Roy's 20th Century Movie reviews

Ahh, who invited you anyway.

Because I personally question the worth of your takes?

I guess it doesn't matter either way, I wasn't reading this thread before and I barely read threads like this anyway so, y'know, carry on.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Because your reviews are so insightful.

Have you read them?

Some of them, yes. I've read some of everyone's reviews.

Very well - in fairness, I decided to go back through this thread and actually read some of these reviews. Interesting to see that I'm not the first one to remark on how the reviews tend to read largely like plot descriptions with comparatively small amounts of personal insight - even then, something like the review for Predator still has some notable inaccuracies in its summarising of key events and character motivations. This is actually meant to be constructive criticism - if you are serious about writing more reviews, I'd suggest (like others have) that you emphasise writing more about what you thought/felt about the movie than merely recapping everything that happens from beginning to end (especially when unmarked spoilers are a problem of their own).

But doesn't every reviewer, including professional critics, summarize the movies to some degree? Read some of Roger Ebert's reviews. I've read many. Almost all of them break down the plot. I mean, if others are reading my reviews, they should at least know the basic plot. That way, they know what it's about and can judge whether to watch it or not.

I don't just list the plot straightforward. I like to pepper my synopses with criticisms and general personal thoughts (At least, I've tried to do it more since the onset of the thread), which sometimes includes the use of wit . Also, a number of movies don't have enough depth for many insights. My reviews would consequently be rather brief.

By the way, what's wrong with my description of Predator? I just read it over and didn't notice any inaccuracies.

@Iroquois

What about my three reviews on this other thread? None of them are plot-centered.

https://www.movieforums.com/communit...0846&page=2339

True, but like you said, it's done "to some degree" and it's never treated as the main focus of a review. I'm of the opinion that you should only reference the plot as much as you absolutely have to and especially try to avoid the most sensitive spoilers (even if the movie is bad - alluding to plot details through criticism is fine, but spelling them out...not so much). Also, if a movie isn't deep enough for you to have enough to write a review without padding it out with a plot description, maybe you can just not write about it - or at least try to critically analyse the lack of depth and see how much you can write by taking that approach.

As for Predator, these were just the comments that stood out to me...

As far as the first movie is concerned, it's effectively the alien version of a big game hunter who travels across the galaxy looking for new species to hunt, but it also follows a weird code of honour where it won't kill unarmed people (like the squad's female prisoner) and only goes after targets to prove a challenge (like a team of elite commandos).

Their reason is survival more than anything else - by the time they stop to fight, it's already killed two of their men so they figure it's better to stand and fight rather than allow it to keep picking them off like they do. The idea of it being a menace to society doesn't figure into it at all.

It had already been established that this was their only route to the extraction point so there was no "going the other way" anyway. Besides, it makes more sense to fight an enemy they know can be attacked and killed (and thus confirm the kill in the process) than to keep going and vainly hope that the thing that's killing them just suddenly stops doing it (never mind that an airstrike following a top-secret illegal border-crossing mission on a target that's already hard to find and verify would be much more stupid). I know it's easy to try to nitpick characters' decisions - I've certainly done it a lot in the past - but I figure it's worth thinking hard about why they don't just take the supposedly "easy" way.

As for your recent posts...they just consist of more nitpicks that either have nothing to do with what the movie's truly getting at (as in the fixation on the logistics of Inception's dream-hijacking technology, which are ultimately not relevant to the story at large) or don't account for human fallibility (such as the main character's shortsightedness in Rear Window, which reflect how in-over-his-head he gets through his snooping). Again, it's the question of what purpose noticing these things actually serves and how badly it affects the film as a whole - you still thought Rear Window was good anyway, after all.

In that introductory paragraph, I was just trying to convey the Predator alien as a mysterious, destructive force. I forgot about the girl being unharmed. That was an oversight. And you're right... guess I did fail to recognize the trope where aliens drift through space taking on any species they have to to survive, and possibly conquer.

And now that I look at it, yes, the "menace to society" suggestion doesn't fit in, nor does the "airstrike" make sense (unless the team determined the alien couldn't be stopped by them and that was the only option left).


I'll admit I am a nitpicker when it comes to just about everything. Thus when I write a review, there's always some personal asides included. Though when it came to Rear Window, I must disagree in that I think my gripe about him peering through large transparent windows did affect my view of the film as a whole (but marred it only slightly...I'd give it 7/10 stars) Other filmmaking aspects compensated. I did take into account human fallibility for that particular criticism, because the guy's habit of snooping in an incautiously brazen manner wasn't something that developed over the course of the movie, not a blunder as a result of his evergrowing curiosity/concern, thus couldn't be attributed to him getting in over his head. He snooped like that from the very start. I just didn't find it believable that anyone, especially a man of his perceptiveness, would snoop on people so openly. He should've at least tried to be more stealthy after he suspected a murder, like any rational person would. That was vexing to watch. So again, I do consider this critique to be essential to my overall standpoint.

I didn't consider fallibility in the other complaints I had with the film...so my bad there.

As for Inception,that particular criticism you mentioned was indeed over something insignificant. But I simply added that in to support my overall feeling that the film is convoluted, overwhelmed with bizarre ideas that needed better explaining to mitigate the perplexity. Too much to ruminate. Then again, I wasn't sold on the primary concept of inception. It too is bizarre. That's just my opinion.

Anyhow, thanks for the constructive criticism.

Yeah, it's worth noting how much missing even seemingly minor details can have such an effect on one's understanding of a movie, especially when details like this don't get spelled out at length or anything but instead get told through quick bursts of visual storytelling.

In fairness, most alien invasion movies do focus on them attacking towns and cities so it's easy to assume that the Predator will do the same thing (and it even starts attacking cities and towns in later films from the franchise, but that's not considered at all in the original).

Yeah, I think that's just a habit moviegoers pick up where we have the comfort of watching everything unfold on a screen and pointing out when characters do something "stupid" or "unrealistic" even if it does "make sense" given the characters' established psychology and personal flaws. I'll leave it be because I haven't seen the movie in a long time and you may well be right about that, but I try to give films the benefit of the doubt in this regard. After all, it was Hitchcock himself who said that his movies would be boring if the characters just did what sensible real-life people would do and go straight to the police.



That's an understandable criticism of said film and what you just wrote here is a better way of expressing it than explicitly focusing on the technical minutiae.

Anyhow, thanks for the constructive criticism.

You're welcome.

"What a long, dull trip it's been"—that should've been the afterword. The story basically goes wherever the boy goes, and every place he goes is the same...some crowded party/gathering. There's not much variety for a movie of this length with this much inaction. The film is wholly focused on the characters, though they're not likeable, memorable, or interesting enough to warrant my attention or care. Their conversations are rather trite and mundane. There's the protagonist, the boy (Patrick Fugit). He's a newbie rock journalist trying to get a story. But he's 15. Apparently he can just leave school and hit the road on a bus tour with some band. No truant officer hunting him down. This adventurous idea was suggested by his new groupie friend (Kate Hudson), who's pretty much a drifting character. I don't think there's anything wrong with the kid. He's honest, humble, patient, kind-faced. Which is why he doesn't fit into that scene, and why I find the character quite annoying. He's like the little brother you had to drag along with you on a date in high school–a third wheel–or the young sibling at someone's house party. You just want to tell him to go hang out with kids his own age, people like him. Maybe when he's a bit older and more forthright, he can stick around. A journalist is supposed to be assertive, even a budding one, if he or she wants to succeed that is.

The kid's mother is annoying as well, in a hyperbolized sort of way. She calls her son almost every day to make sure he's not doing drugs. Even a narc isn't that persistent.

What I don't like most of all about this movie is that we're given a view of 1973 through blurry spectacles. Characters are stereotypical and dialogue is contrived, as if based on what someone thought the era was like. (I know it's supposedly a true story from the director's life, but maybe he wanted to conventionalize it for the screen) Let's also not forget the soundtrack, repleted with the most conventional songs of the time. I cringed when they sang "Tiny Dancer" on the bus. Nauseating. Lester Bangs was right, rock music was already dead by then.

I honestly don't get the high marks this film receives. And it's rated R. Should barely be PG-13.

Cameron Crowe wrote/directed the movie, who worked as a teenage journalist for Rolling Stone magazine. So this criticism feels slightly off. I also think that the characters and dialogue perfectly reflect how it's like to be teenagers in a flashy, rock n' roll world. It's going to be artificial because that's how we were back then.

I do understand why people wouldn't like an Almost Face-type movie though. Solid review overall.

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I was hoping no one would see it until I made my edit, which coincidentally regards just that. Haha.

Great, now I'll just look like a bum who didn't read the review carefully.

I just want to note that, for comparison, Richard Linklater who wrote and directed Dazed and Confused, based his movie on his days in high school, and while I enjoy that movie (the characters were better IMO), there's a lot of stereotyping/exaggeration just like in Almost Famous. I suppose that was to make it interesting, because it was relatively plot-less. So both directors, while having grown up in the time periods they were depicting, seemed to misrepresent them. Hell, the real-life characters of D&C thought the movie was over-the-top, and that it especially misrepresented/exaggerated them. They even sued the director for defamation.

Wow, I never knew that. I'd be honored to be adapted into an on-screen character, but I guess some people gotta be salty...

The sequel cranks up the cheesiness to a just-tolerable level. The action is still there, although the plot isn't as interesting and it's severely lacking in character development. Every addition to the Lethal Weapon series is one worse than the last, maybe bar the third. This and the following two are heavy on the farce. Riggs and Murtaugh are like husband and wife in the way they communicate. And the lines have become cliche. Danny Glover should have patented the word "sh¡t". Joe Pesci co-stars for comic relief, though who needs him when you have all the banter of Riggs and Murtaugh. Riggs in particular needs a quaalude.

Lethal Weapon 3 is an improvement over the previous movie in that there's just more stimulating action. Not as much cheesy dialogue either. Rene Russo also stars, and she kicks serious ass. Joe Pesci again makes an appearance as the third stooge. Just like in the prequels, there's overblown scenes, like in the beginning when they decide to dismantle a bomb themselves and blow up the whole building as a result. If Murtaugh (Glover) had any sense, he would have tried to restrain his partner instead of letting him proceed. Though Riggs (Gibson) is nuts anyway, so who knows how that might've turned out. In reality, they both would have been written up or canned. Same goes for half the other stunts they pull. Both characters could still desperately use a tranquilizer.

Drinking game: Take a shot whenever Danny Glover says "son of a b!tch". If you do, you'll be dead by the time the movie's over.

It's been a while since I watched the Lethal Weapon movies, but I remember thinking that Joe Pesci was pretty funny in this one.