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March 08, 2003
Movie Reviewers are Smarter than You.
In my recent past, I previewed, summarizes, and reviewed movies for a living. I'd get a big stack of tapes, or press kits, or assignments, and I'd sit down with these stacks and write about movies. Sure, I had opinions about what I saw. Hell, sometimes, I didn't see the movies, rather, had to come up with an idea of the film from the press kit and from other research I did <surfing the web, sometimes, or calling my friends on the coasts and asking if they or anyone they know saw the film, or knew producers or something...I swear, my people know more producers than you'd expect>. I'd write as unbiased a summary as I could, then write a bit of an opinion piece, then I'd write a bit in which I compared it to other films in the same genre. or I'd do the whole "it's Jaws meets The Hours" pitch.
I used to be really really interested in reading what other previewers/summarizers/reviewers had to say, sometimes to avoid repeating adjectives already used in other reviews, sometimes just for fun.
I did this for a living. but I never once mistook my experience as a viewer/writer as a qualification to act like an elitist fuck.
Reading reviews of 'independent' and 'foreign' film in national and local newspapers has been pissing me off. I've been reading so many columns in which the writer assumes that all moviegoers are too stupid to understand movies that don't have a voice over to explain the subtext.
The visual communication style has been around since before we all were born, we were brought up with sitcoms and movies and commercials and plays, just like everyone else, but for some reason, reviewers think the movie-going public isn't going to understand the films they're reviewing, because they're so accustomed to one type of communication style and can't adapt to new ways of seeing. Honestly. Just watch the movie, observe what's going on, or not going on, and tell us what you think, but get over your damn self - we're smarter than you assume.
Posted by Heather at March 8, 2003 12:00 AM
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