Tribeca Film Festival madness has begun! There are few NYC events I anticipate more each year than the fest. I love the movies, obviously most of all. But I love the chatter amongst the movie goers, and I love to chatter myself about movies I love. More accurately, movies I hate. I also hate movie critics. As a filmmaker I have a vested interest in how well a movie does and how well vision is presented, and because I see myself as a part of the indie filmmaking community, I think it's ok if I have a strong opinion on my colleagues work. That line of reasoning surely has some roots in the "one of us/one of them" error, and maybe I should temper how critical I am of film because of how I view film critics. I hate them. I hate that they have so much power to drive an audience to see a persons work. I hate how much importance people give to a movie critic when considering seeing a film they were at first interested in. I'll detail two reasons why for you here.
-Emotional reactions
Critics often critique films that they are interested in or have emotional attachments to. For instance, there are a million LGBT critics who exclusively critique films that have commentary on the homosexual community. Often, these people are only focused on the particular aspect of how sensitive the film is to the LGBT community without a view to the entire film as a whole, in some ways a fallacy of composition. And depending on how they feel about that they have a wide influence on discrediting a film based on an ideal that is not aligned with the intent of the film. And people don't go see it.
-Methods of critical analysis
Critics are often products of their tastes. They enjoy a certain type of film, like we all do. Some critics criticize only the types of film they have an expertise in. But a lot of critics are paid to review any type of film. The problem is not only that they may have some outside bias (sometimes critics are cozy with filmmaker and filmmaking houses) but also that no film will evoke the same feelings between 2 people. Critics often have very different views on films, because like us they like what they like.
These people should not be taken as experts on a film they had no hand in creating. And we should not put too much stock in the way they critique a film we may have an inkling to see.
That said, I art directed a film called "Revenge For Jolly" premiering this week at the Tribeca Film Festival! Go see it, it is probably the greatest single piece of art ever created. In history. I haven't seen it yet but I'm going this weekend if you want to come along. Here's some horrible, biased, way off the point "critics" review.
http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/tribeca-review-revenge-for-jolly-doesnt-exactly-earn-that-exclamation-point-20120422#
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