Reviews and Ratings Discussion

Which has very little to do with the conversation I was having about the function of rotten tomatoes and awards reporting not pertaining to award justification.

If I were to bite, I’d say a better example for your argument would be films that are of high merit but were scathingly reviewed because they weren’t diverse enough. Even your award winning, still tomatometer positive example of the Joker featured a diverse cast, eat-the-rich subtext and pleas for mentally-ill treatment, so it’s probably not quite the support you think it is.

What were the reviews of the ultra-white Downton Abbey in comparison to Bridgerton? Does the general consensus support your stance or is your bone to pick more specifically aligned with your own resistance to diversity in film/tv?

Yep, I do! Your recognition of Rashomon as a great film is icing on the cake.

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IMDb
Letterboxd

Well, I’m not having this conversation and never was, neither is the thread about that, so... I explained my reasoning for referencing RT the moment I mentioned it. I still think it’s a perfectly appropriate measure to show diverse films get the positive reception other films don’t get simply due to their diversity, but you’re welcome to disagree.

I find it really quite amusing that with your constant references to logical fallacies and the like, you’re the one constantly referencing my mental faculties and inability to argue things. You’re going to say, of course, that the latter is ‘utterly objective’, so let’s just leave that there.

The new critical commentary on Downton Abbey is also beginning to complain that it’s not diverse enough (not pulling out any more quotes, sorry). I never said all-white films can’t get high ratings, but it’s ever so much harder for them now. Like, a million times harder.

Regarding the way you put your points across, that kind of response is why most people of my persuasion don’t even bring these issues up, and perhaps they are right. I believe Takoma and I were discussing ads in recent months. I argued that there are far more non-white faces in ads than there are non-white people in either the US and the U.K. The same applies to film.

My ‘resistance’ to diversity, to use your term, stems from the fact that diversity misrepresents reality to push a political agenda, be it modern reality (too many non-white faces in ads compared to how many non-white people live in the US and UK) or the past (such as racebending in Bridgerton.)

Diversity in films usually suggests that things which are not remotely widespread in fact are, and as above, its proponents tend to assume that everyone agrees with them. This is, indeed, my ‘bone’ to pick with diversity. Guilty as charged.

You did have that argument. With me. When I pointed out the function of the tomatometer.

What logical fallacies have I deployed when articulating your inability to argue your point effectively?

I don’t have a particularly vested interest in objectivity. I simply would value an opinion more if it was supported, logical and reasonable. I don’t find that you’ve been able to do so, especially in this current “it isn’t realistic,” as if the maxim of “realism” was ever the goal or actuality of cinema. That’s a caveat I find absolutely disagreeable and limiting to all the possibilities of cinema.

I don’t for the life of me see it as an argument. You can use an ironing board as a table if you have to. As I have said about ten times already, I think RT suffices to show what most critics think in crude terms, which was all I was alluding to. An RT rating of 5 suggests most critics think a film is awful. An RT rating of 90 suggest most think it’s good. As diversity is the main thing uniting all the highly rated films I have listed, I said it was at least part of the reason they were rated so high, with some reviewers admitting this much.

I think realism is a must in historical fiction, yes, I do. In my view, that’s what sets it apart from non-historical fiction, otherwise people are better off building an alternative reality and going from there. Hence my reference to Bridgerton being about as far from reality as can be.

I don’t think you and I will agree on this, but happy to continue if you wish, seeing as the last time you and I and a few other posters came to an impasse, this was interpreted as me capitulating. I, as well as you, can find plenty of reviews that explicitly say a film or a series deserves be lauded for ‘pushing boundaries’ or being diverse or otherwise progressive, and very few indeed where a film is commended for being ‘traditional’. I’m going to leave that there, taking a leaf out of Takoma’s book, but I will of course reply to whatever you or anyone else has to say.

I’m more interested in what logical fallacies you implied I made in my assessment of your argumentation than continuing to hear your self imposed maxims on cinema that you expect others to adhere to or value.*

If you aren’t going to explain that part, then I’m good stepping out. I already made the limited points I intended to and stand by them.

Nah, it ain’t my job to indulge you.

Darn

Agreed. There are films with like a 78% but the average score is like a 6.2/10. And something like Joker is an interesting example of the reverse, where it is 68% fresh, but the critic score is actually 7.3/10.

Again, I find this to be a questionable assumption. You are assuming that because Carol has a higher score than you think it should have, it must be because all these progressive reviewers are giving it points just for having lesbians. I mean, are you really asserting that most people are letting their interest in "promoting homosexuality" be the deciding factor in whether or not to recommend a film? (And if this is the case, how do you explain the lower critical scores for Rent?)

Isn't it possible that a lot of critics felt the film was worth seeing (not perfect, not a "grade A" movie, just worth seeing), and for reasons not just because of the LGBT content?

I thought that the film had flaws, but if someone said, "Hey, I was thinking about watching Carol, is it worth checking out?" I would say yes. Wouldn't you?

We all understood that it was fun and historically inaccurate when the characters had a dance party to Queen music in A Knight's Tale. Bridgerton is fluff, and being fluff means that incorporating a more diverse cast is a perfectly fine step to take and one that makes it appealing and accessible to a wider audience. Historical accuracy is clearly not a very serious aim of the series, and I don't understand all the hand wringing about it. By that metric, the romantic leads in period pieces should have crappy, non-straightened teeth and some of them should be covered in smallpox scars. I would imagine most reviewers praising the "refreshing take" in Bridgerton would mention the diversity explicitly in their review, but I'll admit I have not read many reviews of it.

After like the second episode of Bridgerton you just settle into the characters, and the mild jolt of seeing more diverse gentry in that period setting falls to the background. But, yeah, for me a big selling point of the film was seeing different demographics in those roles. It was fun.

I feel as though you think it's a bit of a gotcha that people are explicitly praising diversity, but, yeah, they are! Diversity is a selling point. And if you are trying to tell someone about a show you watched and why it spoke to you or interested you, you will mention the thing that made it noteworthy. And if a show/movie is doing something different, more people will want to check it out.

A very small subgroup of my friends were over the moon about the film Straight Up because it was a romantic comedy featuring a lead grappling with some degree of asexuality. It's not that being diverse makes something a good movie on its own, but it does make it noteworthy and, for some viewers, something that will draw them to it. Any reviewer doing their job is going to want to highlight such elements.

To sum up: I think that saying that movies are getting high ratings just because they are diverse is incorrect. A critic praising diversity in a film and also ultimately giving a film a high score is not some A -> B correlation. I frequently mention diversity in my reviews and it is something I am sensitive to as a viewer, but I'm not out here giving away for every film that drops a diverse cast into the mix or features a gay character.

And if RT's metrics are the sign of anything, it's that glowing reviews aren't going to hugely sway an audience. Just look at the gap between the critic and audience scores for The Witch. If anything, overpraising a movie tends to lead to backlash, so reviewers hyping LGBT content that is unworthy would just be setting those films up for harsh backlash from disappointed viewers.

But what if it was Donna Summer?

Did I say that?
I don't think I said that.

Hm, not sure where I got that from. I thought you had written something to that effect in your post about critics being ****ty when they expect a movie to be what they want. But nope. Not there.



And I wrote that when I was dead sober, so not sure what fissure in my brain was responsible for the misreading.

Not exactly what I was saying, though. What I was saying was that I have issue with critics who only take a movie on THEIR terms. Who don't consider the intention, only their reaction.
When I watch a movie and realize it is not going the way I expected or wanted, I do not get angry at the movie. I reset my expectations. As often as I can and I'm pretty successful with it. I've consciously done this in so many films and then been able to take them for what they are. Sideways was marketed as the road-comedy of the summer. Anyone who has seen it will know that is not what it is. Once you start to realize the film that it is you can either hate the movie for not being the road-comedy of the summer or you can respect that Paul Giamatti blew your ****ing mind with realism and subtlety in what actually was a fairly complex film in terms of character. When I saw the first 5 minutes of Justice League, at first I thought, "Holy ****, this is bad beyond my wildest dreams!" Then I thought, "Oh, they're actually going for camp, ok, I can do that, five me camp." Of course, that movie just sucked, but you get my point.
Ultimately, as I said, it's not about only taking a movie on its own terms it's more about not only taking it on yours.

Appreciate the clarification.


I think I'm on your side on this point. I can't fault people for having convictions about what art should and shouldn't be (I have my own preferences like anyone else), but it's when they're applied too dogmatically and rigidly, the product of incurious perspectives, that it becomes a hindrance to real engagement with art. I guess what I'm saying applies to political and moral viewpoints, but I'm thinking, like your examples, about approaches to the artform itself.


People are free to like what they like, but if they refuse to engage with anything outside of the norms they've defined, I likely won't get anything worthwhile from reading their thoughts.

This is actually well written. Bravo.

I did not like Sideways, even though Giamatti was good in it, I just didn’t care for the story.
I didn’t think Justice league was going for camp. It just plain sucked.

Thanks, I appreciate that.
I didn't love Sideways, but I believe the movie suffered mightily from expectations and really had some great work in it, some snappy, snappy dialogue and some really good acting from a number of performers.
And yeah, that was the thing with Justice League, after 5 minutes, I thought it was going for Camp and reset my expectations for that, "Oh, we're doing camp, fine, not what I was prepared for but if this is your new answer to Marvel after multiple mis-steps, OK, let's give it a whirl."
Little did I know at that moment that it was Unintentional Camp en route to an appalling film. I still cannot understand how the man who made The Avengers also made the theatrical version of Justice League.

Very much so.

Well, I would say my personal reaction to a film is, here's what I perceived the film to be going for/about (this does not need to actually refer to the plot, but it may), here's how well, I think they pulled that off, and here are what I think the strengths and weaknesses of the film are.
Not, I personally didn't like it because I wanted it to be more like this or I personally didn't like it because I have an issue with that or I personally didn't like it because I was expecting the other and I got this. That is not relevant to any viewer but me, so why would I even share it? Except for color.
Honestly, I rarely write "reviews" anymore. I used to and they were long and I worked hard on them and I was sometimes even proud of them. But now, I am more likely to speak in the language we all know here. "This is a movie ostensibly about this trope or in this sub-genre or whatever. While the budget was low, the filmmaking was ambitious and not without craft. The script was taut and snappy and avoided falling into the tropes of this trope. The actors mostly pulled off what the film required of them with at least one standout performance to anchor the film. The cinematography was more than competent and at times surprising. The design was excellent and really pulled me into the world of the film. The editing kept the movie both tense and emotionally impactful given the subject matter. The sound design was quite effective. The music made some interesting choices but given the subject-matter and budgetary constraints, I think it worked. Now personally, I have an affection for these sorts of films and I also have nostalgia for this trope, so that may have effected my reaction, but I can definitely say that this one showed better craft than many of its ilk and sits closer to the top of the genre among contemporary films."
To me, that's a good review (meaning both a quality review and a positive review). Yes, you know how I personally felt about the film as a human, I like this genre, I have nostalgia about it, whatever, but you also get the information a review actually needs to convey, at least to a veteran film-watcher. The film is at least competent. Maybe it's better than that. It is that for reasons, and here are the reasons. That's what film-lovers need to know before they spend their 90+ minutes.

PS - A great example of this is Messiah Of Evil.
I could tell you I loved this movie. It was great. That is my personal reaction to it. It had the things that make me go squee.
How useful is that to anyone? Pretty much not at all. Especially if the things that make me go squee don't make you go squee. Especially if you don't know me.
But when people on one of the old forums said, "Wooley, this is an almost-Lovecraftian low-budget horror from the 1970s, and while it's no masterpiece, it has real craft to it given the budget, some great imagery and design as well as score, creating an atmosphere that is likely a treat for any fan of these types of films and has at least a few really great moments that you will remember long after the movie", well that was a good review!
That I can use.

I mostly agree, but sometimes I’ll hold that against them as well.
For example, The Quick and the Dead went for almost campy violence, but I felt it worked against it. The film would have worked better had it not taken itself so seriously, without some of the more ridiculous scenes.
Which was a shame because it had some fine performances by Hackman and Crowe.

I don't disagree with you at all. But I think that's part of the craft. And I think that film is a great example of where they missed their own mark. Which is totally legitimate criticism. I don't think The Quick And The Dead is a poor film because of what they tried to do, I think it's a poor film because they did a ****ty job of it. And that is almost the point of criticism for me. When you see a film and see clearly what it is trying to do but feel that it fails to do so, that is a legitimate criticism. And it may just be your personal criticism, but in many ways all criticism is personal. Just not that kind of personal. The kind that dismisses or even worse just completely overlooks the craft for the content.
You ever see My Dinner With Andre?
It's 111 minutes long, and almost all of them are just two men sitting at a table in a restaurant having a conversation.
If you tell me (not you personally I'm just using you for the sake of the sentence) that it wasn't a good movie because the dialogue between those two men wasn't as good as the filmmakers thought it was, if you tell me it wasn't good because the actors did not do a good job, if you tell me it wasn't good because the director did not know how to make two men sitting at a table talking interesting, if you tell me you thought it was poorly edited, it was poorly lit, hell, you thought the costume-design was appalling, and in whatever accounting these things added up to a poor film, fine, that's criticism.
If you tell me it wasn't a good movie because you don't wanna watch two men sitting around a dinner table having a conversation, then you're an idiot and you should stop writing criticism.