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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 5230944" data-attributes="member: 32740">People don't understand the purpose of reading critics.  Reviews are there to ASSIST you in making the decision of what movie to see and why, not to make the decision FOR you.  Criticism is opinion, but its usefulness is not just in a 1-to-5 star rating or a thumbs up/down, but in the discussion of WHY they gave it that rating. I see critics often give movies middling star ratings but the review itself takes great pains to point out things the reviewer did NOT like.  If you look only at the middling rating you can mistakenly assume, "I guess it's 'okay', neither great or terrible so it's worth the time and money."  If you read only the written criticism you might mistakenly assume that since the reviewer has only critical comments on the movie that the reviewer is actually trying to tell you it isn't worth your time or money when that may not be accurate.  I can DESPISE certain things about movies that I really, REALLY enjoy.  I can find a movie as a whole to be entertaining, while freely acknowledging that objectively it's AWFUL (people usually call this a guilty pleasure). One of the dangers of being a long-term, professional film critic is that you see endless amounts of utter drek.  Heck, you see endless amounts of movies in general - and not because you are necessarily freely and genuinely interested in the style, actors, director, subject, or anything else about the movie.  You see movies because you are PAID to see movies whether you're in the demographic for the movie or not and then tell people what you think.  After a while critics can get bored or numbed by anything that doesn't shock them or do something outrageous and unpredicted.  Thus, movies that aren't aiming for high-art in the first place can be easily dismissed and unfavorably (and unfairly) criticized making the critic seem like more of a pretentious snob than he actually is. It's possible for you to become familiar with what certain critics like, but it's IMPOSSIBLE for them to ever have the first clue what YOU like.  People have to draw out the infomation from reviews that they want and it's quite possible that one review simply isn't going to tell you everything you need.  If you're REALLY going to use reviews for more than just an unexplained thumbs up/down then you need mutiple reviews.  And you have the luxury of thinkng about a film for hours, days, even weeks before finally forming your ultimate opinion about it.  A critic has to make much snappier judgements, write a review, and then move on to the next movie.  And nobody's perfekt. I spent several years writing reviews of every movie I saw for my personal website.  I don't think too many people outside of my own family read them but that's not why I stopped writing them.  I stopped because simply putting down a proper critical opinion in words got to seem like a chore.  I also started to get less enjoyment out of going to movies because I KNEW from past experience that most of the movies I'd go to see would wind up being so unremarkable or so frequently fail to reach their obvious potential.  But I'd only really see that when trying to dissect those movies with a dedicatedly critical eye rather than just enjoying them for what they were.</blockquote>

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