How to Criticize a Popular Movie

Now that we're in December, I can officially say that my blog has been around for a year. I expect to be doing some retrospective articles later in the month. In the meantime, however, I've been thinking it might be good to start with an issue that has been plaguing me throughout 2014 and come up on this blog in numerous forms. In fact, it was the first article I posted on this blog.

Specifically this is the issue of criticism. Criticism can be good in many ways, but sometimes it backfires. It becomes less critiquing a movie and more akin to peer pressure. It starts to feel like "if you didn't like Citizen Kane, there's something wrong with you". Now I liked Citizen Kane. I think it's a very compelling and well-executed film, but that doesn't mean I hold it in the same esteem as other critics. A lot of people like to call Citizen Kane the greatest movie ever made, but while I would agree that it's a well-done movie I would not go that far myself. I'd argue instead that title rightfully belongs to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Over the course of this year, I have criticized a lot of popular movies. Wendell Ottley wasn't exaggerating when he said I, in his own words "laid the smack down on John Carpenter's most iconic movie" with regards to my contribution to his Against the Crowd Blogathon. The entry in question had me expression nothing but the utmost respect for the works of John Carpenter before I tore apart the one movie of his I despised. It was the very film that die-hard fans seem to almost-universally agree is his absolute greatest achievement: Halloween. I'd actually rank Ghost of Mars as a better film. That's right, I went there.

This year alone I've criticized a lot of popular movies, many of which were critically acclaimed. These include the entire James Bond franchise, Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, Alphaville, Tout Va Bien, This is the End, Playtime, Raging Bull, and Hard Boiled. All of these films were ones I violently tore apart mercilessly, limb from limb, in my blog. It also occasionally went the other way to, where I defended a lot of critically-panned films such as Dark Tide and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

I'm still not free of this pressure yet, it still comes back in some form or another. I myself sometimes get uncontrollably angry when I see someone criticize a film I liked or write a positive review of a film I despised. In this business, it can be very easy to let your personal feelings get in the way so I have decided to provide some advice based on my experience for fellow bloggers, anyone interested in blogging, or anyone interested in criticism in general.

The key, I would say, to criticizing any film, is to figure out precisely what it is about that movie that bothers you. You can't just say "I didn't like this movie. It was stupid." It's one thing to say you didn't like a movie, but it's another to make a strong case about why you didn't like it. Presumably something about the movie bothers you. The problem could range from something as small as a story issue or problems with the characters to simply the way the movie itself is put together.

In any case, you've got to find that problem and bring it out to the forefront. Some problems may also be bigger than others, and those are the ones you'll want to highlight. I didn't like Rambo II for many reasons but one of the biggest is that its characters lack any sort of depth, letalone enough for you to get emotionally invested and care what happens to them.

With most of the films I've criticized on this blog there has been some problem in particular that struck me. With Solaris it was the horrendously slow pacing and needlessly drawn out scenes. With Alphaville it was Godard's lack of effort in actually creating a dystopian future combined with a plot that just in general didn't make any sense and poorly written characters. With Playtime it was a general lack of humor where it should be combined with some bad jokes (what was up with those chairs?) and a multitude of scenes and sequences that just dragged on and on far longer than they needed to.

So you've got to think about the movie and figure out what it was you didn't like. Was it the story, and if so, in what way? Was it just that the main character was too much of a jerk for you to relate to? Perhaps too many of the characters weren't used to their full potential. Maybe it was supposed to be a comedy and it wasn't funny, or it was supposed to be a horror film and it wasn't scary. Perhaps it was the bad special effects that pulled you out, or was it just that the movie took way too long to actually get to the plot? Whatever it was, you've got to find it and bring it to the front. Then you need to make it clear why that is a problem.

Of course, this occurs when you want to explain why you didn't like a popular movie, but what about the reverse? Let's say you've found you liked a film that has been very harshly criticized by most viewers. That's when you've got to invert the process of explaining why you didn't like a popular film. Instead of figuring out what you don't like, you've got to figure out what was that did work for you and then bring that into the forefront. Then you can explain why you felt that the film has been unfairly criticized.

Hopefully this advice helps anyone who is interested in film criticism. I've been thinking I might do a few articles like this during December, along with a few retrospective pieces in between my usual content.