Movie You're Watching Tonight

Still cannot decide whether I loved it, or really liked it (or whether it was great or very good). It was my third Wilder film after Sunset Blvd and Double Indemnity, and I loved those two. So I expect to enjoy Some Like it Hot, leastwise.

Well if you liked The Apartment (and his other works) you should at least like it then. I'd say it's better than The Apartment, and on par with Sunset Blvd although they're different films, but I haven't seen any other Wilder apart from those three unfortunately.

Double Indemnity is a terrific film-noir. If you're a fan of the genre you should see it.

This better be good.

Brazil and Batman

2 of the biggest 80's movies I haven't seen. I'm preparing my top 25

I have love for Ebert, he brought me to Ozu and Keaton and eventually to film criticism, but he didn't really give me film criticism. I think there are three usual tiers in the group of people often called film critics: The newspaper reviewer who isn't much of a critic but is widely known (Roger Ebert, A.O. Scott), people like Jim Emerson who has a lot more criticism based writing but doesn't restrict himself to that (he does reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times and writes some less critical works and some stuff not film related), and the very serious and intellectual critic whose writings are consistently highly critical and factual (usually with historical context); these are the kinds of people who really develop the field of film criticism, the kinds of people you'd read in class (Andrew Sarris, David Bordwell).

"doesn't let your songs and daughters to hand out with other teenagers who said that liked that movie".

A film critic has a knowledge of film history, can discuss films in that context, knows what's going on in the film in relation to its time and place, grasps abstract ideas and can draw inferences and conclusions which will add greater understanding and clarity if considered, and can write entertainingly and authoritatively. A critic gives you the knowledge and clues (right or wrong) which will make you come to your own conclusions and make filmwatching a deeper experience.

A film reviewer has some of this knowledge but is more interested in telling you what a film is about and what he and you should think and feel about it. It can be a dream job, buy that's what it basically is, a job. A critic should feel he's doing a labor of love, and depending on the length and breadth of that love, he can communicate it clearly and entertainingly or can appear to be so full of himself that he becomes self-important, overlooking the film and the reader.

Mr. Ebert was a critic with the heart of a true fan who could write with a high entertainment value. Sometimes he would perhaps give too much weight to a certain part of a certain film, but he always made sure you understood his reasoning or feelings. I'm trying to do the same thing now, but maybe I'm just full of ... er, constipated.

Yeah, Ebert also fails in being a good predictor of other's people's opinion about a film. For instance, if he doesn't enjoy a movie he says: it's crap, blah blah blah... While other reviewers try to understand the film in other terms: if that film in particular pleases the tastes of a certain public so they would say: "Resident Evil 2 may be a good night of fun to those who appreciate that kind of low brown action movie with heavy influence from videogames", instead he says "doesn't let your songs and daughters to hand out with other teenagers who said that liked that movie".

I think that we could categorize 3 types of critics/reviewers:

Type 1 Academic: The one who analyses a movie from an academic perspective, drawing on film history, on social forces molding the work of the director and the overall cultural zeitgeist and the film's place in the whole cultural/artistic world and the values that the film transmits. Purely academic, most people don't care about this type of criticism.

Well we all know how much Ebert was not very responsive to video games. I think rightfully so in most cases. There aren't really very many games at all that are wholly engrossed in the medium. Most of them try to copy too much from film for them to be considered art in their own medium. The closest thing I've seen to video games as art would probably the games of Michael Brough and maybe Starseed Pilgrim.

The Mummy,The Mask,Ace Ventura and some other same type movies