Since Sports Are Now On - What Are You Watching?

I never really got that. If you understand how it actually works there's really nothing wrong with, and for people who actually read reveied rather than just look at a number it provides links to tons of them.

Most of the people I see not understanding how it works are those who think studios are bribing critics and coming up with wild conspiracies because they disagreed with a review.

But the site and the functionality itself are perfectly fine.

I guess all the more reason for me not to really go to the film general board. But reviews in general are useful, and when they're well written they're their own form of entertainment.

Thumbs up and thumbs down got it's own share of flack back in the day, but like the Tomatometer it's just a guideline that gives you some basic idea about what critics thought. It's nothing more and nothing less, and it's fine. I really don't think it's worth hating, much less 'with a passion' like so many people seem to. And I also wouldn't ever take message boards as an exact indication of what the masses think.

Yes. So a 70% is just bascially 70% say 'thumbs up, ' which could mean a barely moderate recommendation or a rave. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes could mean that every single critic says, 'yeah I guess it's not a total waste of time.'

On the other hand, Metacritic asks critics to assign a number grade from 1 to 100, or maybe they try approximate one based on the text. But their number is meant to signify an average number grade.

The idea behind the thumbs up/down thing was 'Do you recommend your viewers go see it?' Yeah, naturally both Siskel and Ebert both discussed the movies on the show in more detail, and also wrote reviews and gave them a star rating... and after they were both gone from the show and took their trademarked gimmick with them the new critics (AO Scott and Micheal Phillips) used a 'See it, S
Rent it, Skip it' rating system. There's obviously more nuance to be found elsewhere and it's not perfect, but I also think that's pretty much self evident, and the score is generally a perfectly OK basic guide post for how the collective critical community feels about a movie, and whether one agrees with them or not is a separate issue entirely.

And the 'critics consensus' blurb is usually a pretty accurate summation of what most the critics seemed to think.

And of course there are shitty critics, and including some with dubious credentials. But that's always been the case. I'm sure there are some good youtuber critics, and while the ones I'm aware of mostly kind of suck, that's a fair representation of how 'professional' critics are today. The kinds of people who are invited to press screenings arent just employees of newspapers anymore.

And I've known Film Studies PHDs and professional in the industry who were idiots with terrible taste, and hig school drop outs who knew more than I did about film history and analysis.

I just think the sizable and extremely vocal 'We hate Rotten Tomatoes!' crowd is a little silly and shortsighted. I mean, we all look at great, classic movies and make fun of their bad contemporary reviews, and a Tomato score. It's a fairly fair and useful tool that summarizes a particular group of people's views on a movie and that's it. It's really not worthy of feeling that strongly about one way or the other.

I don't want to spend a lot of time on this one, because it doesn't deserve it.

Megalopolis is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It's a student film with an unlimited budget. It feels like Coppola wrote this movie when he was 16, and just found the script in an old shoe box under his bead. The trailer made it look like the laziest 'America is the new Rome' commentary that any American cynic has been saying for the last 50 years at least; well, the movie literally starts with that comparison written out on the screen...and it never stops preaching this shit for what feels like 9 hours. Oh, and the city is called New Rome. I kid you not. This is the level of metaphor we're dealing with here.

The message is straightforward and even honorable. "Hey everyone, the American Dream itself has kind of gone to shit and we're all complicit in this, so let's try to do better." But it's preached about in such a way that you'd expect to hear from your neighbor's kid who just attended his first philosophy class. And it's drilled into your head over...and over...and over again. Characters give political stump speeches about it. Characters quote the writings of deep thinkers going all the way back to Marcus Aurelius. Generic commentary about civilization, Americana and what have you, written out on the screen on block letters and narrated by Lawrence Fishburne in case they just weren't talking down to you hard enough. Has a film ever had less respect for its audience?

The story, if there is one, is completely incoherent, as the cast were all clearly directed to perform this like a spoof of Shakespeare on crack. The characters are all bizarre manifestations of an idea, instead of people capable of talking or emoting in any genuine way. I think the movie could be reedited out of order and it wouldn't change the way you view it at all. It's not batshit crazy; it's more like something trying to be batshit crazy and instead coming across as the pretentious bullshit that it is.

How can a movie be this visually all over the place and still bore you to tears? Well again, the level of creativity that goes along with the Roman names of the characters is something to behold. The main character has the ability to stop time. Why, how, or for what purpose is never really made clear, but he does so by saying the magic words: "Time stop now." I cannot stress enough that this movie feels like it was written by a teenage video store employee in 1994 who just smoked his first joint.

It's bad. And not even interesting bad, just bad. Two people walked out of the movie in my theater about half an hour in, and they were the smart ones. The fact that they released a trailer filled with fake reviews for Coppola's previous (undeniably genius) work tells you everyone connected to this POS knew it was garbage. I almost feel bad for the yes men surrounding Coppola, smiling and patting him on the back after witnessing the final product. But not as bad as feel for myself for losing 2h 18m that I'll never get back.

And I really didn't want to destroy it, mostly because Jep Gambardella seemed genuinely intrigued by it.  There is surely a segment of the audience who will respect it in an "art for art's sake" kind of way, and I get that.  I think I'm that way with Coppola's own Apocalypse Now.  Some movies are just about soaking in an atmosphere and a theme rather than following a narrative in the typical sense.  There was a moment about three quarters of the way through Megalopolis where the story actually starts pushing forward in a coherent fashion and I thought, "Am I coming around on this movie?"  But then everything unravels again after about ten minutes and devolves back into slop. 

I tried to respect it for what it is, but I just couldn't get there.  To me it's a vanity piece, maybe the ultimate vanity piece, by someone who couldn't decide which he wanted to do more, ram home his 'message,' or try to prove he's still a premier avant-garde filmmaker.  Spoiler alert: he isn't.        

You mean the people walking out during the movie?  

That definitely didn't happen.  Maybe it was the employees that walked out.  They were promised a bonus if they stayed after their shift and interacted with the film, but they couldn't take it and quit on the spot.   

(Imagining this scenario is hilarious.  It's more entertaining than the actual movie.  Thank you, goons!)