Film Critics

[ono]

Alright, I love reading good writing as much as the next person, especially when it comes to insights to film criticism, and Derek thought it'd be a good idea to have a thread to discuss all critics.

Roeper's taste, like his personality, is something I've found to be rather immature. Not to mention, he's rather loud-mouthed. I like Ebert's more subdued, mature tone. Ebert has honed his taste over years, and I've found it to be one of the most consistent and reasonable things around. There are very few movies I disagree with him about, and, as has been said before, even when I do disagree, he always explains where he's coming from quite well. The WHAS review shouldn't be held against him. He was in a bad movie, sick of it, and simply conjured up a send-up to that old familiar camp song. Like I said, it was quite creative even if it dragged on a bit.

Roger Ebert is the best critic to have ever lived.  This may seem like an exaggeration to some, but I'm dead serious.  He just has so much insight into every movie he sees, his writing is beautiful, he's well spoken, and a great personality to boot.

Richard Roeper is a young loud-mouth who I don't know why he has been put with Ebert.  Sometimes he has these good things to say, but he's just too hyper and bombastic for me.

Gene Siskel was a great man, and I truly miss not being able to watch him spar with Ebert more.  It's too bad he didn't write as many reviews; I don't think I've ever actually read anything of his, but to see him talk was always great.

Pauline Kael is verbose, egotistical, grumpy, and brilliant all at once.  The thing is, also, you can never predict what films she'll like or loathe.  And you'll probably hate her at least once for dumping on a movie you love or praising something you deem filth.  I say her prose needs to be whittled down, but if you can get past the bloatedness and dig in to her works, she has more complex insight than anyone else ever has.  She truly reads into films and puts things in there that you can never tell if the director even intended them.  And whether that is a good or bad thing remains to be seen.  I have her book For Keeps, and saw Afterglow in hardback in a bookstore I was in recently, and some of the things she said as she was getting sicker were still just as poignant and insightful as ever.  She even had some good things to say about Paul Thomas Anderson, and was quick to dump on Kubrick and the Scorsese of the nineties.

James Berardinelli is an online critic with a somewhat boring taste in films and a bad case of Attention Deficit Disorder.  He usually gives the most depressing films the best marks, and if any film goes over 1:30 and he doesn't think it's perfect, he finds some justification to complain that it's too long.  Still, though, his reviews are interesting to read, even if you don't agree with them.  Crazily enough, he has a book coming out soon, a compilation of his reviews.  His website is http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/

And last, but not least, Jay Sherman.  Best fictional critic ever.  ;)  He thinks everything "stinks," and to a snobbish British film The Tea Cozy, he gave "...his highest rating: seven out of ten."  Brilliant.  

I'd also like to hear other opinions on other critics who I haven't really read much of.  I remember hearing Stanley Kaufman mentioned.  Also: Rex Reed (feh), Gene Shalit (hilarious man whose reviews are poetic and to the point), Joyce Kulhalwit (sp?) (the crazy bitch who argued with Ebert about Magnolia's brilliance), Leonard Maltin, and more, of course.

[Alethia]

joyce kulhawik is a fucking idiot.

[Cecil]

wasnt this locked? ohmygod... ive finally lost it!

[Gold Trumpet]

I'm the one who talks about Stanley Kauffmann. He's my favorite critic and writer of the movies. Not because I always agree with him, but that I find him the most insightful and hardest to disagree with in reason. He's been a film critic since the late 50s for The New Republic and uncharasticerally, he started reviewing films during his 40s. Before that, he was a book editor and reviewed books. During his career, his major claim to fame was from the major disagreements he had with Pauline Kael during the 60s. He became notoriously known as the "unKael". During his film review career, he has also been a theatre critic and again, a book critic. He's the most likely to give a bad review on a generally accepted movie. He was unimpressed with the Godfather movies, didn't like Nashville and disliked most films Jean Luc Godard made. He still reviews every week in his old age. He's 87 and still is just as tough in his reviews. Ebert says he is the best critic working right now and very frequently quotes something he had said when writing his own reviews.

~rougerum

[Derek237]

I do think the way Roeper acts is idiotic, but the fact is he does have good taste in movies. At least, IMO. But Ebert is kind of idiotic too. If you've ever seen them on a talk show you'll know that they make total asses out of themselves. Ebert did a lame rodney dangerfeild impression on The Tonight Show.

But my big problem with Ebert is that he's pretentious. His top ten lists consist of artsy movies that I'll likely never see. And his #1 films latley, Jesus Christ. Everything post Fargo is just..wrong. Eve's Bayou, Dark City, Monster's Ball, WTF? I honestly think he's gone insane.

Now look at Roeper's lists. They're full of good movies people generally have seen. And the best movies on Ebert's list are on his, anyway.

Then there's Siskel. He's the best of all 3. Why'd he have to go and die? The thing is- he knew good movies. Well made, enjoyable movies. It took balls to put movies like Die Hard 2, The Fly, Wayne's World, and Under Seige on his lists. Not to mention Kubrick greats like Full Metal Jacket and A Clockwork Orange which Ebert gave thumbs down to.


Of course...this is all just my opinion.   I was judging by the movies they thought were good, but the movies they thought were BAD, well that's a different story. I'm not saying I hate Ebert, he does rate movies well....it's just that he's so goddamn insane.

My list info is just from memory from seeing them on websites so if some could find a site with their lists so people could judge for themselves that would be great.


I think I have arthritis now...

[SoNowThen]

I think Kaufman is a negative, bullheaded ass, who can't appreciate a good film. Rip on A Clockwork Orange, Roma, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, etc... seriously, what movies DOES this guy like?

[Gold Trumpet]

I think Kaufman is a negative, bullheaded ass, who can't appreciate a good film. Rip on A Clockwork Orange, Roma, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, etc... seriously, what movies DOES this guy like?

Read his reviews? Or did you just read somewhere about his general dislike for those movies? Trust me, from someone who disagrees with you a lot, he has a lot of good points and is very rightful in thinking they are wrong. Even Ebert thinks he is the best and considers the last two films you mentioned two of the best films ever made. Just about every single movie on Ebert's top ten list from last year was given a negative review by him.

And what does he like? Recently, he applauded Capturing the Friedmans. He liked All The Real Girls a lot and gave The Pianist an extra long review commmenting on how good it was.

~rougerum

[SoNowThen]

Trust me, from someone who disagrees with you a lot, he has a lot of good points and is very rightful in thinking they are wrong.

I don't understand what this means, GT.

Yeah, I read his reviews on all the films I mentioned. There was this book of his at the co-op where I was doing auditions, and since I heard you talk about him, I decided to pick it up and flip through it. After reading about 6 reviews of films I consider to be the greatest shining example of amazing filmmaking, and seeing him run them all to the ground, I had to put the thing down because I was raging mad. I don't like Stanley Kaufman.

[mutinyco]

You keep bringing up books. See, he's the problem: different mediums do different things better. Or at least in different ways. I don't believe somebody with a pedigree in novels and theater should be reviewing films. Both stage and novel are about the written word. Movies are about telling stories with pictures. That said, the way a novel conveys ideas is through the use of exposition. The way a movie does it is generally through a lack of exposition -- the audience is forced through logic to put the pieces together and fill in the gaps. This is why Kubrick was such a genius.

I don't believe there are any great film critics because they aren't actual filmmakers. They're outsiders. They look at a finished product and try to determine its intent. An actual filmmaker is going to be more insightful because they understand through first hand experience why that filmmaker might have made those choices -- or why the studio might have forced those changes. Critics too often blame everything on the director as if the finished film is purely the result of his/her effort. This is a serious problem because film criticism is based around the incorrect concept of the auteur. Remember, it was Bazin and Sarris who incorrectly wrote about the auteur theory, not actual filmmakers. It was an idiotic theory without basis, because there hadn't been many director films mid century. Most of what we'd seen were studio pictures. When I saw Steven Spielberg at Lincoln Center last fall he was adamant that in professional filmmaking he saw no evidence of the auteur theory. It's a collaborative process, he said, and offered to share the stage with his writers. Only when a director is handling multiple facets can the term even remotely apply -- such as Soderbergh editing and photographing his films, or the Coens writing and editing.

[TheVoiceOfNick]

Leonard Maltin is a pop-critic (like a pop-star, but a critic instead)... forget just writing, he has to do tv bits, radio bits, books... not to mention he whores himself out to interview people for DVDs and (back in the day) VHSs (star wars vhs, etc.). He probably told his mom when he was younger "people are going to consider me a movie god one day... although i will almost never take sides and never have a view on anything, i'll be loved by everyone who loves movies... i'll become an authority and make lots of money by just talking about of my ass)...  please don't tell me he's seen EVERY single movie in his guides... that's just impossible.


Nick

[Gold Trumpet]

nyc,
For the first paragraph, I understand where you are coming from in differences between the mediums. The main problem though is that you are bringing upon assumptions of a man based on the fact he was also a theatre and novel critic as well and that he looked to film in how it conformed to the first two. You aren't giving any examples by him specifically to his being wrong at all. Though he was critics of the other two, it is my opinion he saw film for what it was. In the other thread, Mesh said something about how the movies dramatize situations to the highest effect they can. I agreed with Mesh and found those words also to come from Kauffmann as well. You can disagree with Kauffmann if you want to, but try to disagree with what he says.

Well, thing is though, some critics have turned into filmmakers. French New Wave brought this no doubt and the filmmaker of Deterrence and The Contender started out as a critic. Also, the filmmaker of Run Lola Run and Heaven, reviewed Punch Drunk Love for a German newspaper. To say they are a critic and can't come to an understanding of the film medium and the problems filmmakers can come under is wrong to say in the general. Also, it is wrong to assume every critic went by the auteur theory. Nowhere near all did. Kael fought it. And to further my original point, Kauffmann never agreed with it either. He always said filmmaking was too collaborative and wide reaching to be reduced to something so simple. He did say, though, that he learned from it.

~rougerum

[Gold Trumpet]

Trust me, from someone who disagrees with you a lot, he has a lot of good points and is very rightful in thinking they are wrong.

I don't understand what this means, GT.

It just means he reviewed the films with reasons so what he said was at least with merit. I disagree with you all the time, but at least I attempt to explain myself so it doesn't become a matter of "You're dumb" and that, but we can agree to disagree.

~rougerum

[SoNowThen]

par usual, Mutinyco, we disagree. Auteur Theory is my mantra. Not so much in the incarnation that Bazin and Truffaut started, but more along the lines that Sarris continued in the US. A writer/director who has final cut is most certainly the author of his film, and the film becomes the star. Of course Speilberg would shit-talk auteurism -- he's probably pissed that he's never included when people talk about the great 70's American auteurs. It's a fairly floaty theory, I realize, but Director-as-author (in many of its incarnations) represent all that is good and pure about film. IMO, anyway.

But you and GT have approached something good here, together: I can value a critical opinion much higher when it comes from one who has made films. That's why Godard criticism from '59-'63 is so great. And I guess Ebert should count, he was a screenwriter...

[Gold Trumpet]

But you and GT have approached something good here, together: I can value a critical opinion much higher when it comes from one who has made films. That's why Godard criticism from '59-'63 is so great. And I guess Ebert should count, he was a screenwriter...

That doesn't make sense, though. How is a man of higher intelligence to review a film when he has also made films? For me, in general, I think it gives the man a better opinion to understanding the restraints in making a film, but in no way indicates anything about intelligence in giving an opinion on the quality or merits of a film. I think, simply, that anyone can give as much as a qualified or intellectual opinion on a movie as anyone else given what he actually says in his opinion. Its all in what they say. And to base a theory on higher intelligence for opinions on films to the person being involved in movies or not, that resides in a lot of people that, in my opinion, have made some pretty bad films.

~rougerum

[mutinyco]

I do everything on my films. Write, storyboard, photograph, edit, produce, direct... I still don't believe in the auteur theory. In fact, a lot of the members of the French New Wave admitted that their writing was merely a way to get them in position to direct their own films. And as for Kael, under the assumption that she had distain for the auteur theory, why then was she such a proponent of "personal films"? Why did she praise the director above all else? Why did she declare The Sugarland Express to be one of the most phenomenal debuts in the history of filmmaking? Again, there's nothing wrong with Spielberg. If you know anything about the process of filmmaking it's a FACT that the auteur theory doesn't hold water. Most filmmakers don't support it. It's without merit. I think the criticisms against Spielberg are misdirected at best. Take out your anger on Ron Howard or Michael Bay -- 2 directors without any shame. SS is the real deal.