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My two favorite movie reviews.
Jun. 15th, 2024 07:13 amI am a movie and TV reviewer myself. The two best reviews I modeled my criticism on are both negative reviews for bad movies, but their honesty is admirable and something all critics should aspire to.
The lesser of these two reviews is the most famous (or should I say infamous?): Roger Ebert's joyously bitter panning of the shit movie North.
Read it and tell me what you think.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/north-1994
I think the reason the review has resonated so much for people is because Ebert was a very literate film critic. In my opinion often annoyingly so, and I think more often than not the dude would be better off learning to chill. I'm not saying he didn't have sense of humor. He did. But he took movies more seriously than they should have been.
There is something endearing about Ebert just giving up on his deconstruction of the film's faults by the end of the review and repeatedly saying he hated it instead. I love the review because on some level North is the film that broke Roger Ebert.
Okay, The Powerpuff Girls Movie did too, but because Ebert's take is insane there, instead of understandable, it's MUCH less fun to read.
The BEST movie review I've ever read? Pay It Forward by Lisa Schwarzbaum. She was already a far more solid critic at Entertainment Weekly than their main guy at the time Owen Gleiberman, just because Gleiberman loved 5 dollar words and his own cleverness about his own writing (which by the way involved very little actual insight into cinema).
https://ew.com/movies/movie-reviews/
Schwarzbaum's review of Pay It Forward is fucking FEARLESS and she was a badass warrior goddess decades before boss women were referred to as that. She got a LOT of shit for that review (How DARE you spoil the ending after repeatedly promising you would?) but this review was a new thing for movie critics. It was the first time a movie critic said "I'm not putting up with this shit." God knows I wish there were more critics back in 1994 brave enough to give the same kind of review to a similarly manipulative film like Forrest Gump. It might not have stolen a deserved Oscar from Pulp Fiction or The Shawshank Redemption if critics were more honest about how dirty it did the audience.
Schwarzbaum's contempt for Pay It Forward is righteous and just the right amount of cruel. It's an indictment not just of manipulative Oscar-bait films. But of the broken people (including name film critics) who practically eat that shit up. Maybe that's why the review pissed so many people off. They recognized themselves and their poor tastes in this specific complaint. A hit dog hollas.
Me? It changed everything I knew about movie reviewing. And the shots it took told me that I need to look at ALL critical appraisals of Oscar bait films with a healthy dose of skepticism, and a realization that a critic who is paid to write their opinion, is not necessarily more knowledgeable or correct in writing their reviews that you or I are. Schwarzbaum's cynicism here is a turning point for me in trusting my own judgments, which later on helped my writing. It didn't happen all at once for me, but her review of that shitty movie was a HUGE step of awareness about how dirty pop-culture does the public, and how we've been conditioned to just accept it. This review was the first step for me refusing to accept it. And I will forever be grateful to her for that.
The lesser of these two reviews is the most famous (or should I say infamous?): Roger Ebert's joyously bitter panning of the shit movie North.
Read it and tell me what you think.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/north-1994
I think the reason the review has resonated so much for people is because Ebert was a very literate film critic. In my opinion often annoyingly so, and I think more often than not the dude would be better off learning to chill. I'm not saying he didn't have sense of humor. He did. But he took movies more seriously than they should have been.
There is something endearing about Ebert just giving up on his deconstruction of the film's faults by the end of the review and repeatedly saying he hated it instead. I love the review because on some level North is the film that broke Roger Ebert.
Okay, The Powerpuff Girls Movie did too, but because Ebert's take is insane there, instead of understandable, it's MUCH less fun to read.
The BEST movie review I've ever read? Pay It Forward by Lisa Schwarzbaum. She was already a far more solid critic at Entertainment Weekly than their main guy at the time Owen Gleiberman, just because Gleiberman loved 5 dollar words and his own cleverness about his own writing (which by the way involved very little actual insight into cinema).
https://ew.com/movies/movie-reviews/
Schwarzbaum's review of Pay It Forward is fucking FEARLESS and she was a badass warrior goddess decades before boss women were referred to as that. She got a LOT of shit for that review (How DARE you spoil the ending after repeatedly promising you would?) but this review was a new thing for movie critics. It was the first time a movie critic said "I'm not putting up with this shit." God knows I wish there were more critics back in 1994 brave enough to give the same kind of review to a similarly manipulative film like Forrest Gump. It might not have stolen a deserved Oscar from Pulp Fiction or The Shawshank Redemption if critics were more honest about how dirty it did the audience.
Schwarzbaum's contempt for Pay It Forward is righteous and just the right amount of cruel. It's an indictment not just of manipulative Oscar-bait films. But of the broken people (including name film critics) who practically eat that shit up. Maybe that's why the review pissed so many people off. They recognized themselves and their poor tastes in this specific complaint. A hit dog hollas.
Me? It changed everything I knew about movie reviewing. And the shots it took told me that I need to look at ALL critical appraisals of Oscar bait films with a healthy dose of skepticism, and a realization that a critic who is paid to write their opinion, is not necessarily more knowledgeable or correct in writing their reviews that you or I are. Schwarzbaum's cynicism here is a turning point for me in trusting my own judgments, which later on helped my writing. It didn't happen all at once for me, but her review of that shitty movie was a HUGE step of awareness about how dirty pop-culture does the public, and how we've been conditioned to just accept it. This review was the first step for me refusing to accept it. And I will forever be grateful to her for that.
