Last week, I blogged about movie review aggregators like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, and wondered how they are affecting film criticism. What gets lost when you convert a carefully considered, well-written film review to a score out of 100, or a binary fresh/rotten value?
Critic (and friend of Spark) Jesse Wente weighed in:
Ultimately, this is the difference between reviews and actual criticism – these sites don’t provide criticism – they provide a quick measure. I would never use it as a basis to buy a game or see a movie. However, ever since Siskel and Ebert started using their digits to decide the value of a film this has been inevitable. to many, actual criticism is a dying art – the context and knowledge base used by people on these sites is unknown – whereas if I read AO Scott or even Liam Lacey, I know they know what they’re talking about – I may disagree, but at least I know they have a clue – metacritic, who knows?
The sites, like much of the internet age, are painfully reductive – not without their place, but not what I would call a fully realized tool. For me, fansites are better (Kotaku for games, I don’t really read movie fansites anymore, I’m too close to the business these days) – at least you get actual opinion, slanted though it may be, and not just a number. The democratization of criticism is likely a good thing in the end, although I’m not sure these sites are the final stop.
And New York Magazine film critic David Edelstein says:
I don’t want to alienate any of the fine people at RT or Metacritic but I kind of hate the aggregation. It reminds me of Zagat’s or Consumer Reports or ways of going straight to the averages without getting to know different critical voices or establishing a relationship with a critic you trust. It quantifies what should really be beyond quantification. I like those sites because they introduce people to critics whose works they might not otherwise know… but as a way to see what the “score” of some movie is, it’s one more nail in the coffin of serious criticism.
Yesterday, Nora interviewed David Edelstein about the effect of review aggregators on film criticism. A shorter version of their interview will air on the February 11 & 14 episode of Spark, but you can hear the full, uncut interview below, or download the MP3.
Play audio:
What about you? How do you decide what movie to see at your local theatre? Which do you trust more — aggregate film scores or individual reviews?
And if you like hearing these extended interviews, why not subscribe to Spark’s enhanced podcast? You’ll get regular weekly episodes, plus additional blog-only content like this. [Subscribe via RSS] or [Subscribe with iTunes]
I was listening to this interview while checking up on 43 Folders, and look what I found!
Merlin Mann "On Thumbs, Stars, and Little Men" – http://www.43folders.com/2009/01/28/critics
Thanks Ben… hadn't seen that!
A great way to find critics worth paying attention to would be by completing a sort of ratings primer. Or, as you rate movies, a website might find critics with similar ratings and be able to suggest appropriate movies based on your previous favorites.
I'd be surprised if this isn't being done, but wasn't mentioned in the piece, and I've not found it personally.
Cheers,
Re: Metacritic and film reviews I’m a big film geek, but I never used to pay much attention to movie reviews. After Titantic won a recordbreaking number of Oscars, I decided these people couldn’t be trusted. Then, a couple years ago, I watched the movie “Crash” (the Paul Haggis one about racism, not the Cronenburg one about sex and car accidents). Something about that movie rubbed me the wrong way, but was struggling to figure out what I disliked so much. I looked the film up on Wikipedia and found that it received incredibly positive views from almost everyone. One person who gave it a bad review was a guy named Scott Foundas. Wikipedia referenced a grumpy back-and-forth argument between Foundas and Roger Ebert, who loved the movie. In his review, Foundas voiced the exact same concerns I had about the film’s portrayal of racism. I read more of his reviews of movies I’d already seen, and I agreed with almost all of them. He’s American, so I have to read his reviews online, but they’re almost always dead-on as far as I’m concerned. A lot more useful than the averaged ratings. (Rottentomatoes give 82% for Titanic?! Are you kidding me?)
Thanks Ben!!!!