Am I the only person who doesn’t give a shit what Roger Ebert thinks about a movie? Or any critic for that matter?
Look, it’s a good idea to check reviews of a movie as a collective – meaning looking at the “Average User Review” or something to see if everybody thought it was crap. In that case, don’t waste your money.
But when I hear “professional” critics raving on about how great No Country For Old Menwas, I want to vomit. Now before I get any hate mail for the last statement, I thought the movie was very well-made, and I’m sure that’s what garnered all the reviews. However, a well-made movie does not equal a good movie. Yes they had all the artsy-fartsy dramatic camerawork and long silences, but just because it was well written or well filmed does not make a movie entertaining.
And on the other side of the fence, I heard countless “pros” saying Transformerswas bad. WHAT!? Every “regular” person I talked to loved that movie, but the high-and-mighty movie critics had to find something wrong with it. Maybe because it didn’t have 22 minutes of silence between dialogues or no dramatic artsy film angles. Rubbish.
Movies, as well as most forms of art are simply too subjective to be taken from one opinion. For example, I like the movie Snatch, and my fiancee hates it. No amount of critic’s opinion is going to make me dislike it, or make her like it. It amazes me to think that these “professional critics” get paid as well as they do just to give their subjective opinion about a movie. It amazes me even more to think that people take their opinions and use it to decide if they should watch a movie or not.
And that, Quahog, is what Grinds my Gears.