Great. Now Calum Marsh at Film.com is chastising us film critics for not spoiling movies:
Spoiler Alert: Critics Shouldn’t Care About ‘Ruining’ a Movie
…
when a critic elides spoilers simply because a movie studio demands it, a critic is helping the studio more than the audience—and doubly so in the case of bad movies, which don’t have as much to fall back on once their secrets have been spilled. Only the thinnest and cheapest films can be truly spoiled by knowing their twists ahead of time, which is why, for instance, “Citizen Kane” seems no less great if one knows that “Rosebud” is the name of a sled. The kind of pleasure offered by plot twists are by nature superficial: it’s a momentary feeling of surprise and perhaps astonishment, a quick gasp that hardly lingers after the end credits role. It’s a nice feeling, one that we hope is preserved but not needlessly prioritized.
…
[B]eing thoroughly averse to spoilers on principle does present problems for long-form film criticism, which by its very nature demands full disclosure and the ability to engage seriously with every aspect of a film, including major plot points and, indeed, even the ending. Film criticism is supposed to help illuminate a film, not simply offer a yay/nay declaration of its quality, and in order to do so well it needs to assume that its readers will be familiar with the material in question in full.
Well… yeah. So then why is the whole damn Web pissed off when we do spoil things? You can’t have it both ways.
Unless. Wait. Is there someone who wants to pay for serious long-form criticism that doesn’t rely on being First! and posting before almost anyone has seen a damn film? Cuz that would be awesome.
Fuck it. You want spoiled? Fine. Tom Cruise in Oblivion? He’s a sled.
“Tom Cruise in Oblivion? He’s a sled.”
Ho ho. I always thought he was rather a wooden actor. Greatly enjoyed this bit.
Oh, and count me as one of the many ordinary people who doesn’t like spoilers very much.
Me neither. Let me discover things on my own, please.
We love you because you are so careful with your reviews. No spoilers!
Apparently Mr. Marsh believes that pleasures derived from plot twists are vulgar and base, and as such unworthy of respect. I disagree. Please don’t shit on people who enjoy other things than you, Mr. Marsh.
Obviously you should write two separate reviews, one with spoilers and one without. Both completely without compensation, of course.
Slightly more seriously, I think my attitude to spoilers varies a lot with the film. I think that a film that relies on surprise for its entertainment value is a film that’s not worth watching more than once, and probably not worth watching even once, but many films have more minor things that it’s pleasant to come upon without warning, or with only the film’s own foreshadowing as a guide.
Stay tuned — something like that is coming here…
Well, there is film criticism, which perhaps ought to contain spoilers (how else to “evaluate” a film?), and then there is film reviewing.
I want to read a good review or two before I see a film (by good, I mean thumbs up OR down), but once I’ve seen it, I love to critique it and see what others saw as well.
Would the end of Psycho be as effective the first time you saw it if you knew that “mother” was really a polar bear?
wait! Mother is a *Polar Bear*!?!
Long-form film criticism is not the same thing as a review, and the two have completely different audiences.
I read reviews before seeing a movie, as a way of determining whether a film is worth watching. I generally read long-form criticism AFTER having seen a film, to get greater insight in what worked, what failed, and the cultural context.
I prefer not to see spoilers in a review, but expect them in a long-form discussion.
Exactly!
wait! Rosebud is a *sled*!!!!
That’s what I thought, but my friend insists it’s actually a vagina.
A polar bear named Rosebud.
Who’s also Tyler Durden.
http://xkcd.com/109/
He is Spartacus. I am Spartacus, too, and so are you.
Sparticus is Kaizer Soze.
There is a difference between a film critic and a reviewer. A reviewer is someone who is supposed to help me in determining which film I might go see this weekend. Unless there is a serious reason to do so, I think that there is a code to not breaking some plot points. In contrast, a film critic, like a litterary critic, will look into what this film is about: what are its messages, its relation to the culture we live in, etc. The starting point of the discussion assumes that the reader has already seen the film in order to get you to think about what the film is about. A film critic would discuss story and aesthetic elements of a film to look into its politics: for instance, discussing whether or not 300 is a fascist film or that a TV show like 24 encourages torture. To discuss topics such a these requires that any and all relevant story elements be mentionned to make one’s case.
Maryann, you are a film reviewer: it doesn’t negate the value of what you do, but when I want film criticism, I go elsewhere. Honestly, unless a film is just in your face hit you over the head bad with its politics, if the acting and aesthetic aspects of the film are excellent and the story presents things a certain way, then I get the impression that film reviewers in general will give the film a favourable review and it’ll do rather well on Rotten Tomatoes.
To build slightly on this, I’ve noticed that there’s been some activity on old threads here when the DVD of a film has been released. Not just from me (who hardly ever goes to a cinema), but from other people too. I wonder whether a week or two after DVD release might be a good time to revisit old reviews and take a more critical, in this sense, approach to them.
Actually, I come to this site for MaryAnn’s thoughts about the way women are portrayed in the films she reviews. I think that counts as social criticism.
That’s also one of the reasons I visit this site, but on the continuum ranging from film review to film criticism, I think she still falls closer to the reviewer end of the spectrum than the critic end. To wit, to a reviewer, saying that a film is fun or gives the viewer a warm fuzzy feeling can be both a compliment and fairly accurate, but it’s rather irrelevant to film criticism.
Everyone’s a critic…