Films During Christmas Are So...Depressing

November and December is probably the busiest time for a film critic.  This is when we do the most work, see the most movies, and (personally speaking) this is the time when I have to edit and put final touches on books that are due out in January.  This already puts a lot of stress on a critic, but for the past few years I have noticed another problem altogether.  See, the reason this is the busiest time of the season for writers of film is because it's Oscar season.  This is when all the studios are releasing their films that are "big," "important," and "potent." Films that feature heavy dialog and tough subject matter start flooding the theaters.  Some of the films I've seen in the past few weeks involve father abandonment, child molestation, survival at all costs, and epic space battles that I am legally obligated not to talk about in specific detail until next week (though I will say that this unnamed film is not nearly as much fun as it should be).

That some of these movies are some of the best of the year is of little comfort.  It makes me wonder: What happened to all the fun Christmas films?  It used to be every year we could expect some Christmas films from studios.  Some would be for adults.  Most would be for families.  There was honestly only a fifty-fifty chance of them being good, but when they were good they could be really good ("The Polar Express" and "Arthur Christmas" are two somewhat recent examples).  I remember my dad taking me to movies for my birthday and we would see movies like "The Muppet Christmas Carol," "The Santa Clause 2," and "The Grinch." This year the big movie being released for my birthday is "In the Heart of the Sea," which features no Christmas joy anywhere.  So far I have only seen two Christmas films this year.  The first was the profoundly stupid "We Love the Coopers," which was so bad it was practically gone from cinemas before December even hit (good luck finding it now if you live in a smaller town).

The second is "Krampus," a much better (and shockingly enjoyable film for something that wasn't screened for critics) holiday themed movie that looks at the "other" mystic figure of Christmas that isn't so nice and comes into the picture when Santa decides you weren't nice enough to get any presents.  It's a fun movie to be sure... but it doesn't exactly bring the Christmas cheer one would hope for. Granted, neither did "Bad Santa," but that was released in June the year it came out.  There is also "The Night Before" out there, but I haven't seen it, and I doubt Seth Rogan is going to bring any holiday cheer.  The Christmas films have been so few and far between these past couple of years, that many movie theaters are dedicating screens to classic movies to fill the void of holiday cheer.  This year my local theaters are almost all showing "Home Alone," "Miracle on 34th Street" (both versions), and "It's A Wonderful Life!" Before "Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens" opens there will be some IMAX's showing "The Polar Express" again.  Heck, one theater near me is even showing Adam Sandler's "Eight Crazy Nights."

That movie is so unpleasant you would find more cheer in watching "The Silence of the Lambs."

It all makes me wonder: What the heck happened?  When did going to the movies during the most wonderful time of the year become such a bleak thing to do?  Right now the only movie that has any sense of holiday cheer is "The Peanuts Movie," which has some scenes during Christmas, but is not a movie that is in and of itself about Christmas.  It is true that Christmas movies have somewhat limited commercial appeal.  People only really want to see them during December.  Most of them open in November to try and stretch out their profitability window, but if they movie tanks during the first couple of weeks it could be gone before that crucial period hits.  Open it too late and it never takes off at all.  The movie can't be released on DVD until the following November because no one wants it before then.  The pro to this though is that if the movie IS successful, you are guaranteed to sell it every year to people in one form or another.

Will studios return to their old tradition of making Christmas movies?  I'm concerned about that.  Hollywood has become more about franchise and Oscar movies.  Holiday films don't really fall into either category at the moment.  That becomes a problem because the most we can expect these days is for a non-holiday movie to at least have a portion of the film that takes place during Christmas.  There's also that whole war on Christmas thing going on, where it becomes more and more politically incorrect to celebrate the holiday every year.  Ah, I better stop before I get into a topic that is too big for me.  At the moment I am watching more movies than I usually do, doing more writing than normal, and yet I'm not feeling a whole lot of joy from these movies regardless of their quality.  I don't know what the problem is and I don't know if there is a solution, but hopefully Christmas films will start to feel festive again at some point.

Yes, I Get to See the New 'Star Wars' Early...So What?

Once in awhile the subject of me getting to see movies early comes up.  This usually happens around the time of a highly anticipated summer blockbuster.  People say how much they are looking forward to a certain movie and I respond with a "oh, I get to see that two weeks early" or "I've already seen it."  There is usually a little jealousy at this point, but rarely to the extent I've seen with "Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens" (yes, I'm including 'Episode' in the title because we all know that's what this movie is). These days people have been seething with anger finding out that I am getting to see this movie earlier then them.  The comments range from "you lucky SOB" to "why can't I have your job?"  Here's the thing though guys: Me seeing the new Star Wars movie early really isn't that big of a deal, and honestly, if you were in my position it wouldn't be to you either.

Yes, I do get to see Star Wars early, but I also get to see virtually everything early.  Every movie that a studio hopes to be a hit is screened for the critics (movies that aren't screened are usually so bad we find we don't care).  Every.  Single.  One.  So yes, I get to see Star Wars early, but I also saw "Specter" last week.  I saw "Minions" three days before it went wide.  I saw all "The Hobbit" movies two weeks before they were made available to the general public (then I went to them again with my family for Christmas).  Seeing a movie early loses it's luster very quickly,  It's far more impressive if you're one of the few people to see "Let it Be" or "Song of the South," movies that studios try desperately to keep out of the public eye.  Seeing a movie early is a bragging right you can have for two weeks at the most.

Trust me, I would give up my rights to see the next six Star Wars movies early if I could view "The Day the Clown Cried," which would be a bragging right I could take to the bank.  The second thing to keep in mind is when you are in this line of business, seeing things early becomes the new norm.  So you aren't seeing movies early after awhile so much as you are on a different set schedule.  The third thing is that when you do this for a living long enough and you stop getting excited about new releases because there's always something to see (but I've written about that in another article).  The final reason this is not a big deal is something that is rarely discussed (and hasn't been suggested by a lot of people recently), but it needs to be said:

"Stars Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens" might not even be a good movie.

Sorry, but it's true.  Excitement for the film is high and a lot of people want to see it, but that doesn't mean we're going to get a good movie.  The trailers (which I have not seen) may be exciting to watch, but as I've said before, trailers are not an indicator of a films ultimate quality.  We had this sort of excitement over "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace," which was so hyped we were absolutely convinced it couldn't be bad.  Yeah...glad that went according to plan, right?  If I may be frank with you all, I think people who are pre-ordering their tickets for this thing and getting their hopes up are fools.  This franchise has burnt you so many times, that I would hope you would demand the film prove itself in being good BEFORE you make it a hit!  But that's a rant for another day.

Bad Language in Reviews

Before we begin I want to take a moment to mention that this post started out as something completely different.  In fact, I wrote another blog post altogether where I publicly shamed someone on Facebook.  The argument got started over his using the f word to make a point and claiming he was more intelligent than everyone for using the word to drive home a point.  I made the argument that foul language didn't really mean that, and his response was to unfriend me and basically act like a spoiled prissy brat.  I scrapped that article because I am more mature than that at the end of the day, but it did get me thinking about a touchy subject in the profession today: Bad language in film reviews.

When film critics first became a thing, there was never any bad language in their writings.  This was mostly because the reviews were on TV (in a day before cable), printed in newspapers (are those still around?), and were geared for families because they made up for most of the ticket buyers (clearly not the case anymore).  These days it's a different ballgame now.  TV has expanded to cable and premium cable, which have more lax rules when it comes to what you can and can't say.  YouTube has become a huge way to express opinions, and those have no editorial control at all.  Newspapers are pretty much a thing of the past, and blogs and Twitter have overtaken them as the new place to get information.  Again, most of these sites are free from decency regulations (though more are gaining editorial control for quality sake).

Teenagers now make up a majority of the ticket buying, and they don't give a flying rat crap about quality written reviews.  If they read a review, it's because they find the review to be entertaining to read, not insightful.  All of these factors have made critics change their writing styles to adapt to the times, and one of the things they have adapted is foul language.  Foul language, for better or worse, is a big selling point for opinions and editorial these days.  You don't have to think of clever ways to say something is a piece of...well, you know.  You can feel more "adult" even if you are a ten year old kid writing on a Live Journal account.  And the f word is funny.  I mean, it's so funny that a video game nerd made a career out of saying it to bad Nintendo games.

So the question is brought up several times on why I don't curse in my reviews (or, should I say, very RARELY curse).  Why not jump on the band wagon and just do what everyone else is already doing and finding success in doing?  Well, the main reason I don't use foul language in my reviews is because foul language is also poor language.  Have you ever wondered why your grandparents said that cursing strongly suggested a poor vocabulary?  Let me tell you something: It's not because your grandparents were prude.  In fact, the real reason, believe it or not, is because your grandparents did know what those words actually mean.  Have you ever looked up the definitions of the curse words you put in your reviews (or use in real life)?  I mean, have you ever REALLY researched what they mean?!

More often than not, you are using those words incorrectly.  Words have power, but they also have meaning.  The dreaded f word, the one word that is so offensive and used more than most curse words, is almost always used incorrectly.  Take a moment to dust off your dictionary and look up what the word means.  Now, if you say this word, think of how you use it in a sentence.  I bet you aren't using the word correctly yourself.  It sounds good, yes, but you aren't using it correctly.  The thing about learning you are doing something incorrectly is that no matter how right it sounds, you now feel foolish for sounding uneducated.  It's like when Captain America thought that a fondue was a slang term for intimate relationships (when it really is the word people use for a cake you dip in chocolate).

Once he found out what it really meant, do you think he was going to use it in the way he thought it meant like he did before?  Of course not.  Yet in the world of film criticism, all these young critics use foul language in their reviews all the time without realizing they aren't using proper English.  It sounds good to them, so they say the words, but they don't comprehend what they mean.  That is the main reason I don't use bad language in my reviews.  I know what they mean, and I respect my readers too much to use them.  I want to strive to use proper sentence structure, descriptive words that mean what they are supposed to mean, and I want the review to read as good as it possibly can.  Now, once in a blue moon, I will use a well placed curse word to drive a point home.

I'm not saying curse words can't be used for great effect.  Used properly, any word can pack a punch.  What frustrates me is how liberally these words are used, how often they are used, and how they don't even mean the things the writers think they mean.  Also, using certain words over and over again doesn't read very well, yet most people will use the f word two or three times in the same sentence.  I mean, come on, isn't that a problem your teacher in third grade told you to avoid?  The point of this post is not to tell you how to write reviews or express your opinions, but rather to share my particular view on this topic, and hopefully give you some insight into why I feel the way I do about it.

Taking A Review Break

 

I haven't posted a written movie review for two and half weeks now.  I could probably chalk this up to writers block, but the reality is much more scary: I needed a break from writing reviews.  Honestly, this is far worse of an admission for most film critics to make than that they have writers block.  With writers block you can honestly say you can't write anything, the words aren't coming, anything to justify why work isn't getting done.  When you have to admit that you need a break you are essentially saying that you aren't enjoying the job at the moment, you can write but you don't want to, and for those reasons you need to just stop for a little while.

This can be a dangerous thing, but I think it's necessary once in a while.  After all, this is your livelihood you are talking about.  Your main draw to your website, YouTube channel, and Tumblr account.  For some, it is even what puts food on the table.  Needing a break from analyzing movies may be natural, but shouldn't a critic just keep pushing forward if this is what's paying their bills?  After all, that's what most people have to do anyway, right?  Well, yes and no.  While it is true you have to work many mundane jobs whether you feel like it or not, the key difference is your real job doesn't always depend on you being invested in it to be done properly.  Writing, on the other hand, can suffer greatly when your heart isn't in it.

When your writing suffers, your audience notices, and if the mediocre writing goes on too long, you could start to lose visitors.  Plus, real jobs do allow for employees to have time off from time to time, because people do need to recharge, and they do need to take a breather or else do work that will suffer as a result.  Critics, thankfully, tend to have understanding readers who will understand the need to step away for a moment.  So just be honest with your readers.  Explain why you need to step away from the reviews for a few weeks.  They'll understand.  Not only that, but as a writer you can do other things for your readership so that you can funnel your traffic into something else.  Remember, you are suffering from review burnout, not writer's block.

Personally, I've been writing more articles for Examiner, mainly about animation.  One article I worked on recently (which broke my heart to work on) was about behind the scenes drama for a website I like to visit called Channel Awesome.  The article is very different from most things I write in that it was mainly about people, not content.  I also had to do some research and send out e-mails asking for comments to see if I got my facts straight.  These are the sort of things that you normally don't do when writing reviews, and changing up the flow of writing can be fun.  It prevents the job from being stale.  The other break a critic can take is from PUBLISHING reviews!  That too, I feel, is a valid thing for us to do.

This is where you don't necessarily stop writing reviews, but for a time period you stop publishing them.  Why would a critic do this?  Easy: Because that deadline can be so stinking intimidating.  When you take a break from publishing reviews you are essentially giving yourself the freedom to write reviews for the films you want to review, when you want to write them, without stress of having to have something up by a certain date.  When I'm on one of these breaks I save the reviews I do write in a folder to be edited and published at a later date.  They may be late, but you put yourself on the break so that you only write what inspires you, and when you return to reviewing full time you've done nothing but writing stuff you want to write.  This, somehow, can help make the job fun again.

So yes folks, I put myself on a review writing vacation.  It was so hard to write that "Furious 7" review that I just knew that if I didn't force myself to have some time to myself I was going to crash and burn, and then my break would result is something much worse.  So I evaluated the situation.  April is typically a bad month for movies.  Most of the movies are terrible, and most of the movies people have little to no interest in seeing anyway.  I decided to take the month off publishing, work on other projects, and whatever reviews I wrote would be stored in a folder and saved for my return.  I decided a month would be long enough, and when I return on May 1st I'll be returning with my review for "The Avengers: Age of Ultron."

That sounds sensible right?  I'm confident my reviews will return to their usual quality now that I've had this time to work on other things, and it's not like you needed a forcefully written review of "Paul Bart: Mall Cop 2" to know not to see it (though I have done a quick video review to fill the gap).  Now then, while I have just written about why it is healthy to take breaks in reviewing when you feel fatigued, there are some sensible restrictions and rules to keep in mind if you decide to do this.  That will be the focus of my next post, which I will have up by either the end of this week or early next week.  Just depends if any major news pops up about "The Simpsons" DVD situation pops up that needs to be covered.

The Film Critic on YouTube

This is the first blog post I've had time to write in a few weeks.  There are a couple reasons for this.  The first is that, starting in May, I want to be able to have new content available to publish on a near daily basis (minus weekends), and I've decided the best way to achieve that goal is to write a series of articles that are not time sensitive so that I can have a buffer ready when the month starts.  Wouldn't it be nice if, in addition to the weekend reviews of the new movies, I can have a review of an archive movie every day?  Or at the very least an article that will be the basis of a weekly series?  At the very least I'd like to get the monthly "Great Directors" feature back on track (I love Ang Lee, but he's hogged my home page far too long).  The other reason is because I've decided to get serious about making videos on YouTube.  So far they've been, well...

...let's just say I've still got a long way to go.  The truth is, I'm a much better writer than a video performer.  I've always been introverted and even when I had dreams of actually making movies it was as a director or screenwriter.  The only time I've ever made videos are on occasion when I had something I really wanted to rant about, and even then the rant had to be heavily edited because I would just pause and take too many deep breaths.  So why am I focusing some of my efforts on YouTube?  Well, partly because the few videos I do have uploaded bring in pretty good money, and if I had more there'd potentially be a bigger financial payoff.  The other reason is that video reviews have been a force in this business since "Siskel & Ebert" was popular, and in some ways, it's the only reason there still IS a review industry!

Yeah, Rotten Tomatoes might calculate written reviews and there is no doubt that written reviews tend to be more insightful and thoughtful, but people are watching more videos than ever before.  Mobile devices and video game systems with streaming capabilities have more or less given people access to tons of video reviews with quirky critic "personalities" and sound byte blurbs.  The reviews on these videos are even more animated than any writer could be (and they have to be, since many of their reviews are going to be viewed on six inch screens).  It might not be real film criticism (though Chris Stuckman and Doug Walker are exceptions to the rule), but it sure is entertaining.  To ignore it would be to ignore what has been the crux of the business for the past forty years.

What happens if, like me, you aren't much of a video editor?  Well, much like writing a review, there isn't a right or wrong style in composing your review, just an effective one.  So long as the argument is expressed in a way that is well thought out and spoken clearly out it should work.  While the above video review I did might be weak, I'm much more happy with a recent editorial rant I did...

...which I feel works much better despite there being even less editing involved.  Chances are because I was more passionate about making that video, it came out better than a couple other videos that felt forced.  I'm writing this post as much for me as for people who are interested in getting involved in this business, but video content can't be ignored.  To ignore it would be to ignore a huge chunk of the market this market is built on.  Video reviews are NEVER going to replace written reviews, and in many ways we critics would prefer you read our pieces than watch our videos!  Also, while I will work on my video reviews, I think I'll be focusing on making videos that are poor retreads of my written stuff.  Focusing on rants and cool stuff commentary seems more logical.  So here's to my YouTube career: Hopefully it won't be TOO embarrassing!

Oh, and if you want to continue to support my site, please consider subscribing to my channel!  Thanks!

Memories Through Movies (Or, A Defense For Bad Movies)

On Saturday I spent most of the day watching a show I hadn't watched in years: "Pokémon." This is either a good indication that I am not as mature as I think I am, or an indication that the summer movie season can't start soon enough so that I actually have work to do.  While watching the show there were two things that crossed my mind.  The first was that the show, while certainly made for kids, was still rather funny and help up much better than I thought it would.  The second thing was that the episodes I was watching were seventeen years old.  SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD!!!!  That means I was THIRTEEN when I first saw these episodes!  Well, after having a laugh about how parents could swear that this franchise was going to die in a couple of years being way off base, I started thinking about who I was when I first saw this show.

I don't know if this is just me, but I tend to be a very nostalgic person.  The reason I am is because I love remembering good times.  I have no idea how other people watch shows and movies, but one of the reasons I like to watch some older things is to remember things.  After watching the show a little more I ended up popping in my pan & scan DVD of "Pokémon: The First Movie" (yes, pan & scan was actually a thing at one point).  I haven't watched this for a long time because the dub is a very, well, loose adaptation.  It has lots of deleted scenes, a replaced soundtrack, and core elements of the story were outright rewritten.  The English version we got changed the main antagonist from being a misunderstood creature who was looking for his place in the world into a villain who wants to rule it, and there was this bizarre choice to put an anti-violence message in it (seriously).

It's hard to watch the dub when the original version is vastly superior in every conceivable way.  Yet I watched it because I was just watching the show and remembering times I spent with friends watching it, and I decided to remember the day I saw this in theaters.  On the day of release this movie was one of the biggest events for us kids at the time.  I remember me and my brother got together with longtime friends of the families, conspired to get our moms to bring us (the dads had the excuse of having to work and provide for the family, so they got to skip out), and we watched this movie that we had been waiting for weeks to see while our moms were just bewildered by what it was they were actually watching.

Despite the fact that the movie was the main event, it was afterwards where all the warm fuzzy memories came into play.  We went to Burger King (which was running a Pokémon movie toy promotion).  We discussed the movie (one thing we were all in agreement with was that we were shocked at how dark and violent it was).  We ate food.  For the first day movie theaters gave out random Pokémon cards for each ticket bought (my mom got Mewtwo, so she was officially the most popular one in our group and even she could understand why).  After lunch we went to the house, pulled out our new cards, and played a few rounds of the card game.  On a random side note, it occurs to me that one of the friends I went to was having his birthday on the day I was watching all this stuff.  Weird.

Getting back to the movie, it's clear watching it now that it isn't very good.  If there was nothing else to compare it to I could actually see where all the complaints were coming from.  Now that I can see the original movie the dub I saw in theaters all those years ago looks all the worse.  Yet I still watched the English version, knowing it was bad and knowing I had easy access to the original Japanese version.  So why watch it?  Because movies are a way to relive good memories sometimes.  That's why, I think, Disney's animated "Robin Hood" is thought on so fondly by many of my friends.  See, "Robin Hood" is a pretty bad movie.  There are many, many reasons it's terrible.  When they try to explain why they like it, I just sort of shake my head and laugh at the attempt.

Like "Pokémon: The First Movie," you have to grasp at straws to really be able to say it's a good movie with a straight face.  And yet... deep down, I understand it, and I know what they are really talking about when they say movies like these are good.  They are talking about the memories of watching these movies with other people.  How watching them brings us back to good moments in time that we want to remember more vividly.  These movies help with the memories, long after the delusion that they were ever good has faded.  I wish we could be more honest that when we enjoy some of these bad movies we are really enjoying the memories that surround the movies, but ultimately that's what we are doing, and there's nothing wrong with that when all is said and done.

Don't Watch Trailers...Seriously

I don't watch trailers.  You shouldn't watch trailers.  Trailers are a bane on the movie going experience that just keeps getting worse and worse as time goes on.  To base your movie going choices on trailers is a mistake at best, moronic madness at less than best.  Let's make one thing perfectly clear up front so that you can understand why I am saying all this (and why I am about to say what is coming up):

Movie trailers are NOT your friends!

They are not.  They act like they are, but they are your own worst enemy.  A trailer does not care about you.  A trailer does not care about your tastes.  A trailer does not care about the truth.  A trailer is not objective.  A trailer is, has always been, and always will be, a commercial.  A trailer is selling you a product.  A trailer is about as subtle a commercial as a Fruity Pebbles commercial.  Yes, there is a moment of entertainment to be found from it, but it is still trying to sell you something that you may or may not even like.  Heck, it might be selling you something that may or may not even be any good.  Take the trailer for "Fifty Shades of Grey" as a perfect example: The trailer advertises the movie as a romance film.  While there is a moment at the end that hints at the sadistic nature of the movie in the long run, it is selling you a love story.

This is not factual, honest, or even remotely close to what the movie actually is.  Let's also take a look at the trailer for "The Dark Knight Rises," in which big action is highlighted above everything else in an attempt to make it look big.  Now, in this case the film that is being advertised IS in fact big in some seasons, and has a slew of really memorable actions sequences!  The movie itself, however, is more of a crime drama than it is an action film, with character interaction making a bulk of the film and the action sequences making up only a small portion in the grand scheme of things (about thirty minutes in a three hour movie to be exact).  If you were going to the movie based on these previews, whether you liked the movies or not, you didn't get what you were really promised in the grand scheme of things.

The trailers were cut in a way that marketers thought would best sell what they were shilling.  Audiences, for all their cynicism about how marketing works, seem utterly clueless to this fact.  They base their potential date nights on something that is meant to sell them something.  This is one of the reasons you shouldn't base your movie going choices on trailers.  They only have their own self interests in mind, and you are not one of them.  If you want a good example of how this works, just watch the full fledged trailer of "Frozen" and compare it with the movie you saw.

Tell me, does any of THAT remind you of the movie you saw?!  I mean, yeah, obviously that footage DID come from the film, but if you went to see a movie based on that trailer you were probably expecting more of a comical romp!  There is no sign of the sister relationship, the drama, there is no sign (surprisingly) of Oscar-winning song "Let it Go"... in fact, watching that trailer, we got something MUCH better than what we were promised!  Yet, if you were basing seeing that movie on the trailer, I doubt you would see it because that trailer impressed virtually no one when it hit the screens.  The marketers cutting the trailer thought that's what people wanted to see though.  If that's what the people really wanted, then the movie would have been a huge failure, because they didn't get that.

This is why you need to read reviews.  Because critics, believe it or not, do have your interests at heart.  Yeah, there are some critics who are snobs and act very elitist, but even those critics just want to watch good movies.  You rarely see a critic calling for more movies like "Norbit" and "Batman & Robin" to be made.  We gain nothing from you paying to see a bad movie.  Yet more and more we are being overlooked and undervalued, traded in for the almighty trailer that is about as much as a door-to-door salesman as you can get, and not only do you open that door, you let him speak on your Facebook page.  The sad thing is, this is only PART of the reason you shouldn't watch trailers!  The other reason I'll discuss in a future post.