Monday, September 7, 2009

How do I review and judge a movie?

I've mentioned it before on my old swedish blog, but it's important to explain even here how I review and judge a movie. It's an artform to review, and I'm not saying I'm the best. Here's my only rule:

1. Only write about movies I love, like or at least find interesting.

That's it. When I visit blogs who only seem to have one goal in life: to write shit about movies they don't like, I just leave and never look back. There's a reason to not write about boring movies: I don't want to waste my time or your time to whine about how bad a movie is. Isn't very uninteresting to spend time to write a review about a boring movie? Yes. The text itself get's bad, and the blog start to rot from the inside after all the complaints you're throwing around.

After many years I also got a very good taste in movies and have a feeling for what's interesting or whats not. I buy all my movies and I don't want to spend money on movies that is worthless. If a movie has faults, I try to focus on the good parts but also mention and analyze the bad parts.

Okey, I have another rule:

2. Never "warn" people to not watch a movie.

It's very simple. I have no right to tell people what they shouldn't watch. If I think a movie is shit I would never warn people, because I'm sure someone else will think it's good or even great. To warn people is also patronizing, like my taste is better than theirs. If someone do that to me I would get furious. Or at least irritated.

Ah, darn... there's a third rule:

3. There's no bad movies, only boring ones.

Very true. The only "bad" movies for me are the ones that are making me fall asleep. I can't say that Night of the Lepus is a bad movie, because it entertains me more than a lot of many other movies that are official "quality" movies. I don't think Virgins from Hell is a bad movie, it might be corny, trashy, campy and silly - but it's not boring. And so on, I think you'll understand what I mean.

This is my point of view. Of course there's people who find my favorite movies boring, but who am I to take that opinion away from them?

But there's always reasons to break the rules... so beware! ;)

3 comments:

mamoulian said...

I completely agree with the first and second rule ... The third is wide open for interpretation, though... ;-) But how correct you are in grumbly and opinionated blogs that is only spreading negative attitudes towards certain films... That just won't do ;-)

Ninja Dixon said...

"But how correct you are in grumbly and opinionated blogs that is only spreading negative attitudes towards certain films... That just won't do ;-)"

How do you mean? I know a lot of blogs and homepages with that attitude, either mainstream-lovers who can't see anything else than what's on the closes multiplex this weekend or people who are so deep in "cultmovies" that they just think all movies after a certain year is bad :)

mamoulian said...

What I mean is that there shouldn't be any blogs or sajts that spread this negative attitudes. I totally agree that it's better to write about films you like than focusing on things you don't like and so on...