'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

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DarkImbecile
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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3626 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri Apr 13, 2018 8:39 pm

That’s a broad orange brush you’re painting with there, Big Ben

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3627 Post by Rayon Vert » Fri Apr 13, 2018 10:33 pm

domino harvey wrote:Platoon came out in '86 and was awarded Best Pic in '87, same year Kubrick's film came out. How much more primo Vietnam fever can you get?
I seem to remember the mid-to-late 80s as the heavy Vietnam War film era, with the late 70s films being rare and not all that focused on the combat (Coming Home, The Deer Hunter). Rambo, Missing in Action, Hamburger Hill, De Palma's film, Gardens of Stone, Good Morning Vietnam, Born on the 4th of July, there were lots. You also had the TV shows China Beach and Tour of Duty in the same years.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3628 Post by Roger Ryan » Mon Apr 16, 2018 12:19 pm

Just to be clear, since I started this detour in the thread, I do not personally feel that Kubrick's work suffered from the amount of time it took for him to development and produce it, but being a fan of his when these films were being released, I recall articles like the Ebert review that would complain about Kubrick being a "johnny-come-lately". The reverse of this would be the glowing review/article which would state that Kubrick waited until everyone else's "Vietnam" film had come out then made the ultimate one!

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3629 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Apr 16, 2018 12:55 pm

The ultimate Vietnam movie is Springsteen's song "Born in the U.S.A.," which isn't a movie at all!

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3630 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Apr 23, 2018 12:50 pm

Whilst on the subject don't forget the great (and another pre-Blair Witch example of the 'found footage' technique) 84 Charlie MoPic, which came out in 1989! (Along with the Bruce Willis Vietnam film In Country)

I particularly like the way that Full Metal Jacket (especially in its first half) is very in keeping with Kubrick's big overarching theme of how people exist within somewhat oppressive institutions and make their circumstances work for them, or not as may be. This could almost be a remake of A Clockwork Orange, with the 'in country' second half being about the young men who have been socialised into violence left to put their training into practice.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3631 Post by domino harvey » Sat May 05, 2018 11:27 pm

Blu-ray.com forum member sets everyone straight on La belle noiseuse
This movie is absolute garbage and is laughed at by most of us in France, and justly so.


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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3633 Post by tenia » Thu May 17, 2018 3:43 am

Reading the title, I thought : "which movies could this be ? Stuff that could have been curated by Refn like Mandingo ?"
1st movie : Le cercle rouge.
The others are The Conversation, L'eclisse, The Last Waltz and Inherent Vice.

Some people shouldn't write articles like that.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3634 Post by furbicide » Thu May 17, 2018 5:56 am

tenia wrote:Some people shouldn't write articles
Edited for accuracy.

It’s probably an issue around the English-speaking world (blame BuzzFeed, etc.), but this kind of writing – smug, proudly ignorant, but most of all glib – seems especially prevalent among young Australian writers in online culture publications at the moment. Maybe day-to-day gig reviewing is never going to attract brilliant writers, but this tone just seems to be everywhere. It’s fairly irritating, to say the least...

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3635 Post by tenia » Thu May 17, 2018 7:36 am

Was thinking about that, but no, one can write movie articles even if not very gifted, but stay in your comfort zone, don't write an article about movies for which you clearly had the wrong expectations.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3636 Post by MichaelB » Thu May 17, 2018 7:56 am

One of the handy things about being married to a highly articulate and intelligent woman who isn't a film buff by any stretch of the imagination is that I get a regular daily insight into the views of people who simply don't care about reputations or sacred cinematic cows and reach an often strongly opinionated verdict based purely on what's in front of them.

Which is why I suspect I found that piece more interesting, certainly less worthy of instant dismissal, than many here - and her take on the various films is a lot more nuanced than is being implied above. Of course, the headline doesn't help, as it implied that she hated everything, which isn't actually true: I couldn't see anything in her take on The Conversation to seriously disagree with.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3637 Post by tenia » Thu May 17, 2018 8:19 am

The Conversation is the part I found the most interesting but her writing about Le cercle rouge makes her looking like she simply missed the whole movie. It's not much better for L'eclisse (and I'm myself far from being in love with Antonioni's cinema as a whole). Her style also isn't helping. It's disjointed and very descriptive, making these takes looking quite superficial.

I don't mind "killing the idols". I never did. But it doesn't prevent making a compelling point as to why. Here, I have no idea what this article is supposed to tell us, except that somebody saw movies she wasn't prepared for and didn't know what to do with, and guess what, she didn't like them then. It's like when my mom who hates Johnny Deep, Tim Burton, gothic movies and musicals went to see Sweeney Todd and of course she didn't like it.

But I suppose my main issue isn't so much about the writer not having the right expectations, but seemingly never adjusting oneself a bit once she realised what she was watching.

It probably is an interesting take to see what Mr Average Joe might think, but then what ? What added value does it offer, except seeing someone wasting 10 hours on movies she clearly has no interest in and can't appreciate (and doesn't seem to be making many effort to) explaining us how she... wasted 10 hours on movies she doesn't know what to do with ? If the article ends up more interesting about the viewer's mind than the movies themselves, it seems to be missing the point a bit.

(IMO, of course)
Last edited by tenia on Thu May 17, 2018 8:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3638 Post by Cash Flagg » Thu May 17, 2018 8:25 am

tenia wrote:The Last Waltz
Which documents a 'second-tier soft rock band' !? It's unfortunate that The Band were always destined to be one level below first-tier soft rock bands like Air Supply and Toto.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3639 Post by Alphonse Tram » Thu May 17, 2018 9:07 am

The main issue I had with this was the lack of respect for the films and the people who regard them highly - notably the curators. Instead of trying to understand why The Arctic Monkeys chose these films and what they might represent, she just chose to say are boring and old. I've been trying to get into Opera and some Classical music for years, but I would never write something like this about a highly regarded Opera just because I found it boring and it's themes old fashioned.

Regardless of the above, there also seems to be a trend among some writers to enjoy knocking anything that is considered canon - you could call it trolling in many cases.

This person is clearly young, and that is another reason to think twice about writing something like this as it may come back to haunt you.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3640 Post by domino harvey » Thu May 17, 2018 9:12 am

MichaelB, it can definitely be interesting to hear perspectives on well-regarded films from those with no film background or great affinity-- it's been years since I've dated a movie lover, so I barely even remember what the alternative looks like. But this article isn't engaging with the movies with an open mind, and is coming from a hostile and willfully ignorant place-- it's superiority and disdain for artworks the author doesn't understand, and worse, doesn't want to understand

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3641 Post by DarkImbecile » Thu May 17, 2018 10:56 am

Cash Flagg wrote:
tenia wrote:The Last Waltz
Which documents a 'second-tier soft rock band' !? It's unfortunate that The Band were always destined to be one level below first-tier soft rock bands like Air Supply and Toto.
This was the oddest part for me; she's ostensibly a music critic who just reviewed these movies because they happened to be part of the Arctic Monkey's marketing scheme, so it's somewhat understandable if not entirely excusable that she's not exactly putting a lot of effort into grappling with these movies... but shouldn't she at least pretend to have a bit more context about The Band?

This seems tangentially related to the debate on Twitter earlier this week spawned by this thread from Emily Yoshida:

Image

I get where she's coming from in that her opinion on a film shouldn't be dismissed in its entirety because of an unfamiliarity with other relevant works (that would disqualify half the opinions I express), but it doesn't seem unreasonable that one might give more weight to a critic who is able to place a film in a larger context.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3642 Post by tenia » Thu May 17, 2018 11:07 am

Note that as a whole, I don't mind someone discussing movies solely on their front value by lack of having more context to ground them into (I also agree with Yoshida, who basically just says that Auteur theory might be overdone, which is true in a way, because you should be able to judge a given movie for its own merit without having to dig in humpteen movies for that).

But the Vice's writer just seems not to want to try and write deeper reviews and remain at a vastly superficial level. She ostensibly doesn't care about not caring about those movies and being unwilling to make any effort to adjust to them. Then, why taking the time to write such a piece which, in the end, probably took her some time ?
That's what I'm discussing here : what the added value of her writing is exactly ? What is it she wants to convey to us ?

That reminds me of what Michel Ciment told me. He rants about lots of stuff like a bitter old man, but he told me that with internet, it allowed tons of people to give their opinions about everything, but not all opinions have interesting elements to offer. Yet, they're still written nonetheless.
That's my feeling about this piece. It could have been interesting, even with no contextualisation of the movies, but it's not because in a way, the writer doesn't have anything interesting to offer about them.

Again, it struck me most about Le cercle rouge, because it's probably the movie I know best within the list, and her account reads almost like a parody.
"It is very gloomy, and existential, and French. There is little to no dialogue in Le Cercle Rouge. Instead, men just stare at each other with disdain and smoke cigarettes. Literally every man (and there are a lot!) in this film wears either a nude-coloured trench coat or black suit and skinny tie. Many of them wear fedoras. It becomes increasingly difficult to ascertain who is who, because they are similarly-looking frenchmen wearing the same damn outfit. There is only one female character in this film. She has one line in the entire movie. She says “What is it?” while fully nude. This movie is very, very long, its centerpiece a half-hour long wordless jewelery heist. The New York Times called it “exquisitely choreographed”. It is boring. Melville shows you everything: From the asaliants slowly maneuvering their bodies to avoid detection, to them making glacial-pace cuts into glass. During this sequence, the guy sitting next to me dozes off and starts softly snoring."

This is level-0 of film criticism. Why even bothering ?

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3643 Post by Big Ben » Thu May 17, 2018 11:15 am

The internet has allowed anyone with any level of skill to flood the airways with anything. I agree with tenia's premise that not all criticism is the same but I'll add a caveat. Is said person even arguing in good faith? Surely no one here is going to take someone who claims the Earth is flat seriously? The same can be said of film criticism. If they aren't there to engage in good faith it probably isn't worth your time. Because it's a subjective field you can say just about anything and it's technically valid. It would absolutely insane to believe all actors in these scenarios would be saying these things in good faith.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3644 Post by swo17 » Thu May 17, 2018 11:25 am

tenia wrote:Again, it struck me most about Le cercle rouge, because it's probably the movie I know best within the list, and her account reads almost like a parody.
"It is very gloomy, and existential, and French. There is little to no dialogue in Le Cercle Rouge. Instead, men just stare at each other with disdain and smoke cigarettes. Literally every man (and there are a lot!) in this film wears either a nude-coloured trench coat or black suit and skinny tie. Many of them wear fedoras. It becomes increasingly difficult to ascertain who is who, because they are similarly-looking frenchmen wearing the same damn outfit. There is only one female character in this film. She has one line in the entire movie. She says “What is it?” while fully nude. This movie is very, very long, its centerpiece a half-hour long wordless jewelery heist. The New York Times called it “exquisitely choreographed”. It is boring. Melville shows you everything: From the asaliants slowly maneuvering their bodies to avoid detection, to them making glacial-pace cuts into glass. During this sequence, the guy sitting next to me dozes off and starts softly snoring."

This is level-0 of film criticism. Why even bothering ?
I generally take issue with people dismissing things as "boring" or "pretentious" but otherwise don't have a problem with her take (and I like the film). Actually, I think it's rather well written.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3645 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu May 17, 2018 11:27 am

I would really love to know why dissenting or differing opinions by total strangers are interpreted by some people as such a threat.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3646 Post by Big Ben » Thu May 17, 2018 11:30 am

mfunk9786 wrote:I would really love to know why dissenting or differing opinions by total strangers are interpreted by some people as such a threat.
The reason is biological. People value their opinion as a core part of identity and therefore any disruption of that is cause for distress. The internet which can strip context and tone has exacerbated this. That's why an otherwise innocuous opinion can be become a battleground and if you add in something that's a core part of someone's identity, like Star Wars well that's a time bomb.
Last edited by Big Ben on Thu May 17, 2018 11:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

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'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3647 Post by Brian C » Thu May 17, 2018 11:31 am

I like both LE CERCLE ROUGE - have watched it 4 or 5 times - and Melville in general a great deal, but it’s hard for me to see how her description of the film is really all that far off the mark. A lot of her points, especially the overly stylized costuming and lack of women characters, are criticisms that are pretty common even in cinephile circles.

At any rate, she acknowledges that the film fits within the aesthetic of the new AM album, which feels to me like the only “context” her piece really calls for. She’s not trying to write an overview of ‘70s film. It seems to me that if one is inclined to request that she contextualize the films, they should give the same courtesy to the context in which she saw the films in the first place.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3648 Post by tenia » Thu May 17, 2018 11:43 am

mfunk9786 wrote:I would really love to know why dissenting or differing opinions by total strangers are interpreted by some people as such a threat.
I don't have any issue with differing opinions. My issue with the article is how it's mostly descriptive with little actual critical insight about the movies. It's all very dry and superficial, even on movies on which I agree with her. Sure, she isn't saying anything wrong about Le cercle rouge for instance (as Brian wrote), but apart from mostly summarising it, what added value does her writing bring ?

The quote I selected about Le cercle rouge is almost totally descriptive, the few personal elements look like parody ("a guy started snoring next to me, so I'm right saying it's boring !"), and in the end again, only offer very little analysis of the movie.
For instance, she noticed "There is only one female character in this film. She has one line in the entire movie. She says “What is it?” while fully nude." but does nothing with it. Is the movie misogynistic ? Is it a "very manly men"'s movie ? We'll never know because the writer doesn't do anything with this bit. It's turned into a random bit of info, thrown raw, and it remains like this.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3649 Post by Brian C » Thu May 17, 2018 11:59 am

Well, personally I don’t have a problem with you finding her uninteresting anymore than I do with her finding the Melville boring. But the implication that she’s doing something wrong kinda bristles, I guess. I feel like you’re doing the same thing to her that you’re accusing her of doing with these films, e.g., not evaluating the context in which it appears.

Not every piece of film writing has to be a deep dive! This piece exists mostly, it seems, to give fans of the band some idea of what the event was like. It’s not a submission to Film Comment.

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Re: 'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

#3650 Post by tenia » Thu May 17, 2018 12:10 pm

Well, I don't care about the lack of context. As I wrote, I think movies can be judge on their own merit, and you should be able to judge a movie from the 70s without having lots and lots of knowledge about 70s cinema (to make it simple). I just think that her takes on the movies are, as a whole, too descriptive and not argumentative enough, so that when she concludes this is good and this was boring, it's hard to find her case compelling or convincing.
That's what I'm mostly discussing here. The style and content, I guess, more than the lack of context.

And if the point was to give an idea of what the event was like, then why bothering trying somehow to make small critics of each movies ? Which is why I'm thinking it's either too short or too long. If it was made to be a general review of the event, then, why bothering doing superficial mini-reviews of each movie ? But if you're bothering doing individual reviews, why not taking a bit more time to refine them and go past a beefed-up summary ?

As it is, as domino wrote, it makes the whole thing seeming a bit willfully ignorant, as if the writer is happy showing she doesn't really care about those movies and is happy dismissing some of them so quickly. Not every film writing needs to be a deep dive, but there still is a minimum of compelling to do not to simply be a rehashed summary with a few superficial adjective thrown in it. See again the bit about the woman in Le cercle rouge : it's pointed out, and then ? Nothing. Why pointing it out then ?

I don't know. I wonder if the writer wanted to make such a longer piece in the first place but was giving an improbably word count to reach and had to embroider a lot.

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