MovieMeditation's "One, Two, Three" Reviews!

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I don't think reactions like that can be completely ignored though. At least look at all aspects of the reaction spectrum before writing it off as unimportant.
I am looking at all aspects... and then I write it off as unimportant.

I have seen the audience score, I've heard the response, but it's the same old same old for movies like this... Therefore I don't find it to mean much.

Art films are so diverse. It's subjective, stylistic filmmaking heavy on morals and themes before story and structure. It's bound to split people, especially the "general moviegoer". That's how I see it.

It's fine if people want to listen to that stuff and watch movies based on such people and responses. I just personally don't.



Yeah i'd never listen to an audience score for anything that wasn't completely conventional. Even if i was to Cinema Score uses a tiny sample size so i'd look for something more extensive.

I don't really look for peoples reactions before deciding to watch something anyway, sometimes i will look at what some people i know have similar tastes to me think about a film that's getting alot of buzz which i'm skeptical about, most of the time i already know whether i want to see it or not though.



I simultaneously believe that audience reaction should not be dispositive...and that a really extreme audience reaction in either direction is usually significant.



I simultaneously believe that audience reaction should not be dispositive...and that a really extreme audience reaction in either direction is usually significant.
I agree.

It was mainly the discussion about Cinema Score - a collection of a mere 400 people's opinion gathered into a letter grade - that didn't do it for me.

I was actually just about to respond to Camo about my own way of finding out what to watch - and in that response I was going to mention how I do use audience scores, for starters, for many of the movies I watch by looking at IMDb, for example, and then anything below or very close to 6 I will not watch - unless it's an extreme case. Sure, I might miss out on a personal favorite, but the chances are truly slim.

So whenever a movie is hyped up to 11 I'm usually interested and whenever a movie gets a really low score I usually stay away. As an extension to this method, I obviously use trailers, plot synopsises, directors and whatnot to decide whether it's a movie for me or not.

So yes, in each end of the scale there at least the audience response can be a usable indicator.



I don't think the Cinemascore for mother! is nearly as important as how batsh*t insane and polarizing the word of mouth has actually been. It's the craziest response to a movie I think I've ever seen. An F seems to indicate universal hatred, which I feel is incorrect with this movie. People are all over the freaking place with this movie - I have seen probably every reaction a movie can have regarding this one alone - and I have a feeling that's exactly what Aronofsky wanted. And it's not the first film I personally find good that Cinemascore has given an F to. I don't know their process in rating films but I think it's a bogus indicator on whether or not a movie is actually worthwhile.



I don't think the Cinemascore for mother! is nearly as important as how batsh*t insane and polarizing the word of mouth has actually been. It's the craziest response to a movie I think I've ever seen. An F seems to indicate universal hatred, which I feel is incorrect with this movie. People are all over the freaking place with this movie - I have seen probably every reaction a movie can have regarding this one alone - and I have a feeling that's exactly what Aronofsky wanted. And it's not the first film I personally find good that Cinemascore has given an F to. I don't know their process in rating films but I think it's a bogus indicator on whether or not a movie is actually worthwhile.
Definitely.

And not only is the general response so diverse it's insane, even my own response paralleled just that. I felt so worked up and torn and split and messed around with that I just didn't know what to think - and I loved that. I loved the reaction Aronofsky pulled from me. It's the most extreme experience I've had with a movie in quite a while, and for that he deserves the recognition - whether that'll be awful or amazing.

As many here know I write for a Danish film site, which I have been doing since 2015... we have a rating system where we use an average between 4 different indicators - story, acting, visuals and sound - which you probably know since that's also how I organize my Cinema Reviews, which are reworked versions of my Danish reviews.

Anyways, the point is... Aronofsky's 'mother!' is the first film I have given "full house" in every single department, while writing for the site since 2015. Boyhood, Whiplash and Manchester by the Sea are movies that ended up averaging a "full house", when you round up that is, but 'mother!' was the first I awarded "perfection" all the way around. In a way, because the movie isn't perfect, is why I think this was the movie to finally deserve that full rating. 'mother!' is such a refreshing, boundary pushing movie for cinema. And it's needed now more than ever...



Promises made ~ Promises kept! I watched Patriots Day and reviewed it too. Just for fun, I'll add some of my thoughts side by side with yours I hadn't read any reviews, including yours before writing my own.

2016
Patriots Day
one word Polished.
My one word was: Boo

Hey I used the same damn photo That
's funny, it is a good establishing photo for a review, great minds think alike!

one sentence
A hollow "Hollywood version" of actual events that fails to escape its by-the-books approach and polished style, turning the otherwise goodhearted patriotic picture into a pitiful mocking of those who got injured or lost their lives during this terrible tragedy.
Bravo and I felt the same.
My one sentence:

The 12 minute style documentary epilogue doesn't redeem the director's lame decision to turn a tragic real event, into a lame ass action movie.

one paragraph
I have a complicated hate-hate-love relationship with Peter Berg and his films. His films aren't extremely awful, but usually they contain a poorly contrived story that is a confused mess in style and approach, where only the actual look and feel of the production makes it seem otherwise. He is like the "light edition" of Nolan, although that doesn't make complete sense, since Berg's films are far more sugarcoated and with little to no substance apart from its "true story" source material. He has a fetish for real life events and turning them into big, patriotic mastrubation pieces for the mainstream audience, primarily America. You could almost describe him as the "Michael Bay of serious authentic drama movies", because in some ways they have some similarities, in the heavy-handed and almost vulgar way of handling themes and dialogue...
I like what you wrote there. I don't have a similar paragraph, but I'm on board with "
a confused mess in style and approach"


With Patriots Day he even tries to up the realness by inserting what looks to be real video cam footage of the event - as it is happening on screen - but it feels overly forced in an attempt to stuff the drama down my throat.
Agreed, I wrote:

I hated the way the first 30 minutes was filmed...It looked like a Showtime TV show...with lots of close-ups of the actors, while using a hand held camera with very short scene length. It just looked like cheap film making.


The best emotion and drama this entire movie delivers is at the end, when real life victims talk briefly about their story and their need to overcome life's obstacles. And when your 2+ hour movie can't even come close to two minutes of genuine emotion - or maybe just feel like a fine tribute or decent representation of the events - then you failed with your movie as far as I can see...
Amen, that's how I felt too...

Oh I gave Patriots Day a
mostly because the way Peter Berg misused his subject matter, turning a real life crisis into a Hollywood CG Blockbuster, pissed me off.




@Citizen Rules phew, glad we agree. I was afraid that with some odd miracle you'd like it.

But my senses mostly told me you wouldn't. Glad I was right. Yep, not a good movie... I'm gonna check out your review! Thanks for checking in here, CR, and posting such detailed thoughts. Appreciate it!



Master of My Domain
I think I'll like mother! (huge Aronofsky fan here), but I'm also afraid of it being the pretentious poser film so many reviewers claim it to be. I did like Noah when everyone else I knew hated it though, the difference being that the reaction to it wasn't as polarized. Anticipation and terror at the same time for me.

Great thread so far Meds!
__________________
Letterboxd Profile: https://letterboxd.com/GatsbyG/



I think I'll like mother! (huge Aronofsky fan here), but I'm also afraid of it being the pretentious poser film so many reviewers claim it to be. I did like Noah when everyone else I knew hated it though, the difference being that the reaction to it wasn't as polarized. Anticipation and terror at the same time for me.

Great thread so far Meds!
Thanks, Gats. I missed you around here!

I think you'll like mother! It's a rollercoaster ride full of more ideas and concepts than what is explained but that's what makes it exciting. It's mind f*ck made with flair.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
I agree.

It was mainly the discussion about Cinema Score - a collection of a mere 400 people's opinion gathered into a letter grade - that didn't do it for me.

I was actually just about to respond to Camo about my own way of finding out what to watch - and in that response I was going to mention how I do use audience scores, for starters, for many of the movies I watch by looking at IMDb, for example, and then anything below or very close to 6 I will not watch - unless it's an extreme case. Sure, I might miss out on a personal favorite, but the chances are truly slim.

So whenever a movie is hyped up to 11 I'm usually interested and whenever a movie gets a really low score I usually stay away. As an extension to this method, I obviously use trailers, plot synopsises, directors and whatnot to decide whether it's a movie for me or not.

So yes, in each end of the scale there at least the audience response can be a usable indicator.

IMDB is not a good indicator either though. You have fanboys and crazy people hate rating all the time. When the boards were still up, there were wars to give films ratings of 1's and 10's.

Look at The Promise starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac about the Armenian Genocide. You have a war of people there who deny such an event rating the film a 1 and others rating it a 10.


82,000+ votes gave it a 10

66,000+ votes gave it a 1

It has a weighted average of 6.0 on IMDB.

This tells me nothing about the film and you clearly stated that you will avoid it because of the rating.


Extreme case? Maybe, but this happened a lot. Heck, there was a war to see which movie would be #1 on the top 250. Heck, there is this whole DC vs Marvel rating system going on too.

I just don't see how you can say that an audience reaction is not worth your time, then say that you look to IMDB of all places to see if you would watch a movie or not. Seems counterproductive.



IMDB is not a good indicator either though. You have fanboys and crazy people hate rating all the time. When the boards were still up, there were wars to give films ratings of 1's and 10's.

Look at The Promise starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac about the Armenian Genocide. You have a war of people there who deny such an event rating the film a 1 and others rating it a 10.


82,000+ votes gave it a 10

66,000+ votes gave it a 1

It has a weighted average of 6.0 on IMDB.

This tells me nothing about the film and you clearly stated that you will avoid it because of the rating.


Extreme case? Maybe, but this happened a lot. Heck, there was a war to see which movie would be #1 on the top 250. Heck, there is this whole DC vs Marvel rating system going on too.

I just don't see how you can say that an audience reaction is not worth your time, then say that you look to IMDB of all places to see if you would watch a movie or not. Seems counterproductive.
I thought this discussion was kind of over. Oh well,

You keep jumping to conclusions, looking over the details. That's not exactly enforcing your arguments...

I never said audience reactions were not worth my time, I said that the Cinema Score thing - consisting of too few people and a far too narrow group and basis for a trustable reception, imo - was too slim and that it gave poor impression of a movie's quality. Also, most of the discussion, I referred to audience scores in relation to art films, which are very subjective and edgy movies and per definition won't appeal to the mass audience and therefore a audience score for such movie comes cross as pretty insignificant.

I also said that one "could say audience scores are never really a good indicator", so obviously I'm agreeing to the fact that IMDb is also faulty. But IMDb is the biggest of them all, so at least it's not a terrible indicator when a movie gets past 100-200.000 ratings - by then you'll have a pretty decent picture of how a movie appeal to the mass, diverse audience and most of the 1-rating/10-rating stuff is evened out, the more people rate the movie.

That said, as I mentioned, I never listen blindly to audience scores. Together with the audience response, critic response, friends, family, people with similar taste, trailers, directors/writers etc. I use all those to come to a conclusion about whether the given movie is for me. I've done this a long time now and I know the positives and negatives about each indicator - especially that of IMDb. Therefore I also kind of know how those ratings can fluctuate; how the entire crew of a blockbuster will rate it 10/10 to boost ratings, how mass-hate will define early or overall response, how superhero movies and Nolan movies always get high marks etc.

I feel like I know IMDb well and therefore also its faults, so I can still use it as a "helper" of sorts, to narrow things down a bit. I never trust it completely. I never trust anyone completely about movies I might like. But IMDb can be part of the bigger picture helping me decide, so I'm not completely blind as to what's going on.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
I thought this discussion was kind of over. Oh well,

Interesting. For someone who wants people to read his reviews and engage in conversation in his threads it's odd for you to causally dismiss such conversation.



Interesting. For someone who wants people to read his reviews and engage in conversation in his threads it's odd for you to causally dismiss such conversation.
For someone who wants to keep the discussion going it's odd for you to casually and constantly dismiss the actual arguments I make in exchange for short or snide sentences.


You sure you logged into the right profile? I thought I was speaking to RedFoot for second there...



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
For someone who wants to keep the discussion going it's odd for you to casually and constantly dismiss the actual arguments I make in exchange for short or snide sentences.


You sure you logged into the right profile? I thought I was speaking to RedFoot for second there...
Nah, it's just the pretentious tone in your posts that make you seem like you're better than the conversation at hand that does it. "I thought we were done...oh well" comes off as I should be thankful that you're taking time to belittle me.

I never dismissed any arguments, but you saying that I jump over whatever 'logical' argument you had is an effort to belittle what I brought to the table. It's an ineffective way of debating a topic when you have nothing to really say.

As for me trying to keep the discussion going? I was responding to your reply to other people. You brought up IMDB, which is a different sub discussion. Once I saw the condescending reply, I decided to disregard the discussion and point that out.

I get it, you're a 'critic' and we should be thankful for your higher insight into film.

Also regrading Redfoot, you're more than welcome to look at those posts to see how you went after me first and the response was mere retaliation. But I'm not going to really dive into the past with that. That's over and done with.

I try to make an effort to engage in discussion with whatever you're reviewing, whenever I have the chance. I, like you, enjoy debate about films, but this isn't that. So take care.



@TheUsualSuspect

I don't want this either, but I feel like you're asking for it. I don't like YOUR tone either. I don't think I'm better, but you just keep being so stubborn about your own point of view it tips over into some kind of hostile pestilence type of arguing. I don't like that. I only replied in the same manner you did with my last reply.


I never dismissed any arguments
You replied with "whatever you say" to the last post on the Cinema Score stuff, instead of replying to my points. Then later I made more points, and explained myself, and you got hostile.

but you saying that I jump over whatever 'logical' argument you had is an effort to belittle what I brought to the table. It's an ineffective way of debating a topic when you have nothing to really say.
What I mean is you keep replying to a small amount of what my reply consisted of... Like, if I make an argument on art films, Cinema Score and whatnot, and say audience scores don't matter in that case, you conclude that I said audience scores never matter and that I'm counter-arguing and whatnot... Can't you see that can piss someone off the way you just make up your own conclusions? Take something that is 75% truth and then randomly makes up the last 25% yourself to have a stronger argument? That annoys me, I can tell you.

when you have nothing to really say
Oh really? I have nothing to say? Okay.

As for me trying to keep the discussion going? I was responding to your reply to other people. You brought up IMDB, which is a different sub discussion. Once I saw the condescending reply, I decided to disregard the discussion and point that out.
It's just that the discussion seemed over, and though a "sub discussion" it's a lot of the same thing really, and to me it seemed like you couldn't let things go from yesterday about us not agreeing with you on the Cinema Score deal. That's what I took from it. If that's wrong, well I misunderstood.

I get it, you're a 'critic' and we should be thankful for your higher insight into film.
Okay. So we're on this level now... aha...

Also regrading Redfoot, you're more than welcome to look at those posts to see how you went after me first and the response was mere retaliation. But I'm not going to really dive into the past with that. That's over and done with.
I'm glad you are done with it. Just doesn't seem like it it. You kind of piss me off in the same way your RedFoot persona did, which you couldn't see then and can't see now.

I try to make an effort to engage in discussion with whatever you're reviewing, whenever I have the chance. I, like you, enjoy debate about films, but this isn't that. So take care.
I had a hard time accepting your behaviour with RedFoot, whether you think it was me who was in the wrong and not you. But I eventually did. I began reading your reviews too. Accepting who you were.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
@MovieMeditation

Despite what you may think, I have no ill will towards you. I read your reviews and like them. Yes, sometimes I will deal out a low blow when I think the person is being an ass, which was what my 'critic' comment was. So I apologize for that.

It just seems, to me at least, that your responses come off as snobbish sometimes and THAT gets to me, which is why I respond the way I do. Which is why I think the original Redfoot fight got out of hand.

I don't know what 'I began reading your reviews, accepting who you are' means, but I won't get into it.

I don't want to fight. So I'll just leave it there.

Cheers.



@MovieMeditation

Despite what you may think, I have no ill will towards you. I read your reviews and like them. Yes, sometimes I will deal out a low blow when I think the person is being an ass, which was what my 'critic' comment was. So I apologize for that.

It just seems, to me at least, that your responses come off as snobbish sometimes and THAT gets to me, which is why I respond the way I do. Which is why I think the original Redfoot fight got out of hand.

I don't know what 'I began reading your reviews, accepting who you are' means, but I won't get into it.

I don't want to fight. So I'll just leave it there.

Cheers.
The highlighted means nothing than what it reads - I didn't like you as a person after the RedFoot deal, I began looking at your main profile - this one - differently and sometimes I felt like the persona from the past moved over to here. And again, whoever was wrong and that could as much been me and thereby my own fault, but it took its toll on me with the RedFoot deal. I didn't trust a few people on here for a while and especially you because of that past.

So I simply mean that, after a while, I began accepting your personality and who you were here and how you acted and began to see way past what was once a thing. That's simply what I mean, nothing else.

Glad you apologized, because that was the main one that got me. Anyways, completely objectively (or I'll try), what I think happened here is that we had a conversation on a topic and each made our points, but next to the main discussion there seemed to be an unintended "subtle subtext-argument" where certain sentences and remarks was interpreted wrong by each of us and we thought the other person was being hostile, holy, rude or whatnot. And that span it out of control.

I'll apologize too for whatever I might have said to offend you, because it wasn't my intention, I simply acted on what I thought was a tone or a way of arguing that wasn't completely friendly or with proper purpose to the discussion.


Maybe as a plus on top of this, now we know our differences, ways of arguing and interpreting each other. Maybe that'll actually make things like this less likely to happen again in the future.