Good or New Movies Review

Ganymede

@Auspice said in Good or New Movies Review:

Now it's like this scrabble to find the most obscure song from a lesser-known show.

This is the best song for 2 men and 2 women and a small pit.

Jennkryst

@Auspice said in Good or New Movies Review:

I remember a time when everyone who was into musical theater at all loved Memories because it's such a damn fine song.

Now it's like this scrabble to find the most obscure song from a lesser-known show.

In short: the hipster disease has infected musical theater and any critics engaging in it.

I'm sorry, there is no point in picking the most obscure song from Rebecca (not to be confused with Heathers), but it is the best musical ever.

Auspice

Part of why I can 'see' the shift is that I used to do some small theater performing and my audition piece was 'Someone Like You' from Jekyll and Hide. Other theater people recommended it to me because a) it's an alto-soprano piece so I'd show my range, b) it's known without being one of the 'big' songs out there, so it'd be a spark of 'oh! this is different!'

This was 15 years ago. And I think now critics (as @Lotherio was saying) feel a need to prove how 'cool' they are. Cats? YAWN.
And this happens to p much every musical-turned-film. I give you the Rotten Tomatoes scoring for 2005's Phantom of the Opera:

Critics had nothing good to say, but audiences clearly enjoyed it.

Ganymede

@Auspice said in Good or New Movies Review:

Critics had nothing good to say, but audiences clearly enjoyed it.

To be fair, Gerard Butler was a terrible choice for the Phantom. Paul Stanley would have been better, and he's Paul Stanley.

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Auspice

@Ganymede said in Good or New Movies Review:

@Auspice said in Good or New Movies Review:

Critics had nothing good to say, but audiences clearly enjoyed it.

To be fair, Gerard Butler was a terrible choice for the Phantom.

But so pleasing to look at.

Ganymede

@Auspice

Anyhow, back to what I was getting at, here's a review from some shit at eFilmCritic. Go ahead and read it.

Have you read it?

Remember all the shit we give people for purple prose? About how they seem more in love with what they say and how they say it than any of the substance they are purportedly commenting on? That is this. Being ignorant of the context of the musical and then commenting on it is sort of like criticizing the verbiage of a Shakespeare play-to-film without understanding that it was written in iambic pentameter. And this sort of opinion piece born from ignorance is the same shit that so-called politicos thrive on, or use as a basis for their beliefs when trolling on internet forums.

I get it, I get it. "A film should stand well as written and not require the audience to know the background to be enjoyed." That is all trite when it comes to adapting something from one medium of expression to another, which is the case here. And as much as I want to gloss over the criticism with good humor and my usual "I don't give a fuck" this sort of shit bothers me more these days whilst the United States is mired in some stupid impeachment scandal.

Get educated before you shoot off at the mouth, you ignorant fucks. People's livelihoods are affected by your ignorant opinions.

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new."

Auspice

@Ganymede said in Good or New Movies Review:

here's a review from some shit at eFilmCritic. Go ahead and read it.

tl;dr

Actually, more like: I know how to write film reviews (we had to do it a few times in school) and I didn't get past a couple paragraphs because that's just a shit review.

Any reviewer who puts more of themselves into the review ('This happened to me yesterday' 'In my childhood' 'So then my buddy Bob was telling me...') just likes to hear themselves talk. That shit is fine for a casual Mommy Blog, but not for a professional.

Also, looking at his review record, it appears that unless it's one of those 'WE KNOW THIS FILM WILL WIN AWARDS' (The Irishman for example) cases, he consistently rates lower than average.

Meaning: this guy is the professor that refuses to ever give out an A 'because I want the students to have something to aspire to.'

eye8urcake

I loved 'Cats' when the show was out in the 90s but I'm still sick of hearing 'Memory' and probably haven't heard it in close to 20 years.

Roz

@Auspice said in Good or New Movies Review:

I remember a time when everyone who was into musical theater at all loved Memories because it's such a damn fine song.

Okay I just gotta be that person because I've now seen this numerous times in the past couple days but it's just "Memory"

reimesu

I am REALLY tired of hipster douchebags droning on and thinking it's a critical review, when all it is, truly, is yet another douchebag thinking he's an edgelord.

Shhhh. Let people like things.

GreenFlashlight

@reimesu said in Good or New Movies Review:

I am REALLY tired of hipster douchebags droning on and thinking it's a critical review, when all it is, truly, is yet another douchebag thinking he's an edgelord.

Shhhh. Let people like things.

but how will people know how smart i am unless i tell them how dumb they are for liking a thing i dont like

Auspice

@reimesu said in Good or New Movies Review:

I am REALLY tired of hipster douchebags droning on and thinking it's a critical review, when all it is, truly, is yet another douchebag thinking he's an edgelord.

Shhhh. Let people like things.

This is why a review is supposed to cover more raw specifics. Who wrote the movie. Who directed the movie. Which actors are in it and what else have they been in that a reader might recognize.

Then you can go into some specifics. Use of tropes. Cinematography. Soundtrack choices. Pacing. But it should all be presented in a way that still allows a reader to make up their own mind. It's a very hard balance to strike (informative without being biased), but it is doable.

Too many reviewers now want to force readers to think like they do and have the same preferences they do.

TheOnceler

I have to admit, Ken Russell's Cats would probably be a hell of a thing.

Jennkryst

So. Rise of Skywalker.

I enjoyed it overall, but have significantly more issues than I had with Last Jedi. It had a few 'What? The fuck you do that for?!?'s here and there.

Biggest regret is not spamming Twitter with calls for Boyega and Isaac to go to the LA premier in costume and spend all their time making out.

Semi-relevant to that point: I think they found out that RoS was coming out the same week as CATS and decided the characters had to compete with the CATS horniness.

Sockmonkey

I thought Rise of Skywalker was horrifically and absolutely terrible and I cannot think of one single moment, beyond the initial titles (but before the scroll) and fanfare, in the entire 2 hours 22 minutes that I enjoyed.

JFC.

Auspice

I, on the other hand, enjoyed Rise of Skywalker.

It wasn't perfect. The pacing dragged a couple times and I think they should have tightened it up into 2 hours.
There were a few dropped plot threads I'd have liked more of.

But I went in as the person who grew up with Star Wars. The person who has terribly fond memories of watching it on VHS every chance I got. Who had an Empire poster that was an original theater poster. Whose first midnight movie release was one of the prequels because even disliking them, I still give each one a chance.

And in that vein....it worked. My inner child was happy. It continued the Hero's Journey vein that began all the way back with New Hope. Would I change things if it were me? Sure. Little more of this or little less of that.

But overall... I enjoyed myself. I dunno that I'm in a rush to see it again (my 'would watch again' movie rn is 1917), but I liked it more than TLJ. I'll say that for sure.

Jaded

RoS was a narrative mess. The visuals were great but by this point we can expect that from a Star Wars movie. Otherwise this isn't a "must see theater going experience" but more like a "if I happen to turn it on, on tv at home, while vaccuming I might leave it there" experience.

I was deeply disappointed.

TheOnceler

@Auspice said in Good or New Movies Review:

but I liked it more than TLJ. I'll say that for sure.

Oof.

Considering TLJ rests comfortably in the top three Star Wars movies for me, this isn't much of an endorsement.

I fear that JJ Abrams, a feckless turd whose only true good has been revitalizing the Mission Impossible series, terrified of the neckbeard backlash to TLJ has decided to veer in the opposite direction and as a result crashed the Millennium Falcon directly into craptown.

And I also say that as a person who has terribly fond memories of watching Star Wars on VHS every chance I got. Someone who owns the prequel trilogy and doesn't hate them, though I gotta say, rewatched 'em recently and boy are there long stretches of those movies that are hard to watch. Someone who unabashedly loves this dumb universe. Someone who genuinely liked Solo.

In the end I think this trilogy was done in by the fact that there was no plan for it. JJ Abrams made TFA and was like, okay, someone else can figure out what the deal with Snoke is, who the Knights of Ren are, who Rey's parents are, how much good is left in Kylo Ren, etc. And then it was passed to someone who made a truly, remarkably beautiful film in TLJ, but wasn't particularly interested in any of those questions. And now it's been passed back to someone who just wants to throw as many hacky references to the original as possible. And at no point was anyone concerned about making any kind of unified story.

Which is disappointing. Especially given that Disney knows how to do this, given the success they've seen over in the MCU, where the arc of the Thanos saga was decided shortly after The Avengers.

Maybe they should just give Star Wars to Kevin Fiege.

At least The Mandalorian is still great. And rumor has it that they're talking Doctor Aphra for an upcoming Star Wars Disney+ series. That would be amazing.

ZombieGenesis

I blame Kathleen Kennedy for the state of the new trilogy. Specifically her lack of vision. I have other thoughts and opinions but they delve into the realm of social politics so I'll leave them out of this discussion. Abrams and Johnson are clearly competent directors but neither of them were given a coherent vision to follow and the result is what we ended up with. A serviceable "soft reboot" with The Force Awakens, a dumpster fire in The Last Jedi, and an incoherent mess in The Rise of Skywalker. It's really too bad because I very much liked most of the actors attached to this project and really wanted to see their stories told.

I'll also say that I don't think Kathleen Kennedy is incompetent either. She has, what, 40 years of executive producer credits involving some of the greatest movies of all time under her belt. I just think that heading up the entirety of Lucas Film was too much for her.

Auspice

I've seen a lot of people point to the MCU but remember: that's Marvel. Marvel began that narrative path before Disney bought them.

Now it could be said that Disney should have learned from Marvel, but saying 'they already did this....' No. Marvel did. Not Disney.

The model for movies within the Lucasfilm wing may be wildly different than in Marvel.