Critics - Can You Trust Them?

I'm not sure when it happened. When did I begin to suspect that movie critics weren't the most reliable source to go to to find out what were the good movies to buy a ticket to? There were certainly some low points. There was the time when the critics were all excited about a film called "Howard's End". It's always good to expand your horizons a little bit and try something a little different but what a mistake this one turned out to be - nine hours of total tedium followed by one minute or senseless violence followed by another 3 hours of excruciating tedium. Ok, I may be exaggerating a little about the actual time that I sat in my seat but if you consider what it felt like, the description is not too far off. Other "winners" the critics have praised? "Saint Jack", a total snore starring Ben Gazzara. "Perfume", surely one of the worst written films in history from Tom Twyker who gave us the brilliant "Run, Lola, Run" but somehow picked up a little arrogance along the way and thought he could force this bit of excrement down our throats. And many other stinkers that are supposed to be good for us.

Ignoring the critics doesn't always work either. There was the comedy "Kung Pow" which appeared from the trailer to have the sort of ridiculousness that I enjoyed in Monty Python films and offerings such as "Kentucky Fried Movies". By no means masterpieces, but dependably funny, entertaining films. What did I actually get when I went to the theatre? A film so bad that I felt embarrassed for the actors that had to take part in it. I not only wanted Steve Oedekerk, the director and the writer of this turd permanently banned from Hollywood, if not the planet, but the executive at Twentieth Century Fox who greenlighted this travesty.

After my many bad experiences with critics, I feel like I can no longer trust them to steer me to a good movie. I have to take everything they write - rave or pan - with a grain of salt.

In the time I've paid attention to them, I've found out a number of things about them that lowers their credibility as a group. First of all, they don' pay to get into the movies that they review. There is no financial risk for most professional movie critics. In fact they are being paid to go to the movies by the organizations that send them. That creates a disconnect from us, the general public - the people to pay to go into movies and expect to be entertained. In fact most movie critics are quite different from the people who read their reviews. Critics have had their opinions shaped by film courses in colleges and universities where the emphasis has been on "great art" over entertainment. They've carried over these attitudes and use their columns to promote films that they decree as good for you, not what you might actually enjoy - a sort of "eat your spinach" aesthetic or as they might state it: "enlightening the masses". Yes, that's you and me, those poor uneducated masses that need their edicts from on high if we are truly to be "cineasts". According to these critics, foreign films are always better than domestic films, art house films are superior to popular entertainment, and winners from international film festivals always are better than films that actually entertaining. Often you will get reviews from critics who don't even like the particular genre of the film they are covering. Is it very useful to the aficionado of action films if the critic hates them and prefers Bergman?

As pure as they are about their great principles, those same critics think nothing about accepting invitations for press junkets paid for on the big studios' dime. Nor do they think it at all slightly dishonest when they don't go to a movie themselves but rather ask one of their friends who when to see a picture what they thought of it and what it was about.

These arbiters of what appears on the silver screen are always full of advice to the directors of these films (directors, those film people they call "auteurs" - authors of the films, as though the writer had nothing to do with it). On the rare occasion where critics have crossed over to the other side, the results have been less than stunning. Roger Ebert crossed over and was the director of "Valley of the Dolls" which doesn't exactly rank in with the classics of cinema". Peter Bogdanovich did a bit better with such films as "The Last Picture Show", "What's Up Doc?", and "Paper Moon" but most of his films have not been the most popular or profitable for the studios. In fact a lot have been in the "what's good for you" category and since the 1970's he's kind of drifted off the radar screen.

Viewers have a few more options today than when they had to depend of review in newspapers and on TV. Ain't It Cool News has made a splash with those more interested in popular entertainment. In fact the site has made it possible to know ahead of time, due to spies within Hollywood, to know about stinkers before the studios have a chance to snow you under with a publicity blitz. The only problem is that the writers there are more likely to be fanboys and will be more likely to write about the latest superhero or action flick, leaving out other categories that you might be interested in.

Another option is Rotten Tomatoes. It seems to be on the right track in that it gives you an overall view of the opinions of lots of critics but the big problem is that a lot of these critics are still of the film snob variety. What would be useful would be if there were a way to match you up with reviews that lined up with your tastes in movies. No critic will line up with what you like 100% but it might be possible to find a way to find those articles that would reflect what you would say if you went to the movie and wrote about it yourself. Perhaps someone could come up with a computer program to do this by having you answer questions about movies and your tastes. That way you would have a way to find movies you would like to see instead of having some critic tell you what he thinks you should see.


Note: Posts are going to be a little more sporatic from now on. Too many other projects are in progress.

Hollywood is Losing Its Power

A lot of us haven't noticed it yet. It's been happening quite slowly, but it is becoming more and more obvious that Hollywood is losing its grip as the center of the motion picture universe. Sure all the major and minor movie studios are still there and they still dominate the business but it is just not the same.

Was it the cheaper costs of Canada that got it started? Or the various incentive programs offered by the other states? That is just one reason. This day of reckoning has been a long time coming.

That entity called Hollywood had it pretty good for a very long time. World War I crippled its European competitors, and its great PR machine worked its wonders to make sure that talented people and all that thought they were would funnel themselves into Hollywood's gates. But what has been the cost? With everyone storming the gates to get their chance connections (who you knew) became much more important than what you knew and quality movies became more accidents than expected occurrences. Once someone did something "good enough" to meet standards, those standards took second place to whatever the current trend was.

Once the agents got their grip in the late 40's and early 50's, the end was on its way because deals then became more important than movies. The studio system took all through the 50's into the 60's to collapse. There was television, the outlawing of block booking, and finally the prohibition of the studios owning movie theatres to remove the power, leaving the studios for the most part with distribution. With their weakened state the studios became vulnerable to takeover. Studios became mere appendages to international conglomerates whose love wasn't movies but profits. To satisfy this lust for profits, movies were no longer made for everyone but for mostly males who were 15 to 25 years of age.

While the studios were being raided, there was a brief time when the executives were distracted during the 1970's where some creative experimentation could slip through. But when the conglomerates discovered how lucrative blockbusters could be, a lot of smaller movies became much harder to make.

With all talent flowing toward Hollywood, these self-appointed gatekeepers just could not keep up. More and more elaborate barriers went up in place to stem the flow. Agents found every way they could to avoid reading new scripts. Unions made the barriers to entry so formidable that it was a wonder that any new talent made it into the ranks at all.

Then came the lure of shooting in Canada. Because of government intervention, shooting became cheaper there and run-away productions became the topic of conversation. States within the United States soon followed with various incentive schemes and the flow out of established Hollywood borders had begun. But it still took a lot of money to shoot with film, so it was still mostly the established players making the films.

Then digital video happened. Gradually at first but then more quickly, independent productions began springing up shooting feature films for a fraction of the cost of those on film. But these still had to be put onto motion picture film to be shown in theatres. That barrier soon began falling away with help from the established players themselves. Thinking they could save on distribution themselves, they began lobbying theatre owners to switch over to digital projection. Why? Because they could send their films via satellite and get those expensive film prints out of their budgets. Of course this eliminated a barrier to the independents for getting their films screened.

So where are we now? Hollywood is in one of its worst periods ever. Beyond its television industries being reduced to reality TV shows and game shows, its movie industry has been so contaminated by focus group studies and executive "safe bets" that most of the films are sequels, remakes, retreads of old TV shows, and superhero films which are reaching out to more and more obscure characters as it goes on. More productions are taking place in states where government subsidies have been enacted than in the place where you expect it to be the film making capitol of the world - Hollywood.

Independent filmmakers around the country are rapidly getting up to speed on how to make entertaining and profitable movies. Once Hollywood-based distribution (and along with it the practice of "Hollywood Accounting") is displaced by distributors based elsewhere and the sharp business practices of the establishment is replaced by more sensible and fair ways, the shift of power will be well on its way to being complete.