Twenty years ago, I bought a domain name and launched this website. If you go to the Wayback Machine you will see that I spent a lot of time (many years in fact) quoting the opinions of film critics, often featuring their words as cornerstones in my own posts. We would sometimes collect review excerpts and build posts that bolstered the profile of newly released movies. In those days, the tastes and inclinations of Oscars voters were usually very far away from what the film critics liked. Part of what I wanted to do back then was to help bridge that gap, to show what movies were being praised by critics so that more of them might be considered for the Oscar race.
It took me a very long time to figure out that the industry had no intention of shaping their own behavior around what the critics thought. The long game for studios is profit, so they made movies mostly with audiences in mind, with little need to please critics. So they would produce a movie, market it, release it, and the moviegoing public would decide its success or failure. Critics might occasionally be able to hold a film aloft, even after a box-office disappointment, like Almost Famous or The Insider, so that it would have a shot at Oscar nominations. But for the most part, movies were made to be launched out into the crowd, to sink or swim in theaters, not cultivated in hot houses and custom delivered to Academy voters.
Thing began to shift after the Oscar dates were pushed earlier in the year, carving away weeks when a movie previously would have a chance to prove itself. Starting in 2004, after Million Dollar Baby swooped in at the 11th hour to shake things up with its sudden impact, every Best Picture winner has come from the curated ranks of the festival circuit. Rather than wait for audience reaction, the narrative is now driven by film critics and bloggers, with many movies groomed for the Oscars not even seen by the public until after nominations.
Film critics, meanwhile, became a relative term with new rules of eligibility. When I started, there still were actual film critics, and virtually all of them wrote for print venues. They were among the upper-echelon staff at major publications like Entertainment Weekly, the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, LA Weekly, and the Wall Street Journal. Those outlets carried weight and prestige and thus, their critics did too. The Thursday night before a film opened, we would wait for the reviews to drop. We would comb through them to read what our favorite critics thought about new movies. Their verdict was not black and white, positive or negative, but instead sometimes mixed. The word “qualified” means “certified,” and it can also mean “not absolute; with reservations.” Good criticism should be both, and the best reviews then always were.
I was part of the movement that would eventually lead to the mess we have now because I began to aggregate those opinions into posts to suss out a consensus, and eventually Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic came along to turn that effort into mathematical formulas. But before long, as print media was forced to make cutbacks, the renowned high-profile critics were fired and replaced by less adept writers, bloggers, and journalists — anyone that they could pay less to do roughly the same job. What would it matter, right? By then, it hardly mattered at all, as long as someone could spin a good line to serve as a blurb. There was no turning back. As things stand today, all that seems to matter now is the grotesque fixation on red tomatoes or the splat of a rotten tomato, and ultimately that numerical score. Even my friends who ought to know better will say to me, “This movie has a such and such score on Rotten Tomatoes so it must be good, or it must be bad.” Read a review? Parse the nuance, contemplate the subtleties of the written word? Who has time for that. What’s the number, what’s the score?
It’s a shame. The gradual degradation of the art of film criticism is a great loss to the culture of film appreciation. Because this over-simplified system of rating an artistic creation was never meant to be the function of any kind of criticism, whether art, or literature, or cinema. It’s sad that movies have suffered the most damage and sadder still that we’ve gone along with it. Imagine walking into an art gallery and finding tags on the paintings that label them “fresh” or “rotten.” How absurd and disgusting that would be.
No, the nobler aim of film criticism (and the aspiration we risk losing) is for movie writers to take moviegoers deeper into the experience. Instead, exacerbated by the rise of social media, film criticism today has largely done the opposite: it lets the worst traits of mob mentality to form tribes for or against a film, enabling thousands of vicious little emperors at the Colosseum to jab their thumbs up or thumbs down. If I may put on my amateur sociologist hat for a minute, I would venture to say that humans aren’t prepared for what Twitter or Facebook does to the human brain. Early human tribalism would encourage the clustering of like-minds in the hive. That rigid closing of ranks might mean the difference between survival or death. Anyone who dared think outside that hive would need to be ostracized, else they endanger the harmony within the hive. That prehistoric survival strategy in probably woven into our DNA. Mass hysteria, nationalism, xenophobia are all evidence of the crude remnants of the linked hive mind. Because as long as the hyper-sensitive fears of one individual can spread quickly enough, the prickly alarm signals might save the entire tribe.
A strange thing has happened to me with a particular film this year, and it’s reinforced my belief that film criticism was never intended to form a consensus. I saw Little Women at a SAG screening with the entire cast and director present. I was already quite excited to see the film, based on the trailer, based on the material’s pedigree, based on the talents of actresses I admired. I was anticipating a big lush Oscar movie that would invite me to sink into its pleasures the way the best movies do to me. But right away I felt cut adrift with the jumbled structure of the storyline. Even though I knew the story and can appreciate experimental techniques when handled skillfully, I often had no clue what was going on. After the credits rolled, the opinions of those around me were decidedly mixed: many liked it a lot, and many others not so much. From long experience, I felt quiet alarms go off. This movie, for all its attributes, could leave a lot of people in the lurch.
The eventual critics’ reaction, however, has painted a strong, unanimous consensus, ensuring that this film would rank as one of the year’s best, at least in numerical terms, with a 95% Rotten Tomatoes rating. For completeness and comparison’s sake, let’s look at the Rotten Tomato scores for all of this year’s major contenders:
On the critics side of the equation, we see these numbers:
Parasite — 99%
The Farewell — 98%
Knives Out — 97%
Dolemite Is My Name — 97%
The Irishman — 96%
Marriage Story — 95%
Little Women — 95%
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood — 95%
Honey Boy — 94%
Uncut Gems – 93%
Ford v Ferrari – 92%
Dark Waters — 91%
1917 — 90%
The Two Popes — 89%
Rocketman — 89%
Hustlers — 87%
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — 85%
Waves — 85%
Queen & Slim — 83%
Jojo Rabbit — 79%
Harriet — 73%
Richard Jewell — 72%
Joker — 69%
Bombshell — 67%
Now let’s look at the audience scores, to see where they diverge:
Ford v Ferrari — 98% (21,000)
Harriet — 97% (11,000)
Richard Jewell — 96% (3,500)
Dark Waters — 95% (2,300)
Jojo Rabbit — 95% (4,000)
1917 — 94% (200)
Parasite — 93% (2,100)
Knives Out – 92% (20,000)
Little Women – 92% (3,400)
Queen & Slim — 92% (11,000)
Dolemite Is My Name — 91% (113)
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood — 91% (10,000)
Honey Boy — 91% (500)
The Two Popes — 89% (750)
Joker — 88% (65,000)
Rocketman — 88% (21,000)
The Farewell — 87% (2,400)
The Irishman — 86% (1,000)
Bombshell — 83% (2,814)
Marriage Story — 83% (160)
Motherless Brooklyn — 80% (2,500)
Waves — 80% (293)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — 70% (26,000)
Hustlers — 65% (16,000)
Uncut Gems — 54% (3,500)
Looking at the disconnect between these two lists is a reminder that a consensus built with the RT formula can’t tell us as much about film criticism as it does about the harmonious buzz from within the hive. These scores only tell us what a specific group of lucky people think and often as a hive — this is the realm of Film Twitter, mostly the recipients free screening invitations. Especially when the well-being of the hive tips heavily in one direction, the innate human desire to not be ostracized can come into play, so reviews (even mixed reviews) can be weighted and worded to fall in sync with the most popular movies. They’ve all seen what can happen to movie writers who find themselves on the 5% rotten side of the fence, and nobody wants to suffer that fate. But that kind of calculation, whether conscious or subconscious, isn’t film criticism. In many instances, we have to wonder why members of the inner circle clique tend to circle the wagons in consensus opinions, while the scores from regular moviegoers who don’t worry about being outcasts tell a very different story. Since there’s safety in numbers, we want to pay attention to the sheer weight of thousands of ratings, as well. When we go on Amazon we don’t want to buy products that have a few dozen or even 100 customer reviews. We look for the items that have 4.5- and 5-star ratings from thousands of happy buyers.
Money changes everything. If you’re out there putting down cold, hard cash in the theater lobby (Netflix films being an exception to this since people have a different attitude about movies they can see inside the Netflix subscription model), you are going to want some sort of tangible pay off, not just the second-hand experience of films made for film critics. We’re paying for the orgasm — we’re not paying to watch critics masturbate. Some of the most stark disconnects I see here are the wide chasm created by Uncut Gems, which hit really big with critics but not with audiences, as well as Harriet and Ford v Ferrari, which are major hits with audiences who feel they got exactly what they wanted, but not so well with critics who didn’t.
We see the majority of the films sit somewhere in the high middle with audiences because audiences are looking for something different than film critics are. It’s also important to remember that critics are obligated to see just about everything; audiences are already predisposed to like what they have chosen to go see. Demands met and expectations fulfilled.
All of this is to say that I have long since stopped paying attention to the aggregate score on Rotten Tomatoes, because it won’t ever tell me anything that I don’t already know. I already know what Film Twitter thinks about a movie. I know it long before the movie has even been released to the public because of all the people who saw everything in advance at Telluride or Toronto and then cluster into their social media circles. Worse, that atmosphere can so easily coalesce into a hive mind, and too many people are too intimidated to step outside of it. So they tend to agree more than disagree.
Gone are the days when I would read a review by Kenneth Turan and then one by Owen Gleiberman or A.O. Scott or Lisa Schwarzbaum and gain intriguing new perspectives with each new review. Their thought-provoking opinions could deepen an experience of a movie because their reviews were not anonymous reviews, nor were they part of a hive. They were well-considered takes by people who had big microphones and thus, by dint of their distinguished track records, could truly help shape how we talk about and watch movies. But that has now been replaced by the hive and the hive can’t abide disagreement.
So what do we see when we look back at how these numbers played out for recent Best Picture winners?
Green Book — RT 78%, audience 91% (9,000)
Shape of Water — RT 92%, audience 72% (25,000)
Moonlight — RT 98%, audience 79% (44,000)
Spotlight — RT 97%, audience 93% (70,000)
Birdman — RT 91%, audience 77% (92,000)
12 Years a Slave _ RT 95%, audience 90% (140,000)
Argo — RT 96%, audience 90% (204,000)
The Artist — RT 87%, audience 87% (58,000)
The King’s Speech — RT 95%, audience 92% (144,000)
The Hurt Locker — RT 97%, audience 84% (95,000)
Slumdog Millionaire — RT 91%, audience 90% (1,155,543)
No Country for Old Men — RT 93%, audience 86% (398,721)
The Departed — RT 91%, audience 94% (737,000)
Crash — RT 74%, audience 88% (442,000)
Million Dollar Baby — RT 91%, audience 90% (400,000)
Return of the King — RT 93%, audience 86% (34,679,773)
Chicago — RT 86%, audience 83% (400,000)
A Beautiful Mind — RT 74%, audience 93% (490,000)
Gladiator — RT 76%, audience 87% (34,128,168)
American Beauty – RT 87%, audience 93% (660,000)
Those are the raw numbers. Make of them what you will. I’m not quite sure what going backwards in time proves. For one thing, the further back we go, the effect of social media diminishes until it gradually vanishes altogether. But the one thing I know is that Best Picture winners, for instance, win for a variety of reasons. Sometimes because they are four quadrant crowd-pleasers. Sometimes they win because they involve filmmakers that voters feel are overdue, like the Coen brothers, or Kathryn Bigelow, or Martin Scorsese. Sometimes they just want to push the movie because the movie stands for something that means something personal to them.
But getting back to the hive mind and Film Twitter and Little Women, which turns out is not a divisive film in the least little bit — with unanimous praise from most critics, many Oscar watchers were confused and even angry that the film did not make a better showing with the Golden Globes or the SAG nominations. With nothing else to go by, how could fans of the film understand why such a prestigious Christmas movie with such rave reviews would be shut out? It had to be, many concluded, sexism. Bubbling up online, word spread that men didn’t want to see the movie at all, so of course they didn’t they vote for it. Nevermind that the HFPA and SAG have reached a near perfect degree of gender parity, with a far better balance than any of the other major voting groups. But in the absence of any reviews that even seemed to be mixed, misogyny had to be the explanation. Bear in mind that Ford v Ferrari has great reviews, good box office, an amazing audience score (not to mention an A+ CinemaScore) and terrific deep-bench talent in its cast. And yet, for all that, it still didn’t get named for Outstanding Ensemble at SAG or for Best Picture at the Globes. Maybe when a well-liked movie fails to get a nomination, it’s not the evils of misogyny but simply the bountiful downside of a very competitive year.
No doubt the energy, conversation, and debate around Little Women will help the film with Oscar nominations. Part of the problem is that there are a lot of movies that are pretty good, but not better than the top-tier frontrunners, competing for the remaining spots. The heat of this convo will likely ensure Little Women is pushed to the top of the pile of screeners. So fans can rejoice in that.
What bothers me about the way this has unfolded is that there appears to be zero dissent, and anyone who’s tries to be a lone voice of resistance can expect to be executed on the spot. I’ve not seen a single serious conversation about the film’s disjointed structure, no defense of why that choice was made, and no question whether the experiment worked. Of course I realize that to many viewers it wasn’t confusing. Particularly for Alcott acolytes, it was a glorious redux of all the familiar tropes. For me, not being all that familiar with the arcs of the characters, I felt lost. It surprised me that not a single major critic I can find has talked about it. Not one. So I got myself into trouble yet again by suggesting that some critics — not all — were perhaps grading on a curve as I believe they often do when actors endeavor to direct. Not all, but many: Bradley Cooper, Ben Affleck. This is nothing new. Go further back and consider whether Mel Gibson and Kevin Costner benefited from a sigh of relief when their movies turned out not to be ego-trip catastrophes. This isn’t something I can prove, and of course many people were insulted by it. Many many. The only explanation I’ve been given by the firing squad is that the problems I feel with the film simply don’t exist, that it’s all inside my head. They would rather believe I have a “blind spot” or, worse, a personal vendetta.
It isn’t my obligation, nor the task of users on Rotten Tomatoes, to whip up an apologetic analysis for a movie that works for some but not for others. Yet, in a few instances of films this year, that might be the only way to field any dissenting point of view. Ideally, it’s the job of experienced film critics to describe a movie’s cinematic strategy and determine whether risky techniques work or else don’t. I wish I could find a critic who does that with Little Women, I really do. But the more the online critic community functions as a hive, praising and supporting each other on Twitter for like-minded reassurance, the more they are rewarded for being a harmonious part of an elite and exclusive club. The more their uniformly acquiescent reviews serve to simply prop up the hive, the less effective they are at providing those distinctive, deeper, thoughtful observations about film where diversity of opinion is permitted to veer off in one direction or another.
We know, going back decades to look at past trends in reviewer’s attitudes, that the critics’ first swing at assessing movies has a checkered hit-and-miss history. So do the Oscars. So can audiences. But when we shut down critical thinking, beat down nonconformity, and substitute individuality with group think, I believe ultimately the whole point of thoughtful film criticism has vanished, and you might as well use the audience scores if a consensus is all you’re looking for.
“What’s the number? What’s the score?” This is not just a problem with film critics, but across the whole society, from education to medicine. An excellent read on the subject is “The Tyranny of Metrics” by Jerry Z. Muller. If anybody has time to read, that is . . .
I agree we should not be obsessed with numbers, but they are a big guide. It would be worse without it.
Not for art. Not for literature. Not for movies.
How sick would it be to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and find little stickers beside all the paintings that gave them a numerical score.
True but to be fair when we use numbers (critical scores, BO performance, awards stats) in this context we are not trying to determine quality of the contender in question, we are trying to figure out the Oscar chances of that contender. At least that’s what I use the numbers for.
I would totally say and stand by something like
– “I don’t think Jojo Rabbit will win BP because no film has ever won BP with an MC score under 68 and it has a 57”
or
– “OUATIH is helped by its strong BO numbers because it would have been probably written off awards-wise if it lost money even if it is an acclaimed film”
or
– I don’t expect Little Women to come anywhere near winning BP because based on precedent it would have needed directing and probably even writing nods from the HFPA and at least a single nod, preferably Ensemble from SAG.
But none of that would be me insinuating a single thing about the quality of these films, it would be just me trying to use the numbers to figure out if they have a shot at awards or not.
The thing is it is helpful is choosing what to see, but only to a certain extent. If the source of the rating distribution is compatible with your feelings, then you are more likely to dislike something panned than something praised. Nothing is guaranteed of course.
We all have finite time so some help in deciding what to skip is appreciated. I don’t think anyone should rely on one number and use some sort of cut off. That is too restrictive.
With your example, there is really no point in grading anything because people are going to see it anyway in the museum. But the museum does implicit curation as is a “recommend/ not recommend” binary.
I also don’t really want to read reviews of films before I see them. I prefer to go in blind. Any detailed review fails. Someone ljke Ebert simply reveals too much. Here again a number is useful.
Someone should always decide themselves, though.
She still keeps mentioning that people are confused With that timeline on Twitter. Not a generalizable claim apparently!Also those people who got confused by LW’s timeline were totally fine with the Irishman’s timeline??? Or they dont care about it because Sasha likes that movie??
Since Sasha made those baseless claims that people are confused with LW’s timeline, I just keep asking people who have seen the movie about that timeline issue. I have asked probably more than 40 people including some random people that I dont know. Only 2 said they were confused, but only at the beginning. Then they figured it out. Most people said they had no problem at all. In fact some people said they liked it as it was a fresh interpretation of a similar story.
Yes, they may not represent the whole public, but neither do those few people that she refers to!
As I point out below, on December 13, Sasha posted her favourite films of the year. I list them below, along with their Rotten Tomatoes ratings:
1917 — 90%
Parasite — 99%
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — 85%
Ford v Ferrari — 92%
Dolemite is My Name — 97%
Jojo Rabbit — 79%
The Irishman — 96%
Queen and Slim — 83%
Pain and Glory — 97%
Blinded by the Light — 89%
Honey Boy — 94%
I’m glad Sasha liked those films, but how is she a radical dissenter from the critical consensus and hive mind?
Not liking Little Women does not make you the Che Guevera of film critics.
Saw Dolemite is my name last night and can’t comprehend her undying enthusiasm for the film.
Easily the weakest among the five comedy/musical at the globes.
Agree, but it’s not a mystery to me. Sasha has a personal tie-in with the original Dolemite and other blaxpoitation films and her father.
I find Sasha’s argument here about Little Women to be a closed loop: it works and every single argument builds on the others if you make certain presumptions but if you don’t, the writing expresses no reasons why these things would make any sense, let alone why we should presume them. Yes, if film critics aren’t discussing the elements of Little Women that they consider not working and they go easy on Gerwig, audiences aren’t biased and critics are, Ford v Ferrari having a good score on Rotten Tomatoes implies similar levels of praise from critics as Little Women and Little Women is structurally incomprehensible for the first hour if one hasn’t read the book or doesn’t love the material otherwise, for example through adaptations, this is all true.
But this piece has no doubt that these things are true, and they necessarily aren’t. Could it be that no one has written about these structural problems with Little Women because they had no problems with the structure of Little Women? Perhaps modern mainstream critics don’t really dig in with that many films but to presume that they are ignoring a problem because of biases claims intent based on actions, which is pretty much impossible to actually prove (for example a somewhat similar situation in the basic t-tests in statistical analysis is acknowledged by the idea that you can never really say that the data shows that something is or isn’t a parameter, rather that the data is extreme if that was the parameter). If a critic loves a movie unconditionally, he/she is going to write a review that praises the film to high heavens. This has always been the case and will most likely always be the case (perhaps some critics used to go deeper into why they love the movie so much but this wouldn’t work for Sasha’s argument in any case). Thus if critics really love the movie, their lack of nitpicking the structure isn’t based on anything else than the film working for them, not based on fear of being hated or due to being particularly considerate about the filmmaker or the film in question.
One should also consider that audiences have biases, just as critics have biases. Mainstream audiences often give positive ratings to films purely based on consepts like “Did I have fun”, “Was the viewing experience somewhat pleasurable” and “Was I pissed off about anything in this film”. These concepts, while not as structurally complicated as the demands of critics, are biases that lean towards Hollywood mainstream, the classical Hollywood style and very clear and safe narratives that they’ve seen before. Thus we don’t necessarily need to raise the audience as some special “untainted” person as a reviewer of films.
And I have not seen Little Women yet but even on this site several people have expressed that they haven’t seen any previous versions of Little Women and yet they understood the structure completely. So perhaps understaning it doesn’t need background information, perhaps Sasha just had trouble with it. I’d imagine that if she hasn’t already, a rewatch might clear things up (at least for me often when I don’t understand why people adore a film so much, I presume that it’s a me-thing and simply rewatch it, often finding the problems I had disappearing, I’m for example planning to do that with Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood pretty soon). And even if that doesn’t help, why be insistent on presuming that everyone else is “wrong”? Most people here have movies every season that they hate (I have several this season, particularly Joker) but we don’t go around attacking everyone who loves these movies (even if we criticize their particular choices) and discussing them as if they’re a cult because of our disliking of those films. No individual movie is worth that
Critics tend to go into more detail when they don’t like something. I think it’s easier to write about a film you dislike rather than one you love. I mean, the one you love just sort of works and it’s more instinctive. I think it takes longer to analyse why we like certain films more than others than why we hate certain films more than others.
The audience can be disregarded by looking at the Uncut Gems score. Audience feels anxiery watching it, anxiety is unpleasant, therefore film is bad. A very narrow-minded attitude.
I have quite a few friends who share the same concern about the going back and forth between two time frames. They feel that the editing is messy. It chopped the performances a lot and they lacked continuity. And the death of Beth did not have the impact it aimed at.
Also having problem with casting of Chalamet as Laurie. And to make it worse, the casting of hunky and super sexy French stud Louis Garrel as Bhaer. It really confused the audience of the rationale why Jo turned down Laurie. The previous versions of Little Women did not have the issue. While watching it, I immediately though about Gillian Armstrong’s “My brilliant career”. It made perfect sense why Judy Davis turned down Sam Neill, who should be an ideal husband for most women.
I also have issue of this relentless campaign of pushing Gerwig into the Oscar race. We have better films directed by females this year. It unfortunately will backlash with the voters IMHO.
OT: Almost Famous is still really fecking good. One of the best in the last two decades. Can’t decide who was more worthy of the Oscar, Frances or Kate? Crudup also deserved more love. At least the Academy got it right with Crowe’s script.
Carry on.
I love taking the road less travelled with my movies. Sometimes I’m surprised. Sometimes I’m disappointed. Likewise when I listen too much to others or take what either critics OR guilds like AMPAS say as the best I am sometimes surprised and disappointed. No-one wants to be in a circle of one. We want our tastes to be validated and ‘their’ tastes validated by us. After 40 years + of Oscar watching and having exposure to all the saturation of sites and measurements of film ratings, I make up my own mind what I like and what I think is great, and most importantly WHY.
In television production I was nurtured to not only be able to have the confidence to say which take of a shoot we would use in editing, but why. It wasn’t enough to say take 1 or take 4, but why. That has served me well. Being able to prosecute and sometimes defend a view on a film or a performance is something I value.
Coming here for more than a decade I’ve learned a lot about advocacy and impassioned argument in putting forward a case for or against a piece of celluloid. I’m always thankful for that opportunity to express my own too.
Dave, I cant find your recent email. Can you drop me a line when you get a chance? Thanks, good buddy.
Hi Ryan have forwarded emails to you. Sending you my very best wishes
The fact that the best film of the year, Under the Silver Lake, has a 58 RT critic score and 56 audience score tells me everything I need to know about Rotten Tomatoes.
Under The Silver Lake??? That must be some mighty fine piff you got there
Let’s reassess in 20 years…
In 20 years, it will be on a double bill from hell with Southland Tales.
I could be long gone in 20 years, who knows, but to paraphrase a great man I’ll be thinking, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I never to watch Under The Silver Lake again.”
I admit – I check out rottentomatoes. I don’t take it as gospel, and I usual click on top critics to see what they think. As a kid of the 80’s, I always looked forward to reading the reviews of Ebert, Canby and the like. You’re right, real film criticism is dying. It seems that for every Manhola Dargis, there are 10 Grace Randolphs.
Sasha! Just wow… Let. It. Go.
You did an excellent job in this post (as usual) with history and explaining aggregate scores (even though Metacritic is a far more accurate representation of critical opinion). But is seems your real reason for doing all of this is another sadly misguided attempt to try to justify or hide your very weak central argument: you didn’t follow the “character arcs” of Little Women (though confusingly you also state you are already familiar with the characters and story). I guess because you cannot begin to comprehend the love LW is receiving (at the box office AND with critics AND audience opinion scores)– you crank out a very long historical background piece to try to make some sense of it all.
Here’s the thing: I am an adult male completely unfamiliar with the plot points or character arcs of Little Women. Yet I had NO trouble following Gerwig’s amazing and inventive adaptation –flash backs and flash forwards included– neither did any of the people I saw the film with.
Also: you state more than once that you CANNOT find a review that addresses Gerwig’s approach to chronology in her adaptation. You also state you are familiar with and read all the major critics. Well- you clearly DO NOT read them anymore because the NYT review AND the Gleiberman review AND every other major review I saw ALL not only mention Gerwig’s chronological approach– they single it out as a major ASSET and one of the main reasons they like the film!
Look, I get you didn’t like it. I even believe you may have WANTED to like it. But generating historical paragraphs about the disconnect between critics and audience reactions (however informative and well-written) STILL does nothing to further your contention that Little Women is as undeserving you continue to imply and, often, flat-out state. This whole thing is much much more simple. You flat out didn’t like it. End of story. Just own that and leave it at that. Don’t try to write your way out of it.
I think it’s just about time Elsa weighs in on the subject.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6bf22866ee66eede6b2914b56dda9e885cac0232c0dda089d06cf7765853158b.gif
Literally every review and discussion of the film brings up the structural choices made. Some praise it and some do not. To say that it is not being discussed is untruthful. We went through the total bashing of Lady Bird only 2 years ago. It’s tiresome really.
I’ve been reading Awards Daily for over 10 years…
This may be one of Sasha’s best articles!
Sasha the dissenter. That’s one of the things I like about her. She doesn’t like to belong to a group who just think the same. In general, I agree with her about Metacritic score and especially RT scores. It’s like they’ve become the end all and be all. I have felt for some time now that the scores in this decade have been exaggerated and some of them might be ten points too high. For example, Mulholland Drive and The Tree of Life are two of the best films this century yet they don’t have exceptional MC scores that shows how highly they are rated or how great they would become. MC and RT scores don’t tell you about their qualities, year end lists and awards are better guard. Some great film, like Zodiac and Synecdoche New York, are balnked completely.
I agree, it’s one of her best qualities. It does strike me as odd, however, as others have mentioned, that she still seems to be attributing the success of Little Women and backlash against its relative shut-outs awards-wise to “hive minds” and “firing squads” and “woke twitter” (which is kind of alarmist and unfair language IMO, as well as participatory in misogynist tropes/language) simply because she herself did not like it, and because a few of the people she saw the movie with at a screening didn’t seem to like it either. I would agree with Sasha’s perspective more so if she were interpreting the success of Little Women and Gerwig herself as examples of feminist causes being used to support only “mainstream”/easily consumable/non-challenging/palatable art/artists; I wouldn’t fully agree with that assessment (I think that Lady Bird for example was an often challenging and brilliantly directed masterpiece), but I would be more willing to hear that critique out in comparison the the current claims I’ve been reading, for example, that women in general are being given “passes” when it comes to film criticism/awards, considering that history (including extremely recent and even current history) has consistently demonstrated that this is NOT the case. It’s the insinuation that Gerwig’s success can ONLY be the result of hive mind/click bait feminism/firing squads, rather than ANY concession to the idea that most people actually think it’s an extremely deserving piece of work, which rubs me the wrong way.
Which is all to say – I think that there are elements Sasha is right about (about how film is consumed and filtered today through media like twitter, about how some women seem to get rallied behind while others don’t and why that’s the case), but it’s sometimes hard to grasp through sometimes very dismissive language (the same thing happened during the Lady Bird year). I think it’s possible to acknowledge both that Gerwig may be genuinely and honestly considered to be a master auteur in the making (if not already a master auteur despite her brief filmography) by many out there, critics and public alike, as well as discuss the problematic ways in which women like Gerwig are desired to succeed seemingly at the expense of other women directors/artists.
For example – I hated the Irishman. I understand intellectually why others think it’s a masterpiece – I very simply did not. So I sympathize with Sasha disliking Little Women. But I don’t think that the consensus around the Irishman being a masterpiece is the result of a hive mind or firing squad; despite how much I thoroughly didn’t enjoy it, I don’t think that Sasha’s graded the movie “on a curve” because of some ulterior motive to defend movies made by men against twitter/click-bait feminists (and if I were to make the claim that she only defends the movie because she hates “woke twitter,” I think I would rightfully be called out as being absurd). I might think that she’s grading on a curve because of her personal love for Scorsese, but that’s a very different criticism and conversation.
What is all this about you hating The Irishman? Hate is strong word and I use it sparingly. With films in the Oscar, I have only used it to describe Three Billboards. I dislike Green Book a lot, but do not hate it. I thought Bohemian Rhapsody was horrible and deserved nothing. Jojo is a just messed up film, but I don’t hate it. The film that is closest my feelings towards Three Billboards is Joker, but I still don’t hate it even though it could have a negative affect on society, because I feel it’s just so badly done and just a sensationalist film. That is why I would like to know why you hate The Irishman? Not that there is anything wrong with a hating any film.
You’re right, hate’s a strong word. Mostly I thought it was just ineffective and boring. I actually did hate Three Billboards, and I think I remember sharing that deep dislike with you back when the Three Billboards Wars were waging on this site two years ago. I’ll comment soon when I have a bit more time to explicate more thoroughly what turned me off about Irishman – even if, again, I certainly understand from an intellectual perspective why many love it. Tensions run so high on this site I drift into hyperbole more often than I’d like, which only contributes to things ….
You said it was ineffective and boring. I think the first is a valid criticism, even though I don’t share that opinion. However, I don’t accept boring as a fair criticism of any film. I think that’s just lazy. But is that a reason to hate a film? Maybe you meant dislike and was just trying to make a big example about respecting others views?
Sorry, I’ve not read your comment properly. As I thought you were being hyperbole when you were just using The Irishman as example. I thought that was the reason.
I understand what you mean. I’m not trying to pressure to explain yourself or anything like that. I was just wondering why it provoked such strong reaction since it’s not controversial film in anyway. If you just can’t stand Scorsese films or gangster films, I understand. I dislike Tarantino films because I feel he just ruins his films with his strange fantasies. It’s like he is still a teenager or something. I use the word hate when I see a clear deception on the part of the director. That’s why I hated Three Billboards. I hesitate to use that for Joker because the director was not clever enough to be deceptive. You are one of the smartest and most sensitive contributors, so I (we) would like to hear you views because it adds a lot to my (our) understanding. It’s intriguing me because I don’t think there’s anything to hate in The Irishman.
Haha thank you for the kind compliments, making me blush! Didn’t know I had a fan here! The feelings are most certainly reciprocated.
So when it comes to the Irishman – what did not work for me and what was most ineffective were the temporal structuring/flashbacks, the de-aging technology, the general script and pacing, the editing, and the character balancing/development, all of which I thought negatively and mutually reinforced one another. What I could appreciate and thought was done well, but what I ultimately wouldn’t call masterful, was the cinematography, the themes of the movie, and the acting. I understood what DeNiro was conveying and could appreciate his acting, but it ultimately fell flat for me in a movie where the pacing was too slow, the de-aging too unconvincing, and the time jumps too difficult to follow (partially because of the minimalist plot, partly because of the bare-threads script, but especially because the de-aging was so unconvincing; I legitimately could not tell when DeNiro was supposed to be 35 or 55, making the various temporal narratives difficult to distinguish from one another). I thought Pesci and Pacino were very good, and fairly compelling to watch, but again, the script and pacing were, IMO, very unbalanced, so there was very little at stake for me in following where they were going. I also was not convinced by the supposed friendships between the various characters – and this is a fault of both DeNiro’s acting, the bad de-aging which made it very difficult to follow his emotions, and the script and pacing – and I was not sure whether or when I was supposed to understand their friendships/relationships as positive ones or not. I wondered whether this was part of the point of the movie – e.g., was it deliberately ambivalent? – but it ultimately lowered the stakes of the murder for me. Which, again, I suppose could be part of the point of the movie, but I simply didn’t find it a very compelling point personally.
I also thought the editing was very confusing – and not just in the sense that it made the plot difficult to follow; it made the tone of the movie difficult to follow as well. I was not sure whether or when the editing was supposed to be ironic and funny, whether/when it was trying to be aloof and edgy, or nostalgic, etc. For example – the various cuts to different hit jobs/car bombings; I wondered whether this was supposed to be funny in a Tarantino sort of way, or whether it was intended to convey the senselessness of mob life, but either way, it left me deeply ambivalent and ultimately not caring. I again wondered whether or not that was Scorsese’s goal – to get me to not care about the mob characters as part of his larger project to de-glamorize them, which I think was Scorsese’s most impressive and admirable feat; however, if that was his goal, I wonder whether he achieved it a little too well, because not only did I come out not caring about these deglamorized mobsters, I came out not caring about the movie itself, period.
I think that the themes of remorse, ambivalence, etc. are all good and compelling ones, and they are what make me understand why people admire this movie. However, from a more personal perspective, I will admit my own biases in not really caring about Sheeran’s journey of remorse. Part of me is personally kind of done with caring about what racist old men feel or don’t feel, and this just stems from my personal life – and I’m especially not inclined to sit in front of them for 3 hours. It reminded me of my childhood in the worst way possible – of my Cuban grandfather taking me to get a haircut at one of the Cuban barbershops in town, where I’d have to sit and listen to very boring, old, racist, homophobic, past-their-prime macho men ruminate about when they were very boring, racist, homophobic middle-aged men. Ultimately, from a personal perspective (and this isn’t a critique, but it’s still something I experienced), The Irishman simply … bored me. I could not be brought to care about almost any aspect of it – whether or not this was Marty’s intent is unclear, but even if it was his intent, I’m not sure how much I think it’s a great one. (I also mention my grandfather was Cuban because culturally/ideologically, the old guard Cuban community has many affinities with the Italian communities depicted on screen – similar Catholic Old Country/Mediterranean roots, and as the film itself depicts, intertwined histories in America, etc., which makes the world of the Italian Mob Movie rather familiar indeed, even if in a very indirect way – familiar energies)
Also, DeNiro’s contact lenses were a blasphemous spit in the face of cinema. No one except mob history buffs even knows who Sheeran was, let alone what he was supposed to look like – blue eyes weren’t integral to the plot or to DeNiro’s character development, so why keep them? I thought they were immensely distracting and I’m kind of shocked Scorsese went with them.
RE: Awards Daily – I certainly sympathize Sasha disliking a movie everyone else thinks is a masterpiece. However, I don’t think there’s a great conspiracy going on between film critics to grade Irishman on a curve. I think they may be clouded by their love of Scorsese, just as perhaps there are people who are clouded by a love of Gerwig. But this is one of the reasons Sasha’s insinuation that the love of Little Women MUST be because people want to “award a woman, any woman” sits so wrongly with me. It also strikes me as odd that she continues to invoke “woke twitter” in inconsistent ways – for example, she bemoaned “woke twitter’s” appraisal of Green Book, which she enjoyed, and now she’s using “woke twitter” talking points (Greta Gerwig’s is a palatable movie about white women for white women, in her opinion, hence its success) to take down Little Women, a movie she did not like. In one scenario, wokeness is accused of taking down a movie she considers great; in the other scenario, she herself is acting rather “woke” in order to take down a movie she thinks was bad, while simultaneously attributing its success to a “woke” firing squad holding guns up to the heads of dissenters. It’s also odd that she once bemoaned the demise of Suffragette because of the very criticism she’s now using against Little Women (palatable movie about white feminism, etc.)
Okay, thanks for that. We are a bit more wiser about why you didn’t like it.
“I legitimately could not tell when DeNiro was supposed to be 35 or 55, making the various temporal narratives difficult to distinguish from one another.”
This is the biggest and really only thing I had a problem with when watching first time. The deaging didn’t work for De Niro, but I don’t think it takes a lot from his performance or the film. But if you didn’t like the fillm overall, that’s an easy thing to point as a reason. One of the reasons I love The Irishman is that it seems like Scorsese is doing some reflecting himself. Not just him, but all his gang. This is not the kind of film they would have made earlier in their careers. This is the film to cap his gangster movies.That’s why it is so beautiful to me.
Yeah, the introspection and quasi-autobiographical qualities come through are also why I understand so many people love the movie – it’s a personal connection I don’t quite have to Scorsese, so it doesn’t do much for me, but it’s a compelling reason to love and enjoy the movie.
I don’t think it’s just a personal connection. Sure, if you are a fan of Scorsese, you are more likely to appreciate or get it. But I think that’s not reason. If you have watched enough of his films, especially the gangster movies, you’d understand why it’s do different to earlier films and it seems to personal from the director. I would think the same for any great direcctor that had similar reflection on his work, whether I am big fan of theirs or not.
I wrote this before reading/knowing about Sasha’s extended piece on Little Women a few days ago, in which she does more clearly make the argument about feminism being used to defend an unchallenging/palatable movie made by a white woman. Which is a critique I do have more sympathy with. However, there was a lot more in that article which I think was unwarranted, and I do still think it’s unfair to so wholly dismiss consensus about the brilliance of the movie simply because Sasha herself didn’t like it, and to do so on the assumption that the movie is only being called brilliant because Gerwig is a woman and there’s a firing squad squashing all resistance. That being said, kudos to Sasha for raising really important and difficult points about who mainstream feminism serves and who it doesn’t. I just wish she didn’t resort to sexist tropes/language to get that point across. As I’ve already written, it’s ok to acknowledge that many do genuinely believe it’s an incredible movie, and to acknowledge that maybe it is a great movie even if you don’t personally like it – while also critiquing the social structures which have partially allowed for its success at the (again, apparent) exclusion of other directors.
Sasha seems to be making the mistake of confusing Gerwig and all women. She may think Gerwig doesn’t deserve all the accolade she’s gotten, but she’s implying that’s what ALL are getting. I would say it’s wrong on both counts, but even more clearly so when she generalises.
I mangled my example. That’s not what I meant. What I meant is that good to average films are given way high scores in the high 80’s or even in the 90’s, while some films that are clearly recognised as among the best of the decade or century have a score that doesn’t reflect their quality.
Sasha the dissenter? Who doesn’t like to go along with the critical trends? That may be an image some want to promote, but it’s not borne out by the evidence.
On December 13, she posted her favourite films of the year. I list them below, along with their Rotten Tomatoes ratings:
1917 — 90%
Parasite — 99%
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — 85%
Ford v Ferrari — 92%
Dolemite is My Name — 97%
Jojo Rabbit — 79%
The Irishman — 96%
Queen and Slim — 83%
Pain and Glory — 97%
Blinded by the Light — 89%
Honey Boy — 94%
Every film she lists is critically loved. Every film she picks is part of the end of the year critical conversation, except maybe Blinded by the Light, which is not exactly a radical, out there choice. Her taste is not that of a dissenter — her taste is largely consistent with the critical consensus. Which is fine, but it’s not dissent. And criticizing the “hive mind” of critics when that is your list of favourite films of the year is a bit rich.
And, of all the foreign films this year, and all the films she saw at Cannes, her only forgeign film picks are the two most critically lauded and publicly-embraced foreign films of the year — Parasite and Pain and Glory.
Everyone loves what they love. It’s cool. But this idea that she is some radical bucking the critical consensus because she didn’t like Little Women is nonsense.
You’re missing the point, dude. You can go back over the years to back up your point if you want, but that’s besides the point. You are criticising her for liking films that overlap with critics. I mean, the Academy and Globes are accused of not caring about what critics like yet every year they nominate films that have huge critical acclaim and it’s rare for a film with a low critical approval to win their awards. Last year was the exception and you saw the uproar. She is not objecting to films that are praised by critics, but that they shouldn’t be just a critics thing and should appeal to film going public, too. I think you will find many of her picks are more popular with the public than the films that usually win critics awards or the top ten critics list. She likes Jojo and it’s not a film that would be any near the top critics’ list. She has a certain taste and isn’t going like films that are panned or anything like that. You really think Sasha should champion films that are critically panned? That’s absurd.
Hollywood is a joke.
And yet here you are.
Yet you voted for a game show host
President Trump didn’t host a game show, moron. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. The University of Pennsylvania is an Ivy league school with a 2% acceptance rate. Where did you graduate from? The University of your Mother’s Basement? Don’t kill yourself after he wins a landslide in 2020. How does it feel to be a sheepish loser?
I stand corrected. It was a competitive reality show.
Who are you and what have you done?
I think Greta made a great movie. It is ridiculous to say that people root for the movie just because she is a woman. Last year Debra Granik made the best English language movie and that movie got squat in major awards. Chloe Zhao also made a great movie. There are around 10 solid movies made by women, several by women of color. And then there is Charlie’s Angels.
Love love loved Leave No Trace and The Rider.
And I loved Little Women.
I don’t know that people are saying that people root for the movie because she is a woman, but it is definitely a factor in awards nominations going back to the ridiculous shaming two years ago by Natalie Portman at the Globes. Or should I say, attempted shaming.
I got to see so much good stuff over the last few days and Dolemite Is My Name was definitely among the most enjoyable screenings I had. Christ, Murphy’s performance is among my favorite this year and I think that in a year like this for the Best Actor category, it says a lot. His performance is probably my second favorite Lead Actor performance of the year after Adam Driver’s incredible turn in Marriage Story. The dude was freaking phenomenal and the film is flat-out hilarious and at times deeply touching. I can’t blame Sasha for supporting the film the way she did, despite the fact I also find it ridiculous that it’s almost in all of her category predictions when it’s been left out for much of this year’s awards season. I honestly don’t think the film is going to win anything major which is really a shame and Murphy is still an “if” even for a nomination. At the end of the day, I think he’ll get a nomination, hell, I wouldn’t mind watching him win for his fantastic work but yeah, to say that this film has as much chances at major awards recognition as many of Sasha’s posts would imply doesn’t make sense at all.
Anyway, if it were up to me, the film would definitely score nominations for Picture, Screenplay and three astonishing performances that totally floored me from a better than ever Eddie Murphy, a H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S Wesley Snipes and the terrific Da’Vine Joy Randolph with whom I’d switch the otherwise very good Jennifer Lopez for Hustlers any day.
Just to adjust… Pain and Glory, 97, audiences 92 (286). Similar to Knives Out (only way less audience votes)
Sasha hates Baumbach and Gerwig lets be honest. She can’t just nicely express her dislike of Marriage Story or Little Women, she has to write think pieces unfairly dragging them.
I don’t know about “hate”. But while she can change her mind about people like Damien Chazelle, for instance … it hasn’t happened for Baumbach or Gerwig just yet. I don’t think she has “loved” most or any of their work. There’s something about their output that doesn’t sit with her aesthetically, structurally or thematically. I don’t think she thinks they are bad people or make “bad” movies — she says she was all set to love Little Women before it started. And she acknowledges lots to like about it, actually (the second half, the acting, the visuals). I just think it can be frustrating when someone(s) keeps making movies where you’re waiting to be like: “yes! I got it. Loved that” — and it keeps not happening for you. That said, take-downs, subtle or not, are not fun to read about or absorb.
Why is the onus on her to “‘nicely express” dislike? Is that the standard around here?
Tell it to the OUATIH haters on here. We can put down Scorsese, Tararntino and their work in whatever terms we want. But we must treat the blond with kid gloves, don’t you know. This is just like Lady Bird and the insane overhype.
I deleted so I could rephrase my opinion, which was catty and personal but totally true.
I think the problem is that Gerwig has it too easy for the quality of what she has produced relative to others. We can’t give Bigelow a second Oscar nomination for Zero Dark Thirty or DuVernay a first nomination for Selma, but she can “poor Greta” her way to a directing nomination in this crowded field? It’s a little bit offensive. I don’t like how some gifted female directors who don’t happen to be (supposedly) good-looking former actresses have to bow and scrape for any little bit of attention, yet everybody wants to swoon over Gerwig and go for your throat if you disagree. I am sad to see that it is so widespread. There are posters on this site who went in on Sasha that I honestly can’t believe did so.
I keep going back in and editing this. I am sorry. This hurts me, and I should know by now not to be hurt by this BS Oscar racket after seeing the movies I love lose time after time after time. (Social Network, Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, La La Land, Three Billboards, ASIB)
There is no unfair dragging. She pointed that she and others saw structural issues and other critics aren’t even attempting to acknowledge whether these risks or techniques actually worked out with reasoning.
I would respectfully suggest that one can dislike a movie for artistic reasons and that hardly is proof that one has PERSONAL HATRED of the fimmaker who made the film one is dragging.
The majority of, “Movie critics” are rabid left wingers. It’s Fake News!
Sounds like something Trump would say. Is the criminal in jail yet?
Is your mother tired of living with you?
I couldn’t agree more. Using woman card to campaign for Little Woman is as ugly as using race card to campaign for Dolmite.
What did Gerwig do to Sasha? Lmao. I am not a fan of Little Women either but almost everyone I know loved it and I couldn’t care less. I don’t understand why she’s getting so worked up about it.
LITTLE WOMEN is absolutely one of the very best films of 2019 and Greta Gerwig is a master class director. It richly deserves the critical praise it has received from all over the map.
masterclass my ass
You must have a nice ass then
Safe to assume everyone here at AD has a nice ass.
Another article complaining about how unthinkable it is that some people like Little Women and she doesn’t.
you completely missed the point
The overall underlying message here is she understands what moviemaking is, she knows what good/bad movie is. If you agree with her taste then you are fine. But if you dare to disagree then it means you dont know what you are talking About or you have a different agenda. She will not mind attacking your credibility or preference by using every possible so called fact or stat out there! Both critics and audiences (at least a big majority) seem to like this movie. So there must be something wrong with them! She forgets the fact that many people like this movie despite its structure, something that I personally think makes this version of the movie better. Oh hell no! If she says the structure is flawed then it should be universally agreed as she sometimes doesnt know the difference between a personal opinion and a fact.
I really appreciate her passion for movies. I dont think it is a problem to push/support movies that she personally likes. Also like everyone else She is free to voice her negative opinion about a movie and performance but when she does that by attacking others, I lose respect for that.
Also she keeps talking about “merit” etc. but as we know if Erivo or Lupingo gets nominations she will push for them in every possible way arguing that either one should win so one of themcould be the second african american best actress winner.
I wish she used her passion and great writing skill (and mastery of words) to write more positive articles rather than these attack pieces.
My then wife hated Ladybird because it reminded her of relationship with her mother.
My now ex-wife hated Marriage Story because it reminded her of our divorce.
Yet we still talk.
And we both loved Little Women.
Why don’t you write it yourself? Instead of whining about it.
I think Little Women is merely okay (been there, done that), but it looks like you were just looking for an excuse to insult its supporters, which obscures your valid point.
Get in the ring. Don’t just bitch about what other critics say. You’re a good writer. Write a piece that you clearly think the world needs more of.
“The ring” is this site. Sorry that not everybody is swooning over the quirky blond princess.
I don’t get why everybody gets all gooey and wants to defend her all the time. I don’t see them coming to the defense of movies that were way better, whether this year or in previous years. It’s very unsettling, and you didn’t find it with other female directors who are more intellectual and take on more daring and mentally stimulating projects. It’s made me hate the Oscar race even earlier than usual. I thought that it would happen next week when my favorite movie gets skunked for who-knows-what.
It seems like any other light, happy trifle, wouldn’t really be respected, but put Gerwig’s name on it, and boy oh boy—not liking it is like putting down somebody’s religion.
So write one on this site? That’s what I’m saying?
She has written things about the responses Little Women has received, but she hasn’t written a review as far as I understand. It’s so puzzling to me. She says a proper criticism on Little Women is needed, but she expects others to do it instead of doing it herself.
By the way you don’t have to be sorry. I couldn’t care less whether someone likes Gerwig’s movie or not. She’s just a popular girl of the moment. I just don’t like people whining and not doing anything.
Oh, I see. I get it now.
Are some of us “allowed” to love LITTLE WOMEN Julie? And as far as “films that were way better” what are these films? On my year end list it sits in a towering spot at #4. It is far away the finest adaptation of this beloved novel.
1. Never Look Away (Germany)
2. 1917
3. A Hidden Life
4. Little Women
5. Waves
6. Uncut Gems
7. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (France)
8. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
9. Ad Astra
10. Transit (Germany)
11. The Irishman
12. The Lighthouse
13. Parasite (South Korea)
14. The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao (Brazil)
15. Synonyms (Israel/France)
16. The Wild Pear Tree (Turkey)
17. Jo Jo Rabbit
18. The Two Popes (UK/USA)
19. An Elephant Sitting Still (China)
20. A Marriage Story
21. The Last Black Man in San Francisco
22. Woman at War (Iceland)
23. Queen and Slim
24. Ash is the Purest White (Kong Kong)
25. Luce and Midsommar (tie)
I also liked these films, those they missed my Top 25: Pain and Glory, Giant Little Ones; Honey Boy, Sauvage/Wild, Cats, Give Me Liberty, Diane; Atlantics; Honeyland; Pain and Glory; The Peanut Butter Falcon; The Mustang; Ford vs. Ferrari; A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood; Wild Rose; Dark Waters. Dolemite., Sorry Angel
Hence in what I have concluded was an exceeding strong year in film at home and abroad LITTLE WOMEN is in my Top 5 at #4. From where I am standing that is spectacular regard.
This is a superb and varied list. While I have not seen LW yet, based on your taste I am pretty sure I will like it!!
how brilliantly well said
You are allowed to not like Little Women. You are allowed to not like the structural filmmaking decisions made in the production of Little Women. No one is trying to say that you don’t have the right to express your opinion. Use your pulpit to express those opinions as much as you want! But at least do your readers the service of couching it in intellectual honesty rather than blaming the entire critical community for…liking a really good movie?
Don’t pretend that critics aren’t discussing the structure (they are; they just get it and like it). Don’t pretend that audiences don’t love it too – the supposed critic-audience disconnect that is the foundation for this whole article doesn’t seem to exist, given that the respective RT scores are 95 and 92 (perhaps this article would’ve been better written about Jojo Rabbit? Or perhaps you were just looking for an excuse to bash Little Women?). I didn’t know the plot at all going in; I followed along just fine and have since seen the film a second time. (Also – were you familiar with the plot or not? You indicate both in the article, depending on which is most convenient to the point you’re trying to make at the time.)
I think sasha proved her point really well. It’s also a wokeness problem. Mother, Last Jedi, films made by black film makers get a bump on RT. Good Liar, Three Billboards, Isle of Dogs got his hard by critics for faux PC slights. Look at critics in the TV world gushing over Lena Waithe, Donald Glover, Aziz Ansari, Kenya Barris, Issa Rae or Schitt’s Creek for further evidence when they’re not necessarily better shows
Where is the actual evidence of this, though? What evidence do you or Ms. Stone have that anyone has gone out of their way to give better ratings to minority or women filmmakers? In this very article she tries to make that argument about Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, but the actual evidence provided is…nearly identical audience and critics scores. Are the audiences also giving a “wokeness” bump? Remind me how that worked out for The Last Jedi and Ghostbusters.
Interesting that all of the shows you think are getting unfair attention are by minority creators. Also interesting that you provide no counterpoints.
Sasha : In your Rotten Tomatoes list you don’t have A Hidden Life which has a higher score than JoJo Harriet Joker and Bombshell . It’s a wonderful moving inspiring film it is too long but unlike his last three films Malik seems back. I’d pay to see it again which is more than I can say for The Irishman which has to be the best example of the critics going overboard for a film that at least for me was undeserving of such adulation . Also after seeing Cats the reverse seems to be true that the hive mind giveth and the hive mind taketh away . Cats is not the disaster i expected it to be .
Steve Barr:
I totally agree, A HIDDEN LIFE is one of the very best films of 2019. And CATS is far from a disaster!
I thought Cats was hilarious. I loved every moment of it. Given how impossible this musical is to adapt to film, it worked surprisingly well. There were some things that were just plain bad (the frantic cutting, the rather boring camerawork that didn’t quite fit the visual style, the sound mixing) but in the hands of a greater director, a true visionary, it could’ve been a real masterpiece. It wasn’t that far from it. Still a very enjoyable film in all its bizarreness and silliness.
Also, completely agree on A Hidden Life. It’s wonderful.
Why would the industry shape their behavior around what the critics want? You have to make movies to understand movies. If you’re Picasso you don’t paint what critics want. That’s what you critics don’t get. Art is personal and it’s got to do with something that burns deep inside of you.
If only artists understand or appreciate art, what would be the point? The whole point is that you can understand and appreciate it despite not being an artist. Understanding the art and understanding the artist are two different things. It’s not about doing what critics want. It’s about appreciating great art. I’ll give you a great example, the industry awarded its best award to How Green is my Valley while critics gave theirs to Citizen Kane. Vertigo was ignored by the industry and it was elevated by critics years later. Industry ignored Hitchcock pretty much all his life but critics recognise his films among the best film ever. It’s about appreciating art. Anyway, only a handful of filmmakers make great art and vast majority make average or mediocre films. And just because you are a filmmaker doesn’t mean you can recognise great art let alone make it. Don’t pretend like they are all Picassos.
As someone who hadn’t seen or read any previous iteration of this story, I fell in love with this film and can promise you that I had precisely zero difficulty following along at any point of the film, partly because of the craft of the actors, the contrast of Yorick Le Saux’s cinematography, and Greta’s sensitive grasp of the characters’ rich inner-lives. And it worked brilliantly because the flashbacks have this wonderfully romantic nostalgia about them that makes you want to luxuriate and live in every inch of the frame until the cuts to the present jolt you back into reality and punch you in the face, forcing you to reconcile with the ever-forward motion of time and all the love, loss, and change that comes with it, just as Jo and the rest of the characters have to come to terms with. I can’t even imagine watching any other version that follows a linear fashion at this point in fear of how dull I’d find it compared to this film.
So now that someone has offered you the explanation you’ve been demanding in order to stop insinuating that critics not being as confused as you seemed to be by the device or what it lent to the story are either grading on a curve or virtue-signalling in fear of some imagined “PC police,” I will say that it’s my favorite American movie of the year — better than The Irishman, Hollywood, Marriage Story, 1917, Jojo, Joker, Ferarri, even Parasite (I still find Memories of Murder to be Bong’s peak masterpiece). It’s my third favorite overall just behind Pain and Glory and Portait of a Lady on Fire, and I’m so glad that it’s proven to be a smashing success both financially and critically with an A- Cinemascore and strong user ratings on the aggregate sites as well.
This’ll be my first version of LW too and I’m glad because it actually looks entertaining unlike the other versions that I’ve been avoiding my whole life.
I adore it too, though I have it at #4 behind only NEVER LOOK AWAY. 1917 and A HIDDEN LIFE and ahead of WAVES, UNCUT GEMS, PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE, AD ASTRA, HOLLY WOOD, TRANSIT and THE IRISHMAN.
Yes I agree and thank you for writing this. RT has way too much sway these days.
Look at the high marks for the two films with large Asian casts. Parasite and The Farewell will still get no Oscar acting nominations because Hollywood just looks past the actors. The Last Emperor, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Slumdog Millionaire, The Life of Pi and a few others have been recognized throughout years, but not for acting.
Meanwhile, dozens of white actors with multiple nominations throughout their careers score over and over with lackluster performances.
Anne Archer (Fatal Attraction) and Anne Ramsey (Throw Mama From the Train) get recognized over Joan Chen (The Last Emperor)? Bullshit.
Judi Dench (Chocolat) and Frances McDormand (Almost Famous) get a nod over Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger? Whatever.
Sadly, it’s going to happen again. Diversity in Hollywood means inviting a token black person to the party. That’ll stop the “Oscar so White” complaints…
Dench and McDormand are two of my favourite actress of al time. I will not take any issue with their nominations, even though Yeoh deserved a nomination at the very least.
The Killing Fields, Best supporting actor goes to… you’re welcome
Sasha as a film fan and devotee to your website in that context I I certain manu others have ” fallen” in love with you no lol it NOT literal love i trusting you and others can work out what I mean. ( so if your a dufus Nd you subscribe to being here as online troll a ” hive mind gatecrasher” don’t judge what you don’t know. If you don’t know what I mean then that only reinforces Sasha direct profound point at heart of her article that you judge fall into line with critics and the ” hive” you lack ability think objectively independently and on merit not judt vfollowing what others think from online community.
People know me through here over years know all too well (some still do nut reflects badly on minority not me) to take educated intelligent independent think outside box stand on my views which most you do I grateful for that.
Objective non- consensus merit baseddebate bout films is what sorely lacking I do love deeply admire Sashas courage as online blogger to” rage against the online machine “) constructively being supremely well informed and then above all else this is where her post a single paragraph all Sasha bold innovative posts in least decade one stay 2irh me for life here online
” Then in 2004, after Million Dollar Baby swooped in at the 11th hour to shake things up with its sudden impact, every Best Picture winner has come from the curated ranks of the festival circuit. Rather than wait for audience reaction, the narrative is now driven by film critics and bloggers, with many movies groomed for the Oscars not even seen by the public until after nominations”
And the cutting through self made arrogance veil of denial and ignorance ambivalence to core reason wherecritics gonebadly humiliatingky wrong out of step totally with public year on year:
” sacking ….of renowned, respected critics their peers and readers in print and online admired cos they were…informed…objective and stirreddebqte in way engages public ”
rather than banal vain pathetic ego and selfish power trip of entitlement that leads to critics abusing their responsibility duty of care to imm3rse public in their debate like dead doornail hanging fordear life when they know one day approach stubbornly resisting dropping on floor all while digging hole for itself in public eye. This is analogy sums upgrading gulf and disturbing self serving alliance between critics academy vs.audiences .
I was wondering what happened to glieberman? Schwartzbaum, Ao Scott etc…now I knowthank you Sasha you pinpointed with absolute precision to expose point where academy fell out step with public far more than in any other previous decade .
What bet for instance ” the dark knight” had match by critics and audiences prob both raring over 90% each at minimum and totally inforgiveably g lot snubbedexceltlqndmark performance heath ledger. Whether like it or not Joker will haunt academy and anti- comic adaptation critics i convinced more thwn ever no qwuestion critics use appeasement of online mob to justify film elevated as Oscar contender. Now we kn oowstart of online rage began on bout 2007. And need be put in it a cage fast social media as collective does not represent educated informed views of majority of us who can overlook the hive mind . And again i in f uurious ag r eemrnt with Sasha.
One wonders judgement of bosses of publications of new york times and all publicatiions sasha outlined and true motivw sacking eenowned reoitable educated objective publicly inclusive critics . If budget cuts neededhow outfitting propaganda spurned social network links finance they pump like bunch of sewerage discharged upstream rathee than down i guarab5ee likes pf now past critics still be there to date.
This proves too what I been saying that politics takes precedent a feeds more broadly amongst these publications social media machine.
What the fuk may we enquire this raises question academy must address pronto feel obligatio align themsekvwd with undemocratic egos of left wing arrogant socialist pigs who replaced clear as water all too see measured balanced prior critics. And let online bullies dictate academy members own judgement?
Honestly I say with irony as we know disgracefullyEndgame will not get nominations in majorcategories it clear to me reason why not just it comic book adaptation but it doesn’t engage with socialist online way enough pass the pub test.
Yet such is ignorance of online crowd does anyone remember significant moment explain Thanos moment he villain he bad was sure but he has wisdom which rare in bills in on big screen . Let remember Infinity War and Endgame directly linked could arguably be seen as duology in scheme of epic colossal 20+ movie build up but Thanos says in infinity war ” the universe resources finite consumption finite, wealth is finite. The universe requires correction” guess what hello right there at heart Thanos motivation liesleft wing idea I back in terms of awareness bit not like online crowd bullies do to judge it NOT ‘ left wing enough ‘ for record Thanos is right out resources are finite but it his method of tackling problem that problem for every democracy on earth and probably beyond in cosmos.
Hello earth yo social mediacrntral motive is measured sensible idea of balance we are unbalanced society but we need work together not to execute judgement singularly that one leader one authority judges who lives or dies. Or maybe it was indirect slap in face through msg of social media trolls that them and their allies in critics groups and academy could not accept what oversight that is my g-d.
So lesson from 5his if u see where coming from don’t promote judgement look deeper in meaning of film and include consider audience response before using social medialabel taking things out context no to minority of dopy presumptive readers I obviously don’t love sashanot in way pplemay assume if you do frankly you deserve be part of increasing rabid judgemental online crowd.
I make no apology in prior post ideally putting endgame and Ford vs Ferrari as my top 2 contenders wow sasha in furious agreement with you on film’s u back in maybe it us something wrong with us and silent majority of u in eyes of Oscar voters critics and pigs online I don’t care bout th4m but I more than ever where bar set high already engage every word u have say bearing in mind we agree heart of problem of gulf between online crowd critics and academy vs. Crowd may be we need a ‘ Thanos ‘ a nap their fingers and bring forced balance to voters and critics no wait force for good iron man snap fingernail Thanos wipe out us good warriors oh dear…:P
These numbers are troubling for those of us predicting OUATIH… Because, from what I can see, every winner on that list (American Beauty to Green Book, 20 movies) had at least an 86% with either the critics or the audience (87% for the preferential era – The Artist), and QT’s movie only has an 85% with critics and a 70% with the audience (which is the lowest number on either side). 85% is not far off 87%, of course, and 70% is not far off 72%, the previous lowest number, so maybe it’s still borderline O.K. – and it does have a better critical score, which seems to be the norm for preferential winners (8/9, with The Artist having the same score on both), more than for non-preferential winners (which are split 50-50 between those liked more by critics and those liked more by the public). But it’s not great… Of course, we knew this, more or less, given its 83 on Metacritic, which is also quite low for BP winners. (There is Green Book, though, and things like Argo or Birdman or The Shape of Water aren’t too far ahead of that score.) But this looks even more alarming, I would say. Anyway, I still think the Hollywood nostalgia angle will prove stronger in the end. It’s no coincidence that Argo, The Artist and Birdman are among the least well-reviewed winners in the Metascore standings, for the preferential era, if you ask me…
I see no problem here. OUATIH critics score (85%) is still above Green Book (78%) and the audience score is only 2 points below The Shape of Water.
Yeah, but it all feels a bit borderline…
Hollywood nostalgia will get it over the line , and not just with actors but also with the blue collar craft workers ; or so it seems to me ! All the movies have some kind of handicap
I’m counting on it… (But am far from confident.)
I was already worried about the numbers for Hollywood and these numbers seem to me to underline it’s problems. People seem to general like it, but not love it enough.
Yup… Not good…
I am happy that Sasha, beginning with Green Book (which she liked), began to clearly express unpopular opinions again, which I think she avoided a bit after the Argo season.
I always said here. We should never stop to express unpopular opinions. Even though we may feel weird or receive criticism. I have a handful of unpopular opinions that I never refrained from expressing. Sometimes it takes long to find the best way to express, though. Always thought Moonlight’s final act was a mess and, naturally, the film is less admired in countries with more progressive cinematography than in the US. Lady Bird’s reception was vastly boosted by Me Too and the film is not better than a handful of coming of age movies that were never treated as Oscar material.
I have an unpopular opinion about one the Oscar contenders this year that I’m still thinking about the best way of expressing… sometimes is hard to conceive the best way.
I only wish she presented them more as opinions (as she does in this article) than as facts (as she does in some other articles on the same topic) – whether due to negligence or intentionally… But I have no problem with her disliking Little Women or any other movie, and writing about it, of course. None whatsoever.
Agreed 100%. The blurred line between proper factual analysis of the race and opinion/pushing certain films is the most infuriating part of this site.
I think all predictions should be Will Win/Should Win or be nominated to make it easier to tell.
All Oscar experts push their favourites of course, but I think Sasha incorporates her preferences into her actual predictions more than others
I somewhat disagree with this. This isn’t political journalism. The onus is on the viewer to sort it out if they are using the site for a guide in predicting, not on her to be “objective,” especially when she thinks a few people who are going to entertain the race are egregious or lacking.. I can read her talk of Dolemite and then use other sites to provide context and figure out who is more likely to be predicted.
This has always been more than a basic “who should I predict” site. You can go to the top five at Gold Derby for that.
This is a much better critique. This one is critiquing the film and the evolution of film criticism. I think she makes some valid points.
Yes – this is her best and most impartial article on the topic, by far.
And I agree she makes a number of very interesting points, things about which she may well be right.
Oh, I have sooo many unpopular opinions I am surprised I am not in Film Twitter jail yet. I’m also tempted to list my top10 but it would take time. To narrow it down to 10.
I don’t care for Rottentomatoes anymore for two reasons :
1. their pass / fail system is ridiculous, basically any film that gets a 6 out of 10 from all critics can have a perfect score and any film that gets a 5 out of 10 from all critics can have a zero score
2. they are not selective enough with their critics, basically anyone with a keyboard and a tiny, obscure blog can post a review and call themselves film critics.
This is why for critical consensus I only look at Metacritic because that score is more of an average of the individual scores top critics from the top60 publications publish.
And if we are still talking about Little Women (still ?) then looking at the reviews on MC is telling : 56 reviews including 22 with perfect scores and 13 with scores of 90+. And we are not talking about obscure blogs that made the cut at RT here, these 56 reviews were all published by legit publications and written by legit film critics.
This is why the insinuation that some of these critics essentially lied and praised a film they couldn’t have possibly loved, in an attempt to support an undeserving woman simply because she is a woman, was very insulting indeed. Because a lot of those 35 reviews with scores between 90-100 on MC were written by highly established film critics including Richard Roeper, David Edelstein, Joe Morgenstern, Tomris Laffly, Ty Burr, A.O. Scott, Peter Bradshaw, Leah Greenblatt, Kate Erbland, Peter Travers, Stephanie Zacharek and Kenneth Turan. And I am fairly certain not one on this list can be persuaded to compromise their integrity for any random film when they review hundreds of them every year.
Well said
point #1 invalidates RT’s entire system.
Ryan: I just sent you a technical glitch e-mail. Thanks.
We’re still working on trying to figure it out!
Thanks very much for your efforts.
The Laramie Times could have a good critic, but unless you love hunting and fishing, Wyoming is a gorgeous brutally cold hellhole, that you leave ASAP. No wonder the Cheneys love torture. Aggressive Comix and Fan Sided probably hate Brie Larson. Armond at The National Review thought Little Women was about White privilege. So yes.
Wasn’t Armond White the one who got his ass booted out of one of the big critics’ associations in NYC a few years back for basically being a complete asshole? i take everything he says with a mine’s worth of salt; perhaps others should, too.
Some of my friends on FB were discussing the idea of trying to make Little Women more diverse racially/ethnically, and the general conclusion seemed to be that, given most of the main characters being member of the same family, and given social realities in mid-19th century America, it really wouldn’t work out. What would work out, everyone agreed, was telling new stories from those whose stories haven’t yet been heard; that’s what’s really important, and that’s what we have to work on.
Mind you, revisionism isn’t necessary a bad thing; it just depends on the material in question. I remember a version of Six Characters in Search of an Author in which it was obvious that the Mother’s partner had been a Black man, because she was white and the children were clearly bi-racial, and that worked out very well in the context of the play. I also thought casting a Black woman as Mrs. Cratchit in the FX take on A Christmas Carol worked well–there were certainly Black people in London at the time, it’s entirely possible that a clerk from the lower middle/upper working class might marry such a woman, and it added another level to Scrooge’s mistreatment of the entire family. (I have plenty of other issues with that particular production, which, for one, totally missed the point of the book, which is that bad people can change, and redemption is possible. Not to mention Guy Pearce, in spite of being an excellent actor who I’d like to see playing Scrooge in a less-squirrelly version of the story, couldn’t completely squash his Aussie accent, to the point where, after one particular line, I howled back at the TV, “Throw another shrimp on the barbie, Ebenezer!” But I digress…) Anyway, I’ll just say that the idea of Armond White, of all people, playing the diversity card when he’s bitched and moaned about “political correctness” (or, as some of us call it, “simply being decent human beings rather than asswipes”) in the past is, well…just about in keeping with the rest of this totally fucked-up year. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go bang my head against the wall for a bit…
Armond White heckled Steve McQueen during a 12 Years of Slave press screening. He also scheduled a New York GCC during Sundance. The March’s were somewhat poor. Orchard House is a literary and Transcendentalist shrine.
The Parasite had an all Korean cast, The Farewell was all Chinese, Dolemite was all black, Harriet The main heroes were mostly black. The Irishman was mostly Italian. But Marvel and DC are diverse.
Very well said.
Speaking of “hive mind”: A good friend and I went to see Cats yesterday, fully expecting it to be the total dumpster fire/shit show of a movie that we’ve been hearing about from both critics and audiences, to the point where it may well end up as a cult film a la The Room, the whole “so bad it’s good” trope. Except…we actually liked and enjoyed it, and are seriously thinking of seeing it again! While I wouldn’t claim that there’s a pack of critics who were just waiting to tear it down, it does feel to me very much as if the hive mind did indeed take over, and it became a matter of coming up with the cleverest way to trash the film, rather than actually viewing it on its own merits. I suspect a number of people were freaked out about the whole CGI fur/whiskers/tails business, which is more than a little odd, but we got over it rather quickly. I’ve posted my own review of sorts to IMDB, and am waiting for it to go through their queue, but in the meantime, it’s just upstream in this very post.
The Harriet thing fascinates me. It’s certainly a movie with many problems (mostly directorial) if you were to look at it as a piece of cinematic art. But as a televisual presentation of this remarkable story — as an educational tool — it’s quite effective. That’s why I think it’s less popular with critics but MORE popular with people interested in the story. The filmmaking doesn’t elevate the material, but most audiences don’t care.
I agree. But in the long run, people are gonna think “I liked that movie.” However, not a lot are going to say “that’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen”
They could’ve made a better movie for such a towering figure. Regular filmgoers might not care but the product really doesn’t serve the subject as well as it could have.
I thought it was that textbook “good” film that was greatly elevated by the central performance and the fact that it covered a piece of history that is utterly fascinating.
What Harriet Tubman pulled off and in that brutal era no less, is nothing short of extraordinary. Couple that extraordinary story with an extraordinary performance and for a brief moment one may even feel after the film that the film itself was extraordinary, as well.
But once I came off that high I realised that it wasn’t. It was a very conventional, by the numbers biopic. “Only” a good film. About someone great.
Except, except . . . fostering — I won’t say “eliciting” — that stunning Erivo performance is also “filmmaking”. The director, Kasi Lemmons, understood what she had in this powerful actress, and she framed Erivo’s gifts to the best advantage. That performance certainly “elevated” the material, and Erivo surely didn’t manage that all on her own. She’s said as much in interviews. The performances of Leslie Odom Jr. and Joe Alwyn were also quite good. All those actors had to be guided into the material. Strong performances that avoid going over the top have to be shaped. Lemmons clearly knows how to do that. Give credit where it’s due, is what I’m suggesting. But I’ll agree with you and some critics I’ve read that the great, thundering Harriet Tubman movie we need lies in the future.
Breaking news: some people/groups disagree with someone else’s opinion on a subjective piece of entertainment/art.
Egads.
I wrote a similar essay a while ago, and to me, one thing you’re overlooking is that there is a slanting advocacy where most film critics think en masse with regard to identity politics. They are increasingly sociology majors and people of color or women or on the LGBT spectrum who view their role as to advocate for films that fit their pet causes:
You can directly see that films by black filmmakers have a higher score on RT than they do with the RT general public. I wrote here:
One of the dangers of this advocacy is that it’s not reflecting what people want to see. “Mother!” received a cinematic score of 69 percent, with the reviewers by and large undecided on whether they approved of the film’s feminist messages. While reviewers like Alex Bevan at Pop Matters split the difference between the two camps, Jess Joho at Mashable attempts to posit the film as a feminist manifesto — over writer and director Darren Aronofsky’s own explanations for his film. As the headline-making cinemascore demonstrated, audiences cared significantly less than critics about the feminist underpinnings in determining where it’s a good film.
The same phenomenon occurred with “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” The film was exonerated by film critics for, as one critic put it, being “the most triumphantly feminist Star Wars movie yet,” and “a celebratory inclusiveness that seems entirely in the Jedi spirit,” while the viewer rating on RottenTomatoes went down from 93 percent to 55 percent. Some of the headlines revolved around anger at the social justice messages, and while these arguments of “feminist propaganda” don’t necessarily represent the majority of audiences either (including me), a strong case could be made again that the critics were judging the film based on its congruity to their pet causes rather than its merit as a film.
One of the problems with this advocacy is that misleading arguments become more misleading when presented en masse.
https://thefederalist.com/2018/12/20/film-critics-insufferable-wokeness-reinstituting-moral-code-movies/
Literally every review, podcast conversation and online discourse has discussed the “disjointed structure”.
All this for a movie that has 93% audience approval at RT and 4.4/5 on Letterboxd. And is probably on its way to $90-100m at the box office. Is that all the hive mind at work? Or maybe you just didnt like a movie? Which is the easier to believe?
Like or dislike a movie all you want. But skip all this emperor’s clothes/they’re being nice to a woman director crap. Its offensive and intellectually dishonest.
and now an A- cinemascore. Is that Film Twitter influence as well?
RT mostly works with really really bad films. E.g. Cats. I don’t trust them anywhere in the middle or higher end.
And it doesn’t work for CATS either which is substantially better than reviews would have you believe.
“Gone are the days when I would read a review by Kenneth Turan and then one by Owen Gleiberman or A.O. Scott or Lisa Schwarzbaum and gain intriguing new perspectives with each new review.”
Most of those people are still gainfully employed and actively writing reviews.
I don’t think Sasha thinks they’re now retired. Maybe just that they’re now tired?
Gleiberman just this week posted a thing where he felt it was important to shit all over some of the 10 most admired movies of the decade.
Gleiberman is also the guy who felt it was important to write an entire piece about that unfortunate Zellweger photo two years after the incident simply because around the same time she had the nerve to have a big comeback movie after a 5-year hiatus. Long story short : established and knowledgeable or not, I don’t think I much care about what he has to say.
What exactly is the point of your second paragraph? Are you attacking Gleiberman for NOT joining the hive mind in regards to films that he thinks have been overpraised this past decade? In other words, that you vehemently disagree with the main point of Sasha’s article?
All of this talk about critic consensus and hive minds sounds insanely hypocritical. It’s bad when it is in regards to a film I dislike that the masses love, but is fine when the sides are reversed.
These are movies we’re talking about here. Not life or death. You don’t like a film, great. You love a film, even better. In any given year, I agree with critics or the general consensus around 80 percent of the time. However, there are almost always 10 percent of movies I love that seemingly most hate and 10 percent of films I will never comprehend the adoration for.
For example, this year I’ve been enraptured by Hollywood and Jojo Rabbit and Ford vs. Ferrari but was left incredibly underwhelmed by Parasite. I don’t get what everyone sees in it. I’ve read numerous reviews after the fact and have reevaluated the film in my mind and still see little of interest in it outside of technical merit… and that’s fine. If we all agreed with each other, what a shitty and boring world this would be.
So if film twitter bothers one so much, just get the hell off of there as fast as you can. Why submit one’s self to something that causes such pain? Spend that time watching and discussing movies you love and not wasting so much energy on movies you don’t.
“Spend that time watching and discussing movies you love and not wasting so much energy on movies you don’t.”
Shouldn’t you be crawling up Gleiberman’s ass with your advice instead of mine?
The thing about audience scores is that the people that want to see the movie and have paid for the movie are then expected to rate it (which is why it often skews high). I usually don’t trust them. Hobbs & Shaw got an A- Cinemascore, for instance. Midway got an A. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom got an A-.
I’m more likely to trust the score if it accompanies a small indie film like Parasite. The film isn’t trying to appeal to a huge audience right out of the gate and I feel the patrons that do it are genuinely discerning.
For as “popular” as Ford v Ferrari is, domestically it’s just making its money back (it cost over $90 million to produce).
Audience score will almost assuredly be very low for darker films with little to no levity (Hereditary got a D+). A dark film with a healthy does of humor can score well (Get Out with an A-).
When it’s all said and done, I’m more likely to trust the critics score over the audience.
Rotten Tomatoes? Seriously?
So I went to this with a friend, both of us expecting to MST3K our way through the whole thing; the previous day, the theatre’s manager was confronted by an elderly woman who was irate because the rest of the scanty audience had been doing exactly that, and she wanted a pass for a future date as a result. Needless to say, my hopes were on the seriously low end, and I was pretty much expecting a complete dumpster fire of a film. BUT…
…what do you know? It actually turned out to be surprisingly GOOD! Yes, I was totally sober throughout, and am more than familiar with both good and bad films in such as a way as to be able to tell one from another, and I”m telling you, CATS was actually pretty damn good! Yes, seeing CGI fur on human beings definitely takes some time getting used to (although it was the tails and ears that made me twitch more than the fur itself), but I *did* get used to it surprisingly quickly. Part of my brain kept wondering “Is *this* where it all goes to hell?”, but no, that never happened –it just kept on going its merry way, taking me and my friend (who agrees with me, but doesn’t spend much time on IMDB) with it.
More specific comments: The acting: Everyone did a perfectly respectable job with their characters; Francesca Heyward was a most charming and sweet-natured ingenue, Idris Elba was wonderfully fiendish as McCavity, and, of course, Dame Judi and Sir Ian were terrific. (I definitely noticed that Old Deuteronomy’s fur and ensemble bore a most striking resemblance to Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love, which I’m sure was totally intentional, and I’m reasonably sure I’ve seen Gus’s “human” in a similar outfit for a different role as well.) My only real complaint–and it’s certainly not her fault–was with Jennifer Hudson’s Grizabella having a perpetually runny nose–we know she’s supposed to be a wretched outcast, so the teary eyes are quite appropriate, but did she *have* to have a snotty nose throughout? (It made me want to offer the poor cat a tissue for mop-up; Tom Hooper, could you do *something* about that when you inevitably tweak it all again?) The singing and dancing was all on point, even with the actors who weren’t from a musical background, with the talking/singing of several performers coming off just fine. (Believe me, I’ve seen in done in ways that made me cringe–hello, Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady!–but this wasn’t one of them.) Yes, I even liked Rebel Wilson, who seems to be getting a lot of grief as Jennyanydots–as a cat person, I’ve *known* cats just like that, rolling and lolling and lounging and looking totally obscene in the way that only a large, spoiled cat can, and the only reason they don’t pick up prey daintily with their fingers is because they literally can’t–if they *could*, then they *would*!.
Pretty much everything else: The set design was wonderful–yes, I noticed all the sneaky little cat-related signs and business names, and I’m sure Bast, wherever she may be, is pleased that the theatre was named The Egyptian–and the scale of the set and props re: the performers seemed just about right. I personally didn’t happen to notice any serious CGI glitches (there probably were some, but I must have missed them; as for Dame Judy’s hand, *all* of the cats had hands rather than paws, so what was the problem with that?), and the lighting fit perfectly, especially that lovely sunrise at the end. Oh, and the musical arrangements were another aspect I’d heard complaints about, but I thought they complimented the songs very well. Oh, what the hell…I even cried during the whole “Memory” sequence, and I’m not usually one who cries at movies. *sniff* Finally, the pace moves along quickly and without dragging, and the two hours practically flew by; I daresay there are a number of other films who could use this as an example of what and what not to do in that regard.
TL;DR: I really, really ended up liking the movie, and am seriously inclined to go back to the theatre and see it again, bringing along someone who’s heard and only expects the worst, and hopefully converting them, since I do so love to proselytize…won’t you come along?
Note: No, I’ve never seen the stage show, so I was a total CATS virgin; I am, however, someone who’s enjoyed musicals their entire life, and has lived with *real* cats for many years, so I like to think I have some understanding of both that I was able to use while writing this review.
PS: I gave it an 8 on the 1-10 scale…
Damn! So I might have to rethink passing on this. Good to know…
Kathryn Bigelow was definitely NOT overdue when she won.
For the record, Kenneth Turan , Owen Gleiberman, and A.O. Scott are still reviewing and seem to think Little Women is very successful, so are they now in this hive too?
Ah, let me help you:
“So I got myself into trouble yet again by suggesting that some critics — not all — were perhaps grading on a curve as I believe they often do when actors endeavor to direct.”
Email me if you need someone to walk you through what “not all” means.
Clear enough.
I visit this site to admire Sasha’s great writing and passion for movies. I’m glad to see that while her staff writers have their own interesting opinions, they all share the same enthusiasm.