hateful 8 – which also be projected digitally almost everywhere. And the choice between seeing these films projected digitally or not at all isn’t really a choice at all – I’m seeing them. I wonder about the much ballyhooed two day early release of Interstellar on 35MM only – as most theaters in Canada have tickets available for the first week of its run, and so far only four – three IMAX, and one regular – have show times for November 5^th. I’m sure there are more theaters capable of showing 35MM films than that (I know the Lightbox for example can show just about anything) – but so far it seems like a rather thin list.

Besides, I really don’t think there are too many purists like Quentin Tarantino out there – those who claim that they would retire if he couldn’t shoot on film, and digital projection is nothing more than TV in public. I think many prefer film to digital but few would go as far as he would. The truth is that the debate between film and digital isn’t really a debate anymore – digital won. While I still believe that films should be shown the way the director’s intended them – either through film or digital projection – but seeing things on film is really more of a luxury than a necessity – something we should treasure and preserve yet isn’t really necessary for the medium to survive.

Criticwire Survey: Movies for Aliens

Q: This week's question comes to us via filmmaking brothers Josh and Benny Safdie, who asked about the filmic equivalent of the "golden records" placed in the Voyager spacecraft. If you could place a movie or three in a deep-space probe to represent humanity to a curious alien, what would you choose?
 
Since the question specifically says or three, I'll choose three movies. I’m also going to assume that we cannot assume that the aliens speak any of our human languages, and therefore pick three films that do not depend so much on language to communicate who we are. So, well start with a silent film – and if were going silent, that means we need to go with Buster Keaton – and I can think of no better film than Sherlock Jr. (1924) that shows our humor, our daydreams, our fantasies, and so much else. I would also include Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011), which shows the history of humankind, filtered through the prism of one family, and one life. Finally, I think it would valid for us to show some of our darkness – so why not include Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining – if nothing else, it will show how much we need human contact, or else we go crazy. Plus, I would love to see a sequel to Room 237 – from an alien point of view.

Criticwire Survey: Most Anticipted Movies For the Rest of the Year

With summer over, the fall movie season is in full swing. What Are you most looking forward to  in the rest of 2014?
The obvious answer is Inherent Vice – a new Paul Thomas Anderson movie will ALWAYS top my most anticipated list, and this year is no different. I’m a fan of the novel, but wonder if it can be turned into a good movie – but if anyone can do it, Anderson can. The others are probably just as obvious – David Fincher’s Gone Girl, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, Alejandro G. Innaritu’s Birdman, Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars (I think the Canadian release is this fall, even if the American release isn’t until next year), etc. Mainly to big movies everyone is looking forward to.

Criticwire Survey: Directors Who Should (Have) Done TV

Q: After announcing  his retirement from the film business, Steven Soderbergh has segued neatly into a career in television, first with "Behind the Candelabra" and now "The Knick," the first of whose 10 episodes premieres on Friday. What film director, living or dead, would you like to see try her or his hand in the current TV environment?
 
I cannot help but think of the directors who have had a lot of trouble getting their projects made. Currently, I think of someone like Todd Solondz, who has made only a handful of films in the last 20 years, but all of which – even his worst films – are provocative and interesting. There have been a lot of television shows about poisonous effects of suburbia, but none of them are as harsh or daring as Solondz can make – and I would love to see him try. For the past, I would have loved to see John Cassavetes be given a TV show. Cassavetes could, given a TV show, make a large scale portrait of a marriage like A Woman Under the Influence, and then branch off into family dynamics like in Love Streams, male comradery a la Husbands, etc. He would have been a natural.

But I also feel the need to address what really is a lack of diversity among TV dramas - especially the high profile cable ones - all of which basically are about white men, so perhaps we should select a few directors who would do something different. Since his movie career has stalled in some ways, can I suggest Spike Lee as a natural to do episodic TV? Perhaps after all the negative publicity (largely unwarranted) that greeted Lynne Ramsay leaving her last movie, she could do something on TV as well?

Criticwire Survey: Catch-Up

Q: We're heading into the dog days of summer, when the pace of new releases slackens enough to allow for some pleasurable catch-up. So: Name one thing — book, movie, gardening project — you'd like to finally get around to, and one piece of 2014 culture you love that everyone else needs to catch up on.

I recently caught up on the one movie I’ve been saying for years I need to catch up on – Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah – so I feel good about that. Out of 2014 films, I think Lanzmann’s The Last of the Unjust (which never came out in Canada as far as I know – is one of the bigger ones I need to catch up on – unfortunately it looks like the DVD won’t come out until September. Luckily The Dissolve released a list of 88 must see movies from the first 7 months of 2014 – and I’ve only seen about half of those of those, so I need to catch up. In my defense, about half of those I missed didn`t come in Canada – either in theaters or on demand or DVD. I`m grateful for that list –as well as the ongoing list on Indiewire of the most acclaimed films of the year so far – as it allows me to catch up on films I should see before the year end critics polls come out, and I need to catch up on lots more in a short time period.

In terms of TV, my wife and I finally caught up last week on both seasons of House of Cards – which as many have noted got increasingly ridiculous, but I still think is still ridiculously entertaining. She really wants to catch up on both seasons of Orange is the New Black, so that’s on the list for August – and I really want to catch up on True Detective, so that’s there as well.

For TV recommendations, if you missed Fargo, than see that – I loved it more than anything else I saw on TV so far this year. I’m enjoying AMCs Halt and Catch Fire as well – even if it’s not quite as great. I’m still trying to figure out if The Strain is stupid but entertaining or just plain stupid. I’m keeping up with it though.

For films that I think people should catch up on, Ill point out several that didn’t get a lot of box office love but are now available for home viewing – Jonathan Glazers Under the Skin, Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy, Jeremy Saulniers Blue Ruin, Lars von Triers Nymphomaniac and Jim Mickles Cold in July (review coming soon as it just reach iTunes Canada last week – approximately two months after everyone in the USA could see it). If you want to see something in theaters, make sure if you’re close to a theater playing Richard Linklaters Boyhood, you go. Same with Bong Joon-hos Snowpiercer – which I know you can see at home, but deserves to be seen on the big screen. Also Steve James Roger Ebert doc Life Itself.

And it’s not like there’s nothing to see in August. I’m looking forward to wide (or fairly wide) releases like Guardians of the Galaxy, Get on Up, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (sue me, but I’m the exact right age to have been obsessed with them in my childhood), Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, The Giver and (presumably) Magic in the Moonlight. And the independent theater near me will be playing Obvious Child, A Most Wanted Man, The Trip to Italy and Calvary. So there’s still quite a lot to see.

Criticwire Survey: Movie Purge

Q: Thanks to the principles established by the New Founding Fathers of the Moving Image, for the next 12 hours, all crime is legal — but only as it pertains to movies and TV. How would you Purge?

The one huge pet peeve – that will require legal intervention to fix – is that here in Canada, we need the same access to Video on Demand and Streaming sites as Americans get. Our version of Netflix is a pale imitation of what our American friends get. Services like Hulu and Amazon Instant aren’t available at all. When a movie says its available while in theaters on iTunes, it usually isn’t. Today, July 22^nd, is when we finally got access to Cold in July on Canadian iTunes – approximately 2 months after Americans got it. We still cannot get the new Roman Polanski film – Venus in Fur – which was available on demand in America on June 20^th. In America, video stores went under because of all the options consumers had at their disposal to stream things – legally – online. In Canada, we lost all our video stores even though they were making money. Blockbuster Canada closed all their stores, despite profits, in a desperate, and ultimately futile attempt to keep Blockbuster America, which was losing lots and lots of money afloat – and once they closed, Rogers Video, the other major player, closed as well – I assume to try and force people to get their OnDemand services, which charge the same price as the video store per movie – more for older movies – with less overhead. I assume that sooner or later we’ll catch up to America – there have been rumors that Rogers may be building a Netflix competitor for the Canadian market – but we need to goose this thing along. We live in an era where more movies than ever before are made available, and yet in Canada we don’t have access to these movies. I’m lucky enough to work near one of the last great video stores – Bay Street Video in Toronto – so I can get all the older movies I want – but most cannot. I have no idea how I would become the classic movie junkie I am – and started to be as a teenager – today. Canadians deserve better.

Criticwire Survey: The Passage of Time

Q: Richard Linklater has said that the real theme of his movie "Boyhood" is not growing up but time itself. What's your favorite film or TV illustration of the passage of time?

I assume everyone knows that probably the two greatest “passage of time” sequences in history are in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane – where years of marriage are presented in a few minutes over various breakfasts – and in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey where millions of years are skipped in the blink of an eye with a brilliant jump cut. These are so clearly the best they hardly seem like they need to be mentioned at all.

More recently I think two David Fincher movies did a brilliant job at presenting the passage of time – Zodiac (2006) where the years of obsession goes by, in some ways very subtlety, as when the dinner table in which Jake Gyllenhaal sat around the table with his family is now empty except for all the boxes. Then, of course, there was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – which wasn’t loved by a lot of people – but I think was a brilliant examination of the passing of time, and death. Even more recently, I think Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel did a great job – showing the changes to the various characters and the title hotel itself brilliantly. As for Boyhood – I   cannot wait.

Criticwire Survey: Ebert's Influence

Q: The release of "Life Itself" has many critics dwelling on Roger Ebert's influence. What effect did he or his writing have on you, and how do you see his influence on the culture of criticism as a whole?

I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the effect his writing had on me. As a teenager discovering movies in the mid-1990s, Roger Ebert was the first critic whose writing I encountered – and was, for a number of years, pretty much the only critic I read. I watched the last few years of Siskel & Ebert – and again it had an impact (I was mad all week if it wasn’t on – or was the rare rerun) – and then I watched right up until Ebert left the show due to his illness. For an aspiring cinephile, Ebert’s books and TV show – and later his website – opened up a whole new world for movie watching. I watched my first documentary and foreign films because of Ebert – and discovered directors for cinema history that I fell in love with because of him as well. I read him on almost a daily basis for years – and still do refer to him when I’m watching something he reviewed during his lifetime.

It’s not entirely unfair to lay some blame on Ebert for some bad things in film culture – the thumbs up and thumbs down which too many people have replaced actual content in reviews – and has given rise to Rotten Tomatoes and the like, where everything is about percentages and not what is written. Fair enough. But Ebert always had far more content than most critics, and did far more to expose films to a wider audience than ever before. He was my first film critic, and I know to many he was the “only” film critic. His impact cannot be overstated. There will never be another Roger Ebert – the culture isn’t set up anymore to have someone like him dominate in that way. It’s been more than a year, and his loss still affects me. I cannot wait to see Life Itself when it comes out this weekend in Toronto.

Criticwire Survey: A Michael Bay-ferendum

Q: In his review, the New York Times' A.O. Scott argued that "Transformers: Age of Extinction" is essentially "a very long art film... albeit one that was made with unlimited resources." Conversely Indiewire's Eric Kohn made the case that movies like Michael Bay's "actively fight against the prospects of a more varied film culture." What's your take on Michael Bay? And what role, if any, do critics have with regard to a movie like "Transformers: Age of Extinction"?

Personally, I’ve never found it very controversial to call Michael Bay an auteur. You can tell a Michael Bay film from everyone else’s films – which is saying something, since a lot of action filmmakers use similar rapid fire editing and constantly moving, shaking cameras these days – but Bay’s action sequences always feel different. He also expresses his own worldview in each of his films. None of this is to suggest that Bay is a particularly great director – I find his style often insufferable, and his worldview amoral at best. But I did love The Rock(when I was a teenager –I haven’t seen it in at least a decade) and last year’s Pain & Gain, but the other 9 films he has directed I have mixed feelings at best – and often downright hate them. But to suggest that Bay is some sort of anonymous director, beholden to the studio system is, I think, wrong. His films are uniquely his – no matter how big they are. Compare this to someone like Brent Ratner, who seems to ape a different director’s style each time out to see what I mean. The Marvel films are, by and large, better than Bay’s – but they do not really have a director’s thumbprint on them – rather, they have Marvel’s Corporate thumbprint on them. For better or for worse, Bay’s films are his own. He does whatever the hell he wants to, and because by and large they make money, the studios keep letting him do it.

What is the role of a critic in a film like this? The same as it is for every film – to watch the film with an open mind and report back what they saw, and how the film works or doesn’t in that reviewers opinion. Critics will never have an impact on whether a film of this size does well or bombs – the (mostly) raves for Edge of Tomorrow, which was a disappointment at the box office, and critical beat down that accompanied Transformers: Age of Extinction – that still managed the biggest opening weekend of the year – should make this clear. Most audience members no longer read reviews. A critic’s job is to talk about the movie they saw for those, ever dwindling, number of people who do read them.

Criticwire Survey: Meeting Movies on Their Own Terms

Q: Many of the positive reviews for "The Fault in Our Stars" boil down to either "It's good for what it is" or "It gets the job done." But in an essay at Slate that deals in part with John Green's source novel, Ruth Graham says that one of the reasons more adult readers have turned to Young Adult novels is because it offers the pleasures of literary fiction without its challenges: "Adults," she writes, "should feel embarrassed about reading literature written for children." So, as a critic, what's your feeling about measuring a movie—whether it's "The Fault in Our Stars" or "X-Men: Days of Future Past" — against what it sets out to do as opposed to what it could do? (Likewise, do you damn "Orange Is the New Black" for not being "Oz"?) Do you take it on its own terms, or do you set your own?

I haven’t seen The Fault in Our Stars yet (tomorrow most likely, unless my Kings go too far into overtime tonight, and I’m too tired to make the late show tomorrow) so I cannot address that movie specifically. But in general, I do try and take a movie on its own terms, while offering at least some of my own terms to the mix as well. When I reviewed the recent “Legends of Oz” movie for example, I did note that the film really did seem to involve my two and a half year old daughter from beginning to end – even scaring her in parts – while still acknowledging that I thought the movie was crap from my perspective. So if the filmmakers wanted nothing more than to produce a time waster for small children then then succeeded, even if the movie is a dismal failure in most respects. What I try to do in a review is let the reader know if he or she will like the movie, even if I didn’t and vice versa (I quite enjoyed Post Tenebras Lux last year for instance – but know many would not). I did read Ruth Graham’s piece, and for the most part I do agree with it. I have read some YA books in recent years before the movies based on them came out – I was embarrassed as hell to be reading the Twilight and Divergent books (which were dreadful and not very good respectively) – but did quite enjoy The Hunger Games novels, and wasn’t really embarrassed by reading them. Her general point however is that adults shouldn’t just embrace YA novels at the expense of richer, more complex novels aimed at adults – and that’s very much true.

 
Great movies transcend their genres – and should be able to win over converts outside their target demographic – Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was able to do that, as was Sam Mendes Skyfall or last year’s young adult romance starring Shailene Woodley – The Spectacular Now. They do this by tapping into something deeper than most in the genre go for. There’s nothing wrong with making a movie that doesn’t have the same ambition (accept if NO ONE had that ambition, film would become boring rather quickly), but I think as a critic, you need to make an effort to meet a film half way. I cannot be anyone other than myself though – so even if a legion of teenage girls loves Twilight, I cannot praise a film that made me role my eyes nearly constantly. While I think a critic needs to meet a film halfway – I think the film needs to do the same.

Criticwire Survey: Half Time Top 5

Q: What are your five favorite cultural experiences of 2014? They can be movies (or screenings), TV shows (or episodes), music: You name it. (A tally of the most popular responses can be found at the end of this post.)
 

I’ve probably missed quite a bit this year so far – with the new baby and all – and will spend much of the summer catching up. But in terms of movies, my top 5 would be 5) Enemy (Denis Villenueve), 4) Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie), 3) Locke (Steven Knight), 2) Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer) and 1) The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson). Now, technically, I saw both Stranger by the Lake and Under the Skin at TIFF in 2013, so throw in Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch) and Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier) if you want to get what I saw only in 2014 so far. Two other TIFF 2013 films – Joe (David Gordon Green) and Blue Ruin (Jeremy Saulnier) – and one I just saw this weekend – We Are the Best (Lukas Moodysson) – would most likely round out the top 10.

I don’t write about music at all, and TV only a little – because I’m always so far behind in TV (and I won’t go on here about older shows – just two new ones I liked) I only got to see the first two episodes of True Detective – what I saw struck me as something that could develop into something great or something utterly pretentious – and the verdict seems to be split about which way that went. I am (mostly) loving Fargo so far – with great performances, and a look and feel that is close to the Coen brothers masterpiece, but not an exact copy. Some episodes have dragged just a little, and sometimes they overdo it a little on the Coen references, but for the most part, I love the show.

Latest Criticwire Survey: Movie Rating Systems

Q: In his response to Vocativ's ranking of critics by how often they agree with a movie's Metacritic average, "most reliable" critic J.R. Jones takes exception to the practice of affixing letter grades or a star rating to a review. How do you feel about placing movies on a scale? Would you give your reviews a grade if you were calling the shots? And when you write for publications that require them, how much thought goes into choosing the rating versus writing the review itself?

I stopped using a grading system about two years ago now – simply because I got tired of getting questioned about it – mainly via e-mail from some readers. They wanted to know what qualified one movie as a 3.5 star one, and others as 4, something else as a 3, etc. It got tiring – and in all honesty, just didn’t interest me very much. When I used the system, I used the 4 star system – and it was based on Roger Ebert’s 4-star system, so basically 2.5 and down was a “thumbs down” and 3 and up was a “thumbs up”. For the most part, I didn’t put much thought into the rating – it was a gut call, and whatever star rating felt right is what I did. The only ones I really struggled with were the movies I couldn’t decide if they should 2.5 or 3 – the difference between a “thumbs up and a thumbs down” as it were, and the ones I couldn’t decide if they should be a 3.5 or a 4. Eventually I would decide, it would be another “gut call”, and I’d live with it. I decided to abandon the system not just because I got some annoying questions, but also I found that my star system was rather flexible – meaning that often when I looked back at a film, I’d want to either raise or lower the rating by a half star (rarely more than that) – but that I wouldn’t change a word of my review. Inevitably, this meant when it was time to do my year end lists, some initially 3.5 star movies ended up above 4 star movies – and some people are real sticklers about that and don’t much like it. To me, it was an instance of a “foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds” – basically because if I stuck to my initial ratings of movies – sometimes seen months apart, under very different circumstances, I would be wrong. Some people want absolute consistency – I wasn’t one of them. When it comes to rating movies, it can be tricky – and has much to do with outside factors as anything else. I’m going to be posting my review of Steven Knight’s “Locke” soon – and if I were to assign a star rating to the film right now, I think I’d give it 4. But am I giving it 4 because it’s a 4 star movie, or because most of what I have seen in the theaters in the past little while has been average at best, so Locke looks good by comparison? Had I seen Locke in November, surrounded by some of the best movies of the year, would I only give it 3.5? I have no idea.

I think star ratings are fine – I actually like them in a lot of ways, and will admit that when I’m planning on seeing a movie that weekend, I’ll often look at critic’s star ratings (or a film’s Rotten Tomato or Metacritic score) to gage what the reaction is without reading the reviews themselves and risking spoilers. But I do that knowing I’ll come back and read the reviews of the critics I like after I’ve seen the movie – because ratings, and Rotten Tomato scores don’t tell you EVERYTHING. A 50% Tomato score could mean that every critic thinks the movie is average – with some liking it a little bit more, some a little bit less, and breaking down the middle. It could also mean that many passionately love the movie, and many passionately hate it. I’ve read very positive reviews that make me dread a movie, and very negative ones that make me look forward to it.

 
This went on longer that it probably should have. Basically, I don’t have a problem with ratings – either an individual critics or an aggregate like Rotten Tomatoes. But that rating is no substitute for what is actually written about the movie – and the rating is the least interesting part of any review – which is why I stopped.

Criticwire Survey: Too Many Comic Book Movies?

Q: The release of the second "Spider-Man 2" in a decade has many critics, even those with some fondness for the film, crying redundancy. Given that this summer will see new installments in the X-Men, Sin City and Transformers franchises, and Marvel has its movie slate planned through 2028, are there just too many movies based on comic books? And if not, what do future need to do to make sure they're not retracing others' steps?

To quote Reverend Lovejoy: “The short answer, yes. The long answer, no with a but”. There really is no reason why we cannot have several different superhero movies a year. I think, in some ways, superhero movies are this generation’s Westerns – good guys vs. bad guys on a typically black and white morality scale – with a few great ones that try for something a little deeper. Hollywood churned out tons of Westerns a year in their heyday. Why? Because audiences liked them, and they made money. The same is true for superhero movies. There are hundreds of comic book characters – from the iconic to the largely unknown – and many of them have literally decades of storylines to draw from. Therefore, we should be able to get quite a few comic book movies every year, and not have them feel redundant. (Devin Faraci also makes the Western comparison in a recent piece – that I had not read when I wrote this). It’s also worth pointing out, that of the four examples listed, only two or superhero movies – something that doesn’t apply to Transformers or Sin City.

The reality however is that they are all starting to look and feel the same. Each series typically follows the arch established by the Superman movies – with the first one being the origin story where our hero discovers his (and it’s always a him) powers, has fun with them, decides to fight crime, and then ends up against a big bad guy in the end that he (barely) defeats. By the second movie, our hero is starting to see that being a superhero isn’t all glamorous – that “With great power comes great responsibility” – so they have to push away the ones they love in order to protect them – or else they struggle with even wanting to be a superhero anymore, before they realize they have to, and they face an even more powerful bad guy in the end, which they barely defeat. By the third movie, the filmmakers seem out of ideas, and just throw every villain they can think at the screen and hope something works. Audiences grow restless, the series “goes away” from an increasingly short period of time and then it’s rebooted and tells the exact same story again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Nowhere is this more apparent than The Amazing Spiderman movies (my review of number 2 will be posted soon). I thought the first movie may well have been a better film than Sam Raimi’s original Spiderman (of which I wasn’t a big fan) – but it was essentially the same story, so I was left underwhelmed. Number 2 is basically the same structure of Spiderman 2 (Raimi’s best of the series). I enjoyed both The Amazing Spiderman and The Amazing Spiderman 2 – but it’s hard to argue that either really adds anything to what Raimi already did. What’s disappointing of course is that Spiderman has been around for a long, long time. Surely there’s some fertile ground somewhere in all those back issues of the comics that the filmmakers could have mined to come up with something unique. That’s one of the reasons I liked The Wolverine last summer. It’s hardly a great superhero movie – but it was a different one – a mainly standalone effort, where the fate of the free world didn’t hang in the balance.

I think we reached the tipping point back in 2012 when The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. One could make a darker superhero movie than Nolan’s trilogy – but do we really want them to? Some complained they took themselves too seriously already. And one could make a bigger superhero film than The Avengers – but again, do we really want them to? That film, as entertaining as it was, was already a little too overcrowded. Those two films basically threw down the gauntlet for all others to follow – try and beat that they said. Sadly, no one has really come close since. I still enjoy superhero movies – sometimes, they can even still surprise me – as the latest Captain America did. But for the most part, I think filmmakers need to find something new and different – a different take on the genre – if we’re going to get another truly great superhero movie. So far, no one really has.

Criticwire Survey: Un-Romantic Comedies

Q: What's the most un-romantic romantic comedy you know? Not just one that doesn't work, but one where you're actively rooting for the couple not to get together, or despise both of them.

There’s a lot of romantic comedies where I despise both characters – How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days – comes to mind, as does The Ugly Truth. But the one that I remember best is the Ashton Kutcher-Amanda Peet vehicle A Lot Like Love. Kutcher can be funny and charming – at I think he could be, although the evidence is lacking in his movie career so far. And Peet can be as well – although she’s been stuck in more than one of these horrible “comedies” (Remember Whipped? No? Good). This is a movie though that forces the audience to endure the worst part of romantic comedies – the “Meet Cute” again and again and again – as the two characters are so incredibly stupid that it takes them a lot longer than most to realize that maybe they should date. And perhaps they should date – if only to spare the rest of humanity their company. These two idiots deserve each other.

Criticwire Survey: Critical Reassessment

Q: It's starting to seem, with only a little exaggeration, that if you want long enough, eventually every once-derided movie will be proclaimed a misunderstood masterpiece. (See, among other examples, "Showgirls" or the my-neighbor's-a-porn-star comedy "The Girl Next Door.") But surely there must be cases where critics and conventional wisdom got it right the first time around, and the movie everyone thought was terrible is still terrible. What's a case where you find yourself defending history's first draft against people who want to revise the record?

For me, the answer would be Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate. The failure of this film was infamous back in 1980 – the huge cost overrun of the production, Cimino’s hubris which drove his crew mad, his hiring of armed guards to protect him from studio interference in the editing room, the disastrous premiere of his epic, four hour cut of the film in New York, which resulted in the film being pulled, and released the following year with half its running time taken out, which was even more critically lambasted. It ruined Cimino’s career, and was the last gasp of the 1970s where the studios gave young, talented directors carte blanche to make whatever they wanted. In recent years, the film has developed a huge following though – with many critics calling the film a masterpiece, one of the best Westerns ever made. It is natural, in some ways, to defend Heaven’s Gate – which represents an individual artists vision over corporate groupthink – and the stories about its production would be easily forgiven if the film had been a masterpiece – think Coppola Apocalypse Now for example. The problem with Heaven’s Gate though is that it is a terrible movie. Cimino’s extended cut is confused mess, starting with a long, dull speech from Joseph Cotton giving way to a longer, even more dull speech by John Hurt at Harvard’s graduation ceremony. From there, the film just gets worse and worse. The film is largely plotless – so much so that three hours in, I couldn’t believe that almost nothing had happened yet. The performances are awful – even from the usually reliable Christopher Walken and Isabelle Huppert – and even the epic battle than ends the films is a confused mess. The film is a revisionist, class conscious Western – which is admirable – but the film is still a barely watchable mess. The original critics were right – Heaven’s Gate sucks.

To add two more, even though in general, I’m a fan of Paul Verhoeven – but I’m with the original critics who hated Showgirls and Starship Troopers as well. Both are over-the-top camp, which would be fine if they were fun, but they’re tedious, boring and repetitive. Trying to view them as satire may well be what Verhoeven intended (in particular with Starship Troopers, where it’s undeniable) but that doesn’t make them any better. The subtext of a movie doesn’t matter much when the surface is so dull.

Criticwire Survey: Spoilers

Q: Advance copies of Sunday's "Mad Men" season premiere were accompanied by a request from creator Matthew Weiner that critics not several details about the episode, including the year in which it was set. On the same night, HBO aired a pivotal episode of Game of Thrones, whose advance episodes were sent with a request that critics not only avoid spoiling details but refrain from hinting which episodes might be "a big one." (Last night's was a big one.) Where do you stand on the issue of spoilers, and how does it differ in writing about TV, where everyone get a crack at an episode at about the same time, and movies, which sometimes open in different parts of the country weeks or even months apart?

I think there is a difference between film and TV reviews – and I never write the later. But basically, I think when it comes to TV, any time after the show airs (let’s say the next day, because of different time zones in North America) than spoilers are fair game – especially when it’s an established show like Mad Men or Game of Thrones. No one is reading a review of the season 7 premiere of Mad Men or a random episode on season 4 of Game of Thrones trying to decide whether or not to watch the show – they’re already hooked or not (and if they’re not, they probably aren’t reading the review). Now, if they missed an episode and are planning to watch it later that week, than I think that’s the reader’s responsibility to avoid reading that review. I know sometimes if I miss an episode of say, The Walking Dead, I read nothing about the show until after I’ve seen it – I suspect that anything written after the airdate will contain spoilers.

Movies are different however. Many people read movie reviews before they see the movie when deciding whether or not to see the movie. Revealing spoilers, therefore, should be avoided if at all possible – and if not there should be clear warnings – which I try to do when I write my reviews. What constitutes a spoiler differs for many – but basically, any plot developments that are not in the trailers for the movie, I think are off limits. Some probably think I reveal too much – but if you want to know nothing about the movie, than don’t read reviews. The reader does hold some responsibility as well.

I get annoyed by spoilers in reviews when they are not clearly identified – especially advances reviews of movies that haven’t opened yet. I know some critics have complained that analysis should trump surprise – and they aren’t necessarily wrong – but then what harm does it do to throw out a spoiler warning if you want to dig deep in a movie’s ending in a review? One critic last year argued that surprise is only a cheap, fleeting pleasure in a movie – and analysis is more important than that. It’s true that a surprise really is just a fleeting pleasure – there needs to be a reason behind that surprise, which is why I find many twist endings awful as they twist for no reason other than to screw with the audience – but it’s still a pleasure, and should be preserved for the audience. Again, I think writing anything about a movie is fine – but if you’re writing a spoiler review of a new movie, at least let the reader know before they get there so they can decide for themselves if they want to read on.

Criticwire Survey: Groupthink

Q: In his New York Times Magazine rant against "the pernicious rise of poptimism," Saul Austerlitz argued that the music-critical establishment engages in an "increasingly shrill shouting match" when individual critics diverge from the herd. His concern was echoed by Entertainment Weekly writer Anthony Breznican, who accused critics of "cruelly ganging up" on his colleague Chris Nashawaty over his review of "Under the Skin." Is critical groupthink, especially as amplified by the echo chamber of social media, a pressing concern, and if so, how can we mute its effects?

I don’t know enough about music or music criticism to speak directly to Saul Austerlitz’s argument about that – although I admit I do find it a little odd that when I read year end top 10 lists for music, they do seem to align closely to the best sellers. As for Nashawaty’s review of Under the Skin, I think part of the reaction can be chalked up to the fact that he didn’t really spend much time reviewing the film itself – instead he digressed into talking about Johansson’s career choice to do the film, and comparing it with other actors who have made “difficult” films in the past – as if Johansson should spend all her time doing Marvel movies (which, I increasingly love her in by the way). There have been other negative reviews of Under the Skin – and there will be more (I loved the film when I saw it at TIFF last year – but the public screening I attended had more walkouts than any other TIFF movie I’ve been to – people thought they were going to see a more typical sexy alien movie – perhaps along the line of Species). It will be a divisive film. Part of the people shouting down the review were doing it because Nashawaty didn’t love a film most critics did – part of it was because of the substance of the review itself. And perhaps a small part of it was anger at EW itself – for firing Owen Glieberman last week, and leaving Nashawaty, a critic with far less experience and less well known in critics circle, as the only one left over there. Not all of what Nashawaty faced was fair – but some of it was.

In terms of groupthink, it is a danger somewhat – not so much because critics agree on certain movies, but the way they react to those who don’t. All movies will have their detractors – they aren’t necessarily wrong if they fall outside the majority opinion – we’ve all been there. Great movies can withstand that criticism – I’ve often found that a negative review of a movie I loved has helped me see what it is I loved about the movie more clearly than a review that agrees with me. You shouldn’t be shouting down everyone who disagrees with you, but rather engaging with their argument, even if you completely disagree with it. But that’s the culture we have today – and it goes well beyond critics. Go to the comments section of (almost) every movie site, and you’ll find a bunch of people calling each other idiots for their opinions, rather than engaging in serious debate. Basically, I don’t even bother to read most comments sections anymore, because they are so full of hatred and vitriol – The Dissolve’s thoughtful commenters being the exception that proves the rule.  

Criticwire Survey: Advance Screenings

Q: Paramount held "Noah" back from many critics until the day of release, inviting only a handful of critics to see it in advance. Two questions: Does it affect your mindset going into a movie knowing the studio didn't want critics to see it before it opened? And is there anything wrong with making critics wait to see a movie at the same time the public does?

Movie studios have no obligation to make movies available to critics before they are screened for the public. I know professional critics don’t like being referred to as part of the “publicity” department for the movies they review – and rightly so – but from the studios perspective, that is precisely what they are. It isn’t free for the studios to give critics advance screenings – they have to rent the theaters and have other costs – so if they feel they aren’t going to get any financial benefit from screening for the critics, why would they do it? It's actually surprising they don't withhold more screenings from critics - blockbusters are criticproof anyway at the box office - but perhaps it's just the realization that in the age of internet, you cannot really escape critic reviews for anything more than a few hours after the first public showing anyway, so they may as well keep the critics happy.

When they don’t screen movies for critics it means one thing – the studio doesn’t have faith in the film. That could be because they know they have a crappy film on their hands, and as I say above, at that point why would they pay to have their film bashed? It could also be, and I think Noah falls into this (much, much rarer category) that they are simply nervous about the reaction – not whether it’s good or bad, but about the content of the film itself. Noah generated a lot of controversy in religious circles for a long time before it screened for anyone. But it was all based on speculation. Once it screens, it’s now based on the movie itself, and has a greater chance of effecting its box office. The studio knew the reviews would be good – which generally, they were – but also knew their target market are not ones who pay attention to critics, so they decided they didn’t matter, and didn’t screen the movie for them. In this case, it wasn't a matter of keeping every critic out - there were quite a few reviews of Noah out days before the film was released, but only selecting a few critics to see it.

I’m not a professional critic, and I never get to see anything in advance, so no, it doesn’t change my judgment – and it shouldn’t change anyone else’s judgment either.

Criticwire Survey: Filmmaking Experience & Film Theory

Q: Jazz critic Ted Gioia recently lodged a complaint that "music criticism has degenerated into lifestyle reporting" because most music critics lack a musical background and theoretical tools. Do movie critics need filmmaking experience or an understanding of film theory to do their jobs?

I think there is actually a few different questions here. The whole “lifestyle reporting” question is  a problem in film criticism, as we have become a culture obsessed with celebrities. For the most part, it barely interests me at all – and it’s gotten to a point where I very rarely read interviews with celebrities anymore – because it’s never about their work, which is the only thing about them that I find interesting. But as the profession of film criticism becomes harder and harder to actually make a living at, critics are now expected to be “film reporters” as well as critics – meaning they have to write about a lot of crap that has very little to do with criticism – they have to be Oscarologists, box office experts, do set visits, do fawning celebrity interviews, get into twitter battles with other critics and fans etc.  It’s boring.

The second question as to whether film critics need filmmaking experience, I don’t think so, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. Other than a six minute high school film – which at the time I described as being in the style of Jim Jarmusch – basically because in the whole six minute film, I had three shots, I have never attempted to make a film – but more experience would definitely not hurt what I write. Certain filmmakers I would love to see do some film criticism – Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino (even if I would disagree with him more than not), Paul Thomas Anderson spring to mind, because when they talk about other films and filmmakers they usually have something interesting to say. Others, like Steven Soderbergh, I think would drive me nuts as critics. Still, I think knowing what goes into making a film – and how long and difficult a process it can be – would help – at least in terms of some critics treating the films they are reviewing with respect.

As for film theory, yes, I think it’s necessary to have an understanding of at the very least the basics of film theory. No, I don’t think it is necessary to gather that understanding in an Academic setting. There are tons of film books you can read, lots of great film criticism, DVD commentary tracks, etc. in which one can gather that knowledge without spending 4 years in a film program – not that I think there is anything wrong with that either.

I don’t think I really need to tell anyone reading this that I do not spend much time either delving into the particulars of how a film is made or talking about film theory. That’s just not the way I write about films. I try to imagine the audience of what I write as I try to explain the about the film in question, what it’s about, and the effect it had on me while I was watching it. I know that some find my approach simplistic – others I know think I take film too seriously and just want to know if a film is “entertaining” (I’ll always remember one conversation I had about a film, where I when I asked if I liked it, I responded by saying that I thought the film was poorly acted, ridiculous in terms of plot, and was about to go on when I was interrupted and asked – “Yeah, but was it fun?”) the but it works for me and I’m comfortable with how I write.

Criticwire: Preparation for Reviews

Q: How much of a duty do you feel to research a review? Do you need to have seen all of "Veronica Mars" before writing about "The Veronica Mars Movie," or be familiar with the writing of Stefan Zweig before reviewing "The Grand Budapest Hotel"?

A lot depends on the movie itself – and whether I feel the need to do any additional work outside of watching the movie itself. For example, before I watched the Robocop remake, I went back and watched Paul Verhoeven’s original to refresh my memory – I try to do this with remakes as often as I can. For some movies based on books, I like to read the novel beforehand – but WELL beforehand. So for example, I finished Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, which Paul Thomas Anderson is adapting and the movie will be released in December, about a month ago. I like to read the book, and have that knowledge to be able to compare, but not right after – which I think can often bog you down in too much detail. By the time I see Anderson’s movies, I’ll remember the basic story, style, themes and feel of Pynchon’s book, without getting so caught up in every little change Anderson made from book to screen.

For the two movies cited above – I didn’t go back and watch all of Veronica Mars before seeing the movie on iTunes this weekend (a review will be posted sometime this week). I was a casual fan of the show, and wanted to see the movie, but I didn’t donate to its Kickstarter campaign – and even had I wanted to, I didn’t have 60 hours to dedicate to re-watching Veronica’s previous adventures before seeing the movie. I don’t think that hurt much. And no, I have never read anything by Stefan Zweig – I didn’t even know Anderson’s newest movie was inspired by his writing until a few weeks ago. I probably would have picked up something by him had I known earlier, but I didn’t. I did watch all 7 of Anderson’s previous features though (retrospective to be posted soon) before seeing his latest (hopefully sooner rather than later).

There’s also the question of time, availability and cost. I work a full time job unrelated to this blog – and have two kids and am an avid L.A. Kings fan - , so I don’t have time to read every book, play or article being adapted, delve into every older version and watch the complete TV series of something like Veronica Mars. I also don’t have access to every one of those things – in part because sometimes they’re not easy to get, and in part because even if I can get them, the cost prevents me for doing so (essentially, if a book is the library, I’ll get – if not, probably not).

The most interested I’m in a movie, the more prep-work I will do. Sometimes that’s a lot, but for most movies I see, I don’t do all that much prep work. A movie is its own thing – and while perhaps knowing Zweig for example may deepen my understanding of The Grand Budapest Hotel, the movie still needs to work on its own terms - which you can tell simply by watching it.