Best of 2012: My Favorite Reviews I Didn't Agree With

When did we stop engaging in good-hearted debate? Whatever happened to the lost art of agreeing to disagree? Personally, my favorite part of analyzing a movie is never writing the review. I enjoy the conversations that follow, the heated discussions and debates. I like trying to convince someone to give a movie they hated a second chance and I love when someone forces me to reconsider an opinion of my own.

So in the name of that lost art, here are my favorite professional reviews I read this year that made me reconsider and reevaluate a select few movies.

Though the movie didn’t do much for me, I understand why people enjoyed The Avengers. But I’ll always be amused at the outrage some people felt when they found out someone actually could have been unimpressed by the movie. I thought it was the same old product I'd seen a hundred times before (except this time a little bigger, a little louder and a lot longer) but Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe gave what I found to be the most persuasive argument for its existence. The movie, he writes, “is as close as a movie can come to the fantastical reality of a really good comic book.” And the fact that the movie offers no surprises isn't important. “I might not remember any of the sequences in The Avengers, but I’ll remember the rush. I don’t need anything else.” Fair enough.

And besides, how I felt about The Avengers is pretty much how a lot of other people felt about The Amazing Spider-Man, a movie I had a blast at. Its story, writes Manohla Dargis of The New York Times, is one “that many moviegoers older than 10 may think they’ve seen because they probably did when the first movie burned up the box office.” The filmmakers, she contends, “weren’t allowed to take true imaginative flight at a company that’s conspicuously banking on a resuscitated franchise to carry it through its next fiscal quarters.” Ouch. I suppose corporate products are as prone to subjective interpretation as art.

Speaking of art, I was one of many left in awe by Paul Thomas Anderson's latest, The Master. But I completely understood the reactions from friends and critics alike who were left cold by what they felt was a pretentious mess. Richard Corliss of Time magazine points out a number of issues that he feels holds the movie back from greatness. It “violates the cardinal rule of the father-son or master-servant plot: that the acolyte will somehow change his mentor” and once this becomes clear, “after about an hour, the story flatlines into repetition without development.” It’s a solid argument and one that I can't yet counter. But I suspect that this lack of change, while certainly counter to any intuitive sense of what drama should be, is part of the film's challenging message.

On the other end of the spectrum, I was thoroughly disappointed by Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. But I found New York Times critic A.O. Scott’s scholarly defense of the film enlightening. I felt Tarantino’s characters were flat and one-dimensional. Scott argues, however, that Tarantino “does not hesitate to train his revisionist energies on some deep and ancient national legends” and “exposes and defies an ancient taboo” – that a black man can be the agent of that classic literary motive: revenge. And the violence is not exploitative as much as it embodies Tarantino’s “moral disgust with slavery, instinctive sympathy for the underdog and an affirmation (in the relationship between Django and Schultz) of what used to be called brotherhood.” Scott views the movie from an interesting perspective, one I wouldn’t have thought to take. I’m still not sure the movie clicks for me but let’s just say I agree to disagree.

- Steve Avigliano, 2/23/13

Why They Suck: The Two Breeds of Bad Movies

By now most critics and organizations have published their picks for the best movies of the year. Typically, I wait until February to make my Top 10 list so that I have an opportunity to catch up on holiday releases and movies I missed in theaters. In the meantime though, I’d like to take a moment to discuss a few 2011 films on the opposite end of the qualitative spectrum – the bad ones.

Not all bad movies are made alike and for me the sea of duds divides into two categories: artistic failures and commercial failures. Since cinema is as much a business as it is an art form, all movies must straddle this line. A.O. Scott summarizes the point nicely. “No filmmaker sets out to make a bad movie,” he says, “and no producer or studio executive sets out to lose money.”

Of course, bad movies still get made. Loads of them. And I find that a clunker’s failings can usually be attributed to choices made on one side or the other of the aforementioned balancing act.

The first example in this case study is Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, a truly awful bomb from earlier this year that I chalk up as an artistic failure. True, this orgy of computer animation could not have happened without major studio backing, but it was also the first opportunity Mr. Snyder had to develop an original story rather than work from previous source material. After making a series of hits within the studio system (Dawn of the Dead, 300 and, to a lesser degree, Watchmen), he was given creative license to direct another, this time from the ground up.

The result is a bombastic blast of misogyny that pitifully vies for fanboy love by emulating every known geek-approved genre and blending them into a self-absorbed mess. It is Kill Bill with none of Quentin Tarantino’s levity or reverence for his female leads. Still, Sucker Punch is the kind of disaster that can only come from someone with a bold, if perhaps misguided, vision, and it is endlessly more watchable than the alternative.

Enter Exhibit #2: Green Lantern, a movie that, on first glance, appears to have all the necessary components of a successful superhero origin story. Beneath the surface, however, the film is empty and hollow; it has no heart, no humor. The same may be said of its star, Ryan Reynolds, whose good looks are a shell that hides an utter vacancy of charm. There is no drive, or purpose, or love of the character behind the production.

The movie is the result of a green-lighting frenzy that occurred in the years following Spider-Man’s $100M+ opening box office weekend nearly a decade ago. Every studio had to have a superhero franchise they could bank on for huge profit. Five or six, if possible. Green Lantern is a product designed to sell Burger King onion rings as much as tickets. I would happily rewatch Sucker Punch, the badness of which has a kind of operatic grandeur to it, than endure the stale lifelessness of Green Lantern again.

My point is, both films suck, but one had the potential to not, while the other was doomed to fail. You can feel Mr. Snyder’s enthusiasm brimming from every over-stylized, color-saturated shot of Sucker Punch. This is part of the reason why, when it stumbles, it doesn’t do so gracefully. It smacks hard, face-first on the pavement. But no one can accuse Mr. Snyder of not making bold choices, something the by-the-numbers Green Lantern lacks. His choices are, for the most part, bad choices but he took a chance, a tactic that can lead to great success in a way that playing it safe never can.

I’ll leave open the possibility that Zack Snyder may yet make a great film or, at least, a few very good ones. Even taking into account a hunk of junk like Sucker Punch, he is on the right track. On the other hand, the only good that can come of Green Lantern 2, should it ever get made, will be the return of avocado paste at Subway. (I’m a big guacamole fan.)

- Steve Avigliano, 1/13/12

The Hype Monster vs. The Great and Powerful Backlash

Hype is tough to avoid. The dutiful moviegoer and friend that I am, I like to recommend a good movie when I see it. Plus, if a good film does well at the box office, there may be more of its kind down the road and less garbage wasting screens at my local theater. There’s a difference though between a recommendation and hype. A recommendation says, “See this, I liked it and you will too.” Hype builds the anticipation to levels a film could never possibly satisfy. As a result, people who didn’t see the movie the opening weekend and aren’t riding the hype train feel underwhelmed when they finally do get to the movies. Thus, backlash ensues.

This happens with movies of all kinds from summer blockbusters to the Oscar-nominated. It happened with Avatar last year, The Dark Knight two years ago and it’s starting again with Inception right now. All of the above are critically acclaimed and the first two have become megahits with the latter likely to follow suit. I enjoyed all of them too, but it’s important to keep things in perspective.

Critics and moviegoers alike were hailing Avatar as a game-changer. Movies would never be the same, they said. Six months later, Avatar hasn’t had nearly the cultural impact of Star Wars, which the film was repeatedly compared to, or even Cameron’s own Terminator films. For better or worse Avatar has popularized 3D and proved it to be a profitable investment for studios. Yet I’m at a loss to quote a single good line from the movie and I can only think of one memorable scene off the top of my head. (I rather like the scene when he first gets into the avatar and feels the dirt under his feet.) For me, Avatar remains in my mind what it was when I first saw it theaters: A visually stunning and creative but poorly written sci-fi action movie.

When The Dark Knight came out two years ago, there didn’t seem to be any other movie out that summer and were people so wrong to treat it as such? The Dark Knight is the best superhero movie yet (though Spiderman 2 is a close second for me) and I admire the way director Christopher Nolan gave his film the tone, structure and grandeur of a crime epic. Is it a great film though, in the Citizen Kane, Godfather or Fargo sense of the word? Probably not. That didn’t stop me from championing it as such at the time, of course, but I have to be honest and look at the film in perspective. Heath Ledger deserved every bit of hype he got, but Christian Bale’s grunt can be a bit much and I wish the movie didn’t end with such an obvious sequel set-up. (That last shot of Batman on his motorcycle was cool at the time, but it’s more frustrating than anything else now.) Still, I look forward to one day showing Nolan’s Batman movies to my kids the way my father showed me Richard Donner’s Superman movies. As a piece of pop culture, The Dark Knight is a classic. But remember, that’s pop as in popcorn.

Now Nolan is at it again with Inception, a movie that everyone and their grandma have been calling a “mindfuck.” I’m still not sure what that means and how the word qualifies as a recommendation but I think I understand the intentions. Personally, I prefer the way a Charlie Kaufman movie makes sweet love to my mind and doesn’t just leave the next morning but to each their own, I suppose.

Since Inception’s release, some critics have laid out reasonable critiques of the film, mostly arguing that the movie’s action sequences and set pieces lack the mystical and amorphous qualities of real dreaming. This is true. I admire all of the above-linked reviews, particularly the A.O. Scott one, but I think some of these critics are missing the point. Christopher Nolan set out to make an action movie sprinkled with thoughtful ideas, not the other way around. If he did, he would’ve made it more Waking Life than The Matrix. Those are two more movies I like, but for very different reasons.

Movies operate on a sliding scale of ambition and Nolan has succeeded wonderfully in making a brilliant action movie. That little trick about how ten seconds in one dream equates to twenty minutes in another and an hour in a third is ingenious and I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s an inventive little cheat to give our heroes more time and who cares if it doesn’t hold up to anything resembling logic in the real world?

Those proudly waving the flag of backlash are shouting that the movie is not a visionary masterpiece. Who said it was? Certainly not Nolan. Ah yes, that snow-balling monster of hype did, giving a perfectly entertaining action blockbuster labels it never wanted.

When I searched for a synonym for "hype" in my computer’s thesaurus, I got "ballyhoo" as an option. I like that word more because I think it captures the ridiculousness of people's tendency to overrate. See Inception and see it again but please, let’s try and keep the ballyhoo in check.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/19/10

Seeing Stars: Why Critics Rate the Way They Do

All critics find their own way to rate a work. Ratings (be they numerical or otherwise) are a convenient and accessible way to get one’s opinions out there, and give some sense of objectivity to an otherwise entirely subjective form of writing. It’s easy to scan a newspaper (I’m sorry, I meant scroll a webpage) and get a quick idea of how good a movie is. Some critics might argue that a rating system lends itself to readers skipping the review and looking only at the stars (admittedly, I’m guilty of this crime), but for those truly interested, a rating can only say so much and instead functions as an “Inquire Within” sign.

Roger Ebert, on numerous occasions has expressed disdain for ratings, despite using a four-star system himself (in addition to creating the most basic of all movie criteria: the Thumbs Up). Ebert argues that, to the reader, equivalent ratings suggest equivalent quality in a film when in fact not all four-star movies are made alike. If, for example, the most recent Francis Ford Coppola film was a disappointment and received 2 stars and the latest Adam Sandler comedy was surprisingly decent (receiving 3 stars), is that suggesting that the latter is of higher merit than the former? Perhaps, but I’m a firm believer in taking each movie for what it is, not holding it to lofty standards.

That being said, I’d like to take a look at the many types of rating systems out there for both film and music (another area of criticism I have some interest in) before settling on my own standards I’ll be using for this blog.

Stars are classic. They’re what I’ve grown accustomed to in both reading and writing film criticism. Since as long as I can recall I’ve always made a quick note in my mind of how many stars a film gets after watching it. It’s a fun way to review things, and there’s just something nice about seeing four stars (or five if that’s your thing) next to the title of a movie I truly admire.

Often this can become problematic however, as it assumes all stars weigh the same. Clearly, the four stars for Casablanca aren’t the same as the four stars for The Dark Knight, right? In reviewing music, this problem arises often. David Bowie, for example released a number of full-score albums in his prime, but he’s still releasing solid music now, so should I compare the new to the old? As obvious as it might seem to do so, I’d avoid the comparison, otherwise no one would listen to his new stuff because it would be viewed as inferior to the old. The music website Pitchfork seems to have a reliable 10-point system that avoids this exact situation. This larger scale offers a wider range to be more specific in one’s quality assessment. Marching to a different tune entirely, I know a guy who runs a rather good music review site by timing the amount of good minutes an album has to create an overall percentage of how much of a record is worth listening to. This is pretty ambitious, and maybe a little crazy, but hey, it works and nobody else is doing it.

There are also the letter grades, as Entertainment Weekly uses for all media reviews, which take genre expectations into account. I know, for example what I’m going to get from a B- comedy or an A horror film.

One of my personal favorite critics, A.O. Scott for The New York Times, uses no rating at all, yet his essays are among the most concise and insightful I’ve ever read. All critics for the Times along with other publications do this as well, and I respect the practice.

The best of all however are the aggregate sites (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic). By compiling the average of many different rating systems from professional and significant online reviewers, these sites’ percentages are very insightful and I rarely disagree. It’s been a while since I’ve gone to see a movie I know will be rotten.

For my purposes here, however, I’m going to remain a classicist and use a four-star scale. Below are rough definitions of what these ratings mean but, in the end, it’s the words on the page that truly matter.

4 stars: A perfect, or near-perfect, film that elicits some additional mental or emotional response that pushes it into a category that, in film, is best described as “great.”

3 ½ stars: A perfectly, or near-perfectly, executed film where all aspects (direction, writing, acting, cinematography, etc.) exemplify the highest quality.

3 stars: A good to very good film worth a recommendation, containing some weakness or limitation that goes beyond nitpicking individual scenes.

2 ½ stars: A film that, despite its (possibly many) problems, I feel some level of admiration for. Worth a rental recommendation.

2 stars: A film with as many problems as strengths, with the bad unfortunately outweighing the good.

1 ½ stars: A bad film.

1 star: A bad film that I feel some level of hatred for.

½ star: A bad film that borders on offensive in its lack of respect for its audience.

0 stars: Manos: The Hands of Fate.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/27/09