Are negative reviews biased?

I don't remember the specific context of where I mentioned 'informed reviewer', but I would imagine it would mean just that. Informed. They have experience with things. They know stuff. They have tools to articulate what they think about in regards to the movies they watch.


As for what they should be informed of, it could be all sorts of things. But, in this context, I would think having seen a lot of movies would be the most obvious thing they should have an awarenesss of. But even that would be conditional in all sorts of ways. For example, a person who only writes and thinks about horror movies, doesn't necessarily need to watch any movies that aren't horror (although, I would still argue, they would probably be better reviewers if they also had some knowledge of other genres). But a person who writes about all kinds of movies, should probably watch a little bit of everything.


But really, I'm just talking about basic stuff here. Any information or experience that the person writing the review can pull from in order to make their point about what they are saying about the film would count and qualify as being 'informed'. Obviously though, not everyone would be equally informed.


As for what an uninformed viewer is, it would be the opposite. Those who have never learned much about what it is they are talking about. They probably haven't seen that many movies, or they don't know anything about film history, or the technical side of moviemaking, or different philosophies behind film criticism, or maybe they haven't learned the kind of writing tricks that allow one to articulate their thoughts, or they don't have much life experience or curiosity to learn about others, or don't know very much about history or philosophy or sports or cars or whatever it is a movie can be about.


Now it of course doesn't mean you would be an uniformed viewer if you aren't a scholar on all of these things....but you certainly need to know some of them.


I assume writing your feelings on a movie down, straight from the gut and without too much intellectualizing. Which is fine.That's mostly what I do as well. But even in regards to writing about things almost purely emotionally on how you responded to a film, the more you know about things, the better its still going to be.



For example, as a straight from the hip kinda writer, do you think you write better reviews now, after watching lots and lots of film noirs? Or do you think you were just as prepared to write about them after the very first one you ever saw? If you think there is any difference at all in your old less informed opinions from your new better informed opinions, this would mean you essentially agree with me. Even if you are writing straight from the hip and seem to be under the impression that being informed of things somehow makes you a less honest reviewer.

I didn’t read a single thing in here but I give this thread a

Crumb...First, thanks for the explanation. I can now see we probably agree more than we disagree on the subject at hand.

I think we both initially disagreed as we might both felt somewhat taken back by the extreme opposite viewpoint (that neither of us was actually espousing).

I see you as a learned educated person with deep literary exposure maybe even a degree or two in the literary field, maybe you posted that or maybe it's your avatar but take it as a compliment. I imagined that you might be thinking it's a slap at educated people that the idea that a review written by a layman should be considered equal to one written by an academia.

Myself I imagined the inverse, I thought you were saying uneducated laymen (like me) can't possibly write a review of equal worth to a review written by a more educated person. Of course now that you've clarified your position I know you weren't implying that.

Honestly my reviews seem to be getting crappier and lazier as I go, though sometimes I knock out a good one. But that's just me and my waning interest in writing and one can't really extrapolate anything from that other than 'Citizen needs to try harder' But yes I would agree with you that knowing something about film noir and having seen more than just a few noirs gives me and or the reviewer a better chance of having a more relevant opinion, than say someone who didn't even know what noirs were.

Let me clarify that I would never consider "university educated" and "informed" to be synonymous with each other. Or that someone who dropped out of highschool as not being that.


To be sure, there is obviously knowledge to be learned at places of higher education, but I saw no evidence that people working towards degrees were ever necessarily that much better informed or intelligent than anyone else. In fact, lots were pretty unimpressive in that way. I certainly didn't learn very much during my time at university, or any school, really. I hardly ever even made it to my classes. Got zeros in a couple of them. Was mostly at the campus bar, staring at a wall and waiting for my friends to get finished with their classes that they dumbly bothered going to.


Whatever I've learned in life has mostly been by watching movies and watching people and talking. It's why I advocate for art so heavily. Everything you need to know is in that, and it doesn't costs tens of thousands of dollars to get.

Cool I like ya better now! But now you need this guy as your avatar...

Re: straight-from-the-hip. I think a really important distinction is what happens after. I don't mind reviews coming from a gut feeling or an initial reaction. I mind the posture that just takes those things as-is and isn't interested in discussing them.

Far from being against expressing an immediate reaction, I think those are some of the most interesting and useful things to analyze after the fact. Not too long ago I had an unpleasant emotional reaction to something, but I didn't know why right away. My emotions had processed something before my rational mind had...but once I'd made the connection, it all made sense. It was interesting. And it wasn't either-or, where I felt one way at first and then another after I'd intellectualized or rationalized something away. I had a reaction, thought about why I had it, and then understood it better, in a way that validated it rather than contradicted it.

Basically, it's about the process more than the result. It's about critique being a beginning and not an end. "Just" liking something is fine. But treating that reaction as this mysterious, unknowable thing that you don't even think about, or regarding as cosmic happenstance or something...that crosses over from humility about subjectivity into straight-up boring incuriosity.

Correct. I've banged this drum in other places, but sometimes you can know someone's reasoning (or lack thereof) is at fault regardless of whether their conclusion is.

So it goes with subjective opinions: "I just like it" is fine if you're just trying to kill some time and get through life. It's not so fine if you regard cinema as an actual art form, and it's definitely not fine if "I just like it" is something you proclaim on an enthusiasts' forum...more than once...phrased as an ostensible critique of people who maybe like to talk and think about why they do or don't like those things. This, too, is the result of a lot of cross-talk and miscommunication: failing to note the implication in deciding to communicate your preferences publicly, or treating them as things you merely thought until some mean overanalytical person reached into your head and started asking you to account for your feelings. That, of course, is never what's happening on a forum. It's more like they stood up on a milk crate and loudly yelled "TOY STORY 2 WAS PRETTY MID" and then seemed taken aback when people started asking them to explain themselves.

Differing opinions have a lot of natural impasses, and we reach them pretty often. But the coherence test you're talking about is still worth getting into. If someone "just likes" one thing and doesn't like something very similar, and can't distinguish why, then there's a pretty good chance they just saw one in a bad mood, or because of some reason specific to them but completely external to the work. And unpacking those kinds of things and at least attempting to account for them (even though we can't fully or perfectly do so) is, essentially, the point of criticism.

And if someone doesn't wanna engage in actual criticism, cool. But that probably precludes the proclaiming of same.