8 ms·

Critic reviews are prescriptive: what they think the masses should watch. User reviews are retrospective: how much did they actually enjoy watching the movie.

• watwut 5y ago
  > Critic reviews are prescriptive: what they think the masses should watch. This does not seem to be accurate description of movie reviews I have read. Like, not at all.
  • nmat 5y ago
    Part of a critic's job is to educate people. A good critic can explain why a certain film is groundbreaking and why another film is recycling ideas that have been done thousands of times. The critic's end-goal is to push the industry to make better films not because of critics, but because the public demands it.
    • Touche 5y ago
      This doesn't seem right at all, a critic's job is to drive page views and nothing more. What you are describing is how critic's like to perceive themselves.
    • Retric 5y ago
      That’s hardly the only model. If you find a critic that has similar tastes as you then you can just follow their recommendations. That’s a relatively new thing as newspaper reviews where focused on a much wider audience, but with the internet you have a lot more choices for reviewers.
• bananamerica 5y ago
  I'm a film major. I wrote about film on print for quite a while. This was not in the US. I did want to prescribe, but not to the masses. To other crítics, to the pedantic purists that thought Bruce Lee was unimportant and Spielberg formulaic and uninspired, and that unless your name is David Lynch anything American is worse by default. People who thought anything with emotion was trash for the masses. And I was there, at the newspaper, saying *no*, romcoms can be of value, there's an artform to the action movie, the screwball comedy, and every genre film. I'm really proud of my time as a critic. Nowadays I see everyone shitting on super heroes and remakes, they're easy targets to make people think that you're distinguished. Complain about sequels and reboots, and I say "Shakespeare is remade 100 times a year, a remake, reboot or whatever is always an artistic reconstruction that says a lot about its time, it's history, it's socioeconomic context. By studying the multiple versions of a story, we understand ourselves". Many critics are just sad elitists because now they must share the cultural zeitgeist with everyone else, when even Roger Ebert, when you read his reviews, was historically a lot more open and fair than many of his admirers today.
  • robbiep 5y ago
    That’s an interesting take on the remake I hadn’t considered before. But as someone without an artsy bone in my body, I wish something other than superhero movies could be made
    • TimTheTinker 5y ago
      Americans today are so sharply divided in what they consider to be acceptable beliefs and values that to create films with broad appeal, most filmmakers (and those who pay them) either (a) go out on a limb to promote their own values, or (b) resort to known-good tropes and remakes. Perhaps no one wants to write a beautiful, thoughtful, non-politically charged screenplay anymore. Or maybe doing so would itself be seen as a political statement?
    • wnoise 5y ago
      The vast majority of movies are still non-superhero movies.
• anothernewdude 5y ago
  Except users who don't watch the movie don't rate it. So they're self-selected. Critics are not.
  • phatfish 5y ago
    It's worse than that, it's how much the fans of the movie enjoyed watching it. Most people who watch a movie don't go online and rate it.
• JadeNB 5y ago
  > Critic reviews are prescriptive: what they think the masses should watch. I think this really depends on the critics. Lots of critics never explicitly articulate a philosophy—or, if they do, I don't bother to seek it out—but, for one notable example, Roger Ebert explicitly subscribed to the philosophy that you should review a movie based on whether it achieves its goals, not on whether its goals are the same as your goals.
  • jdougan 5y ago
    I miss Ebert. He never cheated and was clear as to which standard he was judging a movie by.
    • WalterBright 5y ago
      I rarely agreed with him. But I enjoyed his reviews. The best part of his show was when he'd bicker with Siskel.
  • bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    Ok, but he did also penalize films for having bad goals. Case in point The Human Caterpillar.
    • the_af 5y ago
      Centipede. I... think I just won the prize of most useless nitpick ever.
      • bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        hah, well just goes to show Ebert's 0 star review worked and I never watched it.
• Lyapunov_Lover 5y ago
  I disagree that critic reviews are inherently prescriptive. Major blockbusters rely on cliches for the same reason that supermarket chains spend ridiculous amounts of money trying to get every store to look and feel the same: people find familiarity comforting. But to people who watch thousands upon thousands of movies this gets astoundingly boring. Take any hobby. Literally any one of them. The people who are really into it, whatever you are thinking about, will prefer different stuff from what casual fans like. Why do people die from erotic self-asphyxiation? Because we have a compulsion to escalate and to push things further. We need novelty. We need new stuff. We go mad if it's just the same thing over and over. At least that's true for most of us. Not everyone takes it all that far, but when you invest a significant amount of time doing one thing in particular, you're always going to want to take it to greater heights. And that's the thing about critic reviews: they represent movie fans suffering from the cinematic equivalent of erotic self-asphyxiation. Old, tired cliches and predictable plots? No. They want something they haven't seen before. Art movies are incredibly weird, and film critics love them. Imagine your job is rating beers. And you think pilsners are fine but super boring. But people get incredibly mad at you for dissing their favorite pilsners, and they think you're a pretentious snob for recommending imperial stouts. And they want you to give super-high ratings to ... run of the mill pilsners. That's what I imagine it's like being a film critic.
  • wolverine876 5y ago
    > Why do people die from erotic self-asphyxiation? Because we have a compulsion to escalate and to push things further. We need novelty. We need new stuff. We go mad if it's just the same thing over and over. At least that's true for most of us. Not everyone takes it all that far, but when you invest a significant amount of time doing one thing in particular, you're always going to want to take it to greater heights. > And that's the thing about critic reviews: they represent movie fans suffering from the cinematic equivalent of erotic self-asphyxiation. Old, tired cliches and predictable plots? No. They want something they haven't seen before. Art movies are incredibly weird, and film critics love them. I think thismisunderstands art movies, film critics, and art in general (though there are exceptions). As someone who has learned to understand arts on very roughly that level, including film (an 'admission' that always gets a negative reaction!) it's not that you want more and different, like a hit of heroin, it's that your perception changes and you see things that you didn't see before. I first saw Richard III when I was in high school and let's say I didn't love it! I saw it more recently and it was mind-blowing; it soared to heights I didn't imagine, one after the other (though not a happy story way!). It was the same play - I wasn't getting something more or new - I just perceived so much more, from the language to the characters to the insights to the virtuoso writing. That change in perception is fundamental human perception and applies to anything in which we gain experience and expertise. When you first drink wine, you cannot distinguish much between different bottles. You literally cannot taste all the flavors, see the colors, and perceive the other sensations that someone with more experience and expertise can. I'm sure you experience it with your profession or hobbies. If you sail boats, you perceive things that beginning sailors do not - and not meaningless things, but things that have a real impact. The same with reviewing code, UX, automobile engines, audio speaker sound, athletic performance, etc. etc. - whatever you have a developed perception of. Human perception is far more than sensory input; what you 'see' is processed through your brain, including neurons that change based on usage and training, and also through your experience - you recognize your family on a perceptual level, for example (afaik). The generic, quality critic sees things that you and I don't. I try to learn to see those things too, because when I do, they can be wonders. Just like wine tastes even better, car engines are far more moving, etc. when you develop that perception, so do the experiences of films, paintings, theater - I see colors (metaphorically, but literally sometimes) that I didn't earlier in life, so beautiful I didn't imagine they existed. 'Art films' sometimes cater to more developed perceptions and ignore others, which can make them seem wierd - there is (usually) something there to see, I promise (there are superficial genre art films, as with everything else). It's also true that you appreciate different innovations, such as a film that uses an old technique in an ingenius and powerful way, which you wouldn't notice if you didn't know about the technique, which is somewhat about finding something new, as you say.
• phatfish 5y ago
  In my experience yes, critics were cringing over the "bad" movies you liked as a child. I don't think anything has changed, or that there is anything wrong with that. Critics are paid to watch as many movies a possible, even ones they think they will hate (but obviously should keep an open mind). An average movie goer doesn't deliberately watch a movie they won't like, so there is already a disconnect. With the internet amplifying fan culture critics are more likely to be seen as "wrong".
• bko 5y ago
  I don't want a critic to tell me what I SHOULD be watching. I rely on them to tell me what I will like. I can't watch every movie, the movie critic is meant to be a filter. Historically movie critics judged a film based on its relative value. That's why you see a positive review on a cheesy rom-com and a negative review on a more ambitious flawed work of art. The rom-com review is viewed in the context of other rom-coms. For a positive review, it's saying "if you like rom-coms and their premise, this rom-com is good". I want it to be more prescriptive to what I will actually think when I watch the movie. Most people use movie reviews to tell them whether they'll like a movie given its genre. That's why people say "I trust this person's reviews". They mean if the critic says the movie is worth watching and I decide to watch it, I will not be disappointed
  • chrischen 5y ago
    But telling a person what they will like is a much more personalized endeavor suited for automated recommendation systems. Any random person could like objectively bad movies. But a critic can only recommend things objectively good. That means they can only try to filter out good movies, which are movies you should watch but may not like because your tastes are not objectively universal.
    • janto 5y ago
      Critics are not qualified to tell me what I should watch towards developing my own character. The disconnect between what they push as best and what audiences like as good, illustrates the postmodern critic's lack of relevance. Critics are pushers of entitled cynicism and ideology, not meaningful content.
      • chrischen 5y ago
        But critics should be experts in the field (of movies), and at the very least have seen it all. Therefore they can commentate on what's been done before and what is actually new. > Critics are not qualified to tell me what I should watch towards developing my own character. Well yes since everyone is different critics can never satisfy that for everyone.
• l33tbro 5y ago
  Good critics aren't 'prescriptive'. They are scholars of various media who elucidate where a new piece of work sits with in an artist's oeuvre, or the larger canon that the work is contributing to. While some self-anointed blogger critics might have certain ideas about what they wish an audience would watch, an actual critic's (broadsheet paper, industry trade) only job is to contextualise a work in the larger bodies of genre, medium, and culture. > User reviews are retrospective: how much did they actually enjoy watching the movie. How can ANY review not be 'retrospective'? In fact, probably the majority of film criticism speaks to how much or little the critic enjoyed a film. Pauline Kael (probably the most incisive and celebrated American critic in film history) built a legacy based pretty much on how much she much she enjoyed the film. > I think a very interesting graph would be so see to what extent critics prescriptions are accurately forward-looking to viewer attitudes. Why do critics and audiences have to have the same opinions? I this is the fundamental misunderstanding and wonky premise of the article.
• wolverine876 5y ago
  > Critic reviews are prescriptive: what they think the masses should watch. Who writes like that? Could you provide an example? I haven't seen it, having read many, many critics, including in sophisticated reviews like the New Yorker, Film Comment, and the NY Times.
• blenderdt 5y ago
  Companies like Netflix know what and how users watch. This could also be used as data for reviews. 60% of the viewers loose interest after episode 3, 40% of the viewers skip through the fight scene, 80% of the viewers watch the movie in one go... It's a pitty Netflix knows this but still recommend movies I already watched or don't like. So the question is: on whose behalf are reviews written?