Movie Review : The Brave One

My wife and I went to see this movie ("The Brave One"- starring Jodie Foster) last evening. Great movie. Great acting. Great story. Good texture and fun to try and figure out.

Today, after breakfast I happened upon a series of movie reviews about it. As I read the reviews and tried to make any sense out of what the reviewers were thinking about as they wrote their drivel, or tried to understand what it is they think the public expects of them , I was taken by one thought. Movie Reviewers who write movie reviews for a living must be a bunch of jaded, dark hearted souls, who wouldn't know a good movie if it smacked them in the face. They wouldn't know a good performance if it was imprinted upon their skulls with a laser. They couldn't buy a clue if they were Sherlock Holmes on "Wheel of Fortune" and Vanna White was their client.

The only conclusion I can come up with is people who write movie reviews for a living must have some gross misunderstanding of why movies are made in the first place, beyond making sure big stars get big paychecks. Movies are entertainment. Period. End of definition.

I can't remember the last time I went to a movie expecting for the flick to explore some deeper reality or explain the meaning of life to me. I do not go to movies for spiritual guidance (and I'd be hard pressed to name anyone who does) or life advice, or character development or any of the other schlock that these , dare I say, IDIOTS, write about.

One reviewer at USA today said "Foster does her best with a flawed story whose ending rings even less true than the rest of it."

Huh? Did this moron see the same movie I did?
Do you think the boss said to her "Go watch this movie and then rate it against our scale of story development and reality metrics".  Not very likely.

Listen, all the critics got the plot explanations right, all of them basically tell you what the story is about. Just about all of them accurately portray what the main characters are about. I think just about everyone of them got it wrong when they go off on a tangent talking about how it compares to Kevin Bacon's latest movie or the inevitable comparison to Charles Bronson's vigilante characters. I watched all those movies too, and they do not understand their job, and certainly they do not understand the audience in many cases. Don't get me wrong, I guess many of them do ok. Sometimes they do get it right. Occasionally a movie sucks so bad they can't help but see it too.

Most of the time though, whenever they say a film is mediocre, they are pretty much wrong. For example, They said the latest "Die Hard" movie was bad, they were wrong. Coincidentally, "The Sixth Sense" was a great movie as well (nothing to do with the lead actor- Bruce Willis).

The reason they were good movies is because they were entertaining. Why else would they write about it?
If I could see a movie reviewer judge a movie first just by this one element (Is it entertaining?), I could accept pretty much anything else they said. Using all these "self important made up let me look artsy-fartsy" definitions as a reason to write a bad review is not my idea of how you look at a movie in the first place. I pretty much don't give a rats ass if John Wayne made a movie about a stagecoach and this movie is about one too. Why is that important? Does it mean if I make a western, then it should be reviewed and judged against every Clint Eastwood , John Wayne film ever made if it has a similar plot? Of course not.

Movie is entertaining = Good Movie.
Movie is not entertaining = Bad Movie.
Not much else can be said.

Thankx- bigmike
 
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