I was just looking at this movie yesterday. What do you mean by "gut-wrenching"?
You mean the word itself? It's supposed to indicate a physically disturbed reaction to something that manifests as an unpleasant feeling in one's abdomen. As for what actually happens, well, even though it's a true-story film I think it's better that I don't spoil it..
Iro is to reviews as Kubrick is to films.
This could go any number of ways, but I'm going to assume it's because of the dispassionately clinical approach.
I pissed off Iro. F*ck.
But really, I mean nothing harsh. You are so much into reviewing that you sometimes over-examine and over-think things, for better and for worse. That's what I see. But I usually don't mind it, so it's all good.
Ah, you know I was kidding. Besides, we all know that the over-analysing and over-criticising is part of the draw. Gotta offer something that the others don't.
Did you just call Kubrick pretentious?
Did you just call
me pretentious?
But isn't the point of writing a review trying to convince others that what's you think of the film is right? As long as you don't offend anyone, it's totally fine to write your opinions in a factual manner. It's also why most essays (and film reviews are in a way, essays about films, thesis being "this movie sucked/ruled) attempt to justify what is written.
But isn't Zotis actually expressing offence at the fact that I tend to write reviews in such a bluntly factual manner? In any case, it's obviously a by-product of the fact that I have written plenty of film essays in the past and that just bleeds into my reviews.
How dare you!
Calm down, Armond.
Well, I don't think that's how it should be. It reminds me of highschool etiquette where in order to get a point across people would state their oppinion as loud and confident as they could. But no, you can't dictate reality.
What, are you saying that people
aren't supposed to have confidence in their arguments? That's why they teach it in high-school in the first place - because it's an important skill. It's not about the speech being loud, it's about the strength of the actual words that are being used. In a debate, you have to display conviction in the point you are arguing or you lose. Obviously, you can say "but this is just my opinion", but that doesn't automatically let it off the hook. People try to justify bigoted worldviews by saying "it's just my opinion", but that doesn't mean we have to let their thinking go unchallenged.
Also, why bring reality into this? This is art. Being open to interpretation is a fundamental part of any artwork - even light comedies can still be liked or disliked on the basis of each individual's particular sense of humour. The reality is that I think a certain way about a movie, but I know that this does not change the movie itself in any way and that somebody else can have vastly different thoughts about the exact same movie. I don't act like my way of thinking is the be-all and end-all.
Well, this is my approach, or at least the approach I'm trying to develop. If I'm not sure that I'm right then I try to communicate that, and if I am sure that I'm right then I try to communicate that assurance. If I think something is a fact I'll state it as a fact, and if I'm making an assumption then I try to communicate it as an assumption.
It's not like I avoid it altogether. You look at some of my past reviews and I'll actually use phrases like "I can't help but feel" or "it seems like", which are supposed to denote that I'm expressing my own subjective interpretation. I even do that in the
Kung Fury review that you keep bringing up as an example of how I state my opinions like they're facts. Just because I use it
sometimes doesn't mean that I have to use it
all the time. I'll use it if I feel the need to be specific about a certain aspect of a film, but I still operate under the presumption that people can still tell which is which without me having to clarify every single time - or even at all. This is borne out by the fact that, out of all the people who respond even remotely negatively to my reviews, you are the only one who complains about this particular issue. Everyone else just accepts it and argues against the opinions themselves rather than the fact that I don't constantly remind everyone that This Is Just My Opinion.
If a person is color blind and reads that Barney is blue and then goes around saying Barney is blue, they are wrong. But if they go around saying they think he's blue because they read it somewhere and also state that they are colorblind, then they are right, and they aren't missleading people.
But Iro straw mans this by comparing it to adding "I think" before everything he says and that's boring. He puts in work to write his reviews, but he isn't willing to even consider what I've been trying to impress on him for so long. To me it is the difference between his review being tolerable and intolerable. I can hardly stand popping in here once in a while because every time I do it gets me really worked up and I loose sleep over it.
Like I'd try to strawman such a nonsensical analogy. I might as well accuse you of setting me up as some kind of Drumpf-like straight-talking strawman for all the good that mentioning strawmen would do this argument. Besides, is it really bad enough that you literally lose sleep over reading these reviews? How many other reviewers on this site do you read and how many of them follow through with your ideas regarding how reviewers should address the difference between fact and opinion? If you name them and it turns out that they don't do anything significantly different in that regard, then what? Do you lose sleep over anyone else's reviews? I can't imagine that I'm the only one who writes like this.