People love reading reviews. Lucky for them, reviews are everywhere. In
movie magazines, in newspapers, even in fashion magazines. I’ve always found
the great diversity in appreciation very interesting. A film can get up to 5
stars in one newspaper and 1 star in another. It got me wondering about the
objectivity of movie reviews and whether it’s all just about personal taste or
not.
Different degrees to appreciation for a film between two very different magazines, is
quite understandable to me. I understand that a film like Magic Mike XXL (2015) gets much more attention from a magazine like
Glamour, than GQ, but even professional movie reviewers don’t have the same
opinion. The biggest movie site IMDb uses Metacritics to score their films,
besides the IMDB users. These critics are from all over America (and Canada)
from different big newspapers. The Magic
Mike sequel gets an 8.8 from The Globe and Mail (Toronto), but a 2.5 from
the Chicago Sun-Times. That is quite a big difference. A very popular film like Intouchables (2011) is given an 8.6 by audiences on IMDB, but the metascore is 5,7 (with marks from 8.8 to 2.0). Almost every film has this huge variety of reviews and I think this is a little problematic for the image of movie reviewers.
Every critic can say anything about every film, as long as they give relatively good arguments. This is not just about movie critics, it's about all critics: from art to music. The problem is that there isn't a perfect standard, a film that reviewers can compare every film to. There is no 'perfect film', no 'perfect song' and 'no perfect piece of art'. It seems like it all comes down to taste, but I don't think that is entirely true. Professional critics have spent most of their lives in cinemas and thinking about films. They don't just see three films a year, write something random about them and go on with their lives. Most have studied Film and have a lot of knowledge in aspects like cinematography and art direction. Because of the huge amount of films they've seen, it's also easier to rank films on a scale (though it's a subjective one).The more films someone watches, the more material for comparison someone has. Ideally a movie-fan should find a specific filmcritic with the exact same taste as him or her, but that's easier said than done.
Another website for movie critics, called Rottentomatoes, has a big problem. This site gives every film a percentage (all films above 60% are 'fresh' and below 60% are 'rotten' (hence the 'rotten' in Rottentomatoes). Critics can say a film is either good or bad and this will end up in a percentage. I don't think this is an ideal way to rate movies, because a film is often not just 'good' or just 'bad'. For me (and I guess for most people) there is a huge difference between perfect films and 'all-right'-films, but both are, in the eyes of Rottentomatoes the same, both reviews are called 'fresh'. Edgy and daring films oftentimes get lower scores than safe films and public pleasers. For example: Avengers: The Age of Ultron (2015) somehow got a 75%, but a film like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), a creative Wes Anderson films, gets a 54%. I think that these unique movies have more often negative reviews than crowd pleasers. Most people are fine with conventional films, like everything from Marvel. Nobody really hates them and people give these films mostly a 'fresh' review (even if it's just 6/10), hence a higher score. There is often, with more different films (from directors such as Lars Von Trier), a greater variety in appreciation. It's a shame, because this way there is not a good representation of movie-quality. With their method, films that aren't anything special could get the same score as an absolute masterpiece, because all their reviews are 'fresh' (not taking into account that the actual marks differ enormously)
An interesting case that's been all over the news, the past few weeks is Ghostbusters (2016). It started out with a 3.7 as user score at IMDb, which is really low (normally new films start with extremely high scores between the 8 and 9). There were countless angry fanboys that just started giving the film a 1/10. I've seen the film and, although it's not brilliant, it's by no means horrible. The critics are also relatively positive (6.0 Metacritics and 73% Rottentomatoes), so such a low score is not 'fair'. Luckily the score has picked up a bit (at this moment it's 5.3), but it still proves that people actually shouldn't watch at those user scores, because they are mainly decided by the people who give a film either a 1/10 or a 10/10 (I don't think that should be an option, because no film is perfect and no film is completely garbage). It also prove, that most professional movie reviewers are capable of letting their prejudices out of their reviews.
Rottentomatoes and Metacritic might not be the perfect means to objectively rate/rank movies, but it's for the moment the best we have. It's inevitable that critics review films based on their taste, but most have enough knowledge and 'film-watching-experience' that, for me, their reviews can pass for 'objective'. As long as personal grudges against actors or positive or negative feelings towards a subject matter stay out of their review, I'll be happy to read it.
An interesting case that's been all over the news, the past few weeks is Ghostbusters (2016). It started out with a 3.7 as user score at IMDb, which is really low (normally new films start with extremely high scores between the 8 and 9). There were countless angry fanboys that just started giving the film a 1/10. I've seen the film and, although it's not brilliant, it's by no means horrible. The critics are also relatively positive (6.0 Metacritics and 73% Rottentomatoes), so such a low score is not 'fair'. Luckily the score has picked up a bit (at this moment it's 5.3), but it still proves that people actually shouldn't watch at those user scores, because they are mainly decided by the people who give a film either a 1/10 or a 10/10 (I don't think that should be an option, because no film is perfect and no film is completely garbage). It also prove, that most professional movie reviewers are capable of letting their prejudices out of their reviews.
Rottentomatoes and Metacritic might not be the perfect means to objectively rate/rank movies, but it's for the moment the best we have. It's inevitable that critics review films based on their taste, but most have enough knowledge and 'film-watching-experience' that, for me, their reviews can pass for 'objective'. As long as personal grudges against actors or positive or negative feelings towards a subject matter stay out of their review, I'll be happy to read it.
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