Current Events > MovieTok or: How I Learned to Stop Criticizing and Love Anti-Intellectualism

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/15/movies/tiktok-movie-reviews-critics.html

When you read a critics review, it almost sounds like a computer wrote it, said Cameron Kozak, 21, who calls himself a movie reviewer and has 1.5 million followers. But when you have someone on TikTok who you watch every day and you know their voice and what they like, theres something personal that people can connect to.

A lot of us dont trust critics, said Lucious, 31. He was one of many who pointed to the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, where the scores of Top Critics often differ widely from those of casual users, as evidence that the critical establishment is out of touch. They watch movies and are just looking for something to critique, he said. Fans watch movies looking for entertainment.

MovieTok creators are not the first in the history of film criticism to rebel against their elders. In the 1950s, Franois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and other writers of the journal Cahiers du Cinma disavowed the nationalism of mainstream French criticism. In the 1960s and 70s, the New Yorker critic Pauline Kael assailed the moralism associated with Bosley Crowther, a longtime movie critic of The New York Times, and others. And movie bloggers in the 2000s charged print critics with indifference or hostility to superhero and fantasy films.

LOL

Juju Green, a 31-year-old former advertising copywriter, sees himself as on a mission to combat film snobbery." Known as Straw Hat Goofy, Green is the most prominent member of MovieTok, with 3.4 million followers and an emerging side career as a correspondent and host. His most popular video, in which he identifies Easter eggs in Pixar movies, has nearly 29 million views. I had a feeling like I was meant to do this, he said. Green quit his advertising job last year. I like to call it professional overthinking, Green said.

wow amazing

Cruz, 34, echoed other MovieTok reviewers who said they dislike doing sharply negative posts and would be unlikely to slam a movie whether they were in business with the studio or not. She said she generally prefers to deliver negative opinions in the form of a compliment sandwich, preceded and followed by more positive remarks. It pains me to say that this movie, by and large, did not work for me, she said, in a review of the horror-comedy Renfield. Cruz then added: There are a lot of individual elements of this film that really do work.

"i like some things but didnt like some other things" incredible work

the new york times should be embarrassed for putting out this puff piece tbh. comparing this shit to pauline kael or cahiers du cinema you gotta be kidding bro

do people really prefer just being told what they want to hear rather than like... engaging with something as art? this isn't criticism obviously but more like being a glorified publicist. "overthinking." lmao. what do you guys think has led to this? please discuss below @blue_inigo

Brain drain

i could feel my brain draining out of my ears while reading this tbh

knightmarexx posted...

You dropped this, dude:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/9/7/AAOwOpAAEwUh.jpg

i dont follow

Criticism is often written for other critics, and almost requires some education in specifically how to read and write it. So yeah, not surprising that people who don't bring any of that to the conversation can't scratch much past the surface.

BuzzKilljoy posted...

Criticism is often written for other critics, and almost requires some education in specifically how to read and write it. So yeah, not surprising that people who don't bring any of that to the conversation can't scratch much past the surface.

curious to know who is writing impenetrable criticism

Zithers posted...

A lot of us dont trust critics, said Lucious, 31. He was one of many who pointed to the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, where the scores of Top Critics often differ widely from those of casual users, as evidence that the critical establishment is out of touch. They watch movies and are just looking for something to critique, he said. Fans watch movies looking for entertainment.

Pretty funny ngl

Let's be real, Zithy, you love shit like this because it gives you something to bitch about here on CE.

Are they reviewing movies in 10 seconds? I can always agree with turning away from old school fart sniffery but I don't think tiktok is the platform for any kind of proper reviewing.

Save me from the evil devils

Murphiroth posted...

Let's be real, Zithy, you love shit like this because it gives you something to bitch about here on CE.

it does help confirm that i am doing the right thing by spreading the gospel of older or under-seen films

specialkid8 posted...

Are they reviewing movies in 10 seconds? I can always agree with turning away from old school fart sniffery but I don't think tiktok is the platform for any kind of proper reviewing.

the article mentions most of them do it in 30-90 seconds. and almost all of them get paid to do promo for studios. so it isn't actual reviewing or criticism or anti-establishment.

I'm not sure there's a lot at stake here lol.

Let's read the opening of Pauline Kael's defining review of Bonnie & Clyde

How do you make a good movie in this country without being jumped on? Bonnie and Clyde is the most excitingly American American movie since The Manchurian Candidate. The audience is alive to it. Our experience as we watch it has some connection with the way we reacted to movies in childhood: with how we came to love them and to feel they were oursnot an art that we learned over the years to appreciate but simply and immediately ours. When an American movie is contemporary in feeling, like this one, it makes a different kind of contact with an American audience from the kind that is made by European films, however contemporary. Yet any movie that is contemporary in feeling is likely to go further than other moviesgo too far for some tastesand Bonnie and Clyde divides audiences, as The Manchurian Candidate did, and it is being jumped on almost as hard. Though we may dismiss the attacks with What good movie doesnt give some offense?, the fact that it is generally only good movies that provoke attacks by many people suggests that the innocuousness of most of our movies is accepted with such complacence that when an American movie reaches people, when it makes them react, some of them think there must be something the matter with itperhaps a law should be passed against it. Bonnie and Clyde brings into the almost frighteningly public world of movies things that people have been feeling and saying and writing about. And once something is said or done on the screens of the world, once it has entered mass art, it can never again belong to a minority, never again be the private possession of an educated, or knowing, group. But even for that group there is an excitement in hearing its own private thoughts expressed out loud and in seeing something of its own sensibility become part of our common culture.

So what's going on here? When Bonnie & Clyde first released, many of the long-seated print critics blasted it, most notoriously Crowther of the NYT. Once he had been an advocate for disruptive films, but he had a reductive and outdated understanding of depictions of violence, unable to see Bonnie & Clyde as anything than more than perverse entertainment. For Kael, "understanding" why and how violence is portrayed and employed in the film preceded and informed her "judgment" of the movie. But for Crowther, judgment preceded and informed understanding-- a violent movie is bad, therefore the movie used violence in bad ways.

Pauline Kael, part of the generation who would develop and consume the 70s "New Hollywood" films, understood Bonnie & Clyde because it spoke a language her generation understood. Having grown up in the social, political, and military violence of the 60s, the young generation had a different relationship with depictions of violence than their elders who grew up under the Hays Code era of film censorship. Bonnie & Clyde did not depict thrills and fun, it depicted a terrible brutality that gave the film weight and realness.

Kael was responding to the movie as a work of art. That's the difference between her and the interviewed "MovieTok"-ers. The latter seemingly reject interest in movies mattering, instead insisting they be reduced to entertainment products. The need to react to or wrestle thoughtfully with the contents of a film is bypassed. Judgment precedes understanding.

Zithers posted...

But when you have someone on TikTok who you watch every day and you know their voice and what they like, theres something personal that people can connect to.

Zithers posted...

It pains me to say that this movie, by and large, did not work for me, she said, in a review of the horror-comedy Renfield. Cruz then added: There are a lot of individual elements of this film that really do work.

That's exactly how critics have always worked. Like, "man, I hate PB&J, but I love it when my mom slaps protein and sugar between two slices of bread."
Read Ebert's review of Attack of the Clones: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-wars-episode-ii-attack-of-the-clones-2002
You can tell he's not the target audience, but trying to give it a chance. He compliments what he sees as good and discusses what's bad and where it might lead. He even looks for and finds meme potential.

No, wait: Anakin tells Padme at one point: "I don't like the sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating--not like you. You're soft and smooth." I hadn't heard that before.

Rotten Tomatoes is a critic aggregation site, criticism isn't supposed to exist in this walled off vacuum where it's either positive or negative. Short-form and long-form criticism have existed longer than cinema has.

I never read or watch reviews, if I want to watch something then I'm going to watch it.

I also have the ability to enjoy movies critics often rail against because I can enjoy vapid and shallow stuff for superficial value, provided it at least offers that in an appealing way.

I consider myself rather amenable on the subject, especially compared to my friend who got a bachelor's in film and now seems to hate things he watches more often than not.

ChocoboMog123 posted...

That's exactly how critics have always worked. Like, "man, I hate PB&J, but I love it when my mom slaps protein and sugar between two slices of bread."
Read Ebert's review of Attack of the Clones: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-wars-episode-ii-attack-of-the-clones-2002
You can tell he's not the target audience, but trying to give it a chance. He compliments what he sees as good and discusses what's bad and where it might lead. He even looks for and finds meme potential.

Rotten Tomatoes is a critic aggregation site, criticism isn't supposed to exist in this walled off vacuum where it's either positive or negative. Short-form and long-form criticism have existed longer than cinema has.

i mean, a real critic would not waffle between trying to be nice to studios (so that they can be paid by them like tiktok kids do - as they would have no conflict of interest) and giving some negative criticism. roger ebert would savage movies all the time.

also i don't think the kid bringing up rotten tomatoes has ever actually read film criticism so probably just best to call him an idiot and move on

Kradek posted...

I never read or watch reviews, if I want to watch something then I'm going to watch it.

I also have the ability to enjoy movies critics often rail against because I can enjoy vapid and shallow stuff for superficial value, provided it at least offers that in an appealing way.

I consider myself rather amenable on the subject, especially compared to my friend who got a bachelor's in film and now seems to hate things he watches more often than not.

you can read reviews after you see a movie. i do this all the time.

tell your friend to watch stuff on turner classic movies or the criterion channel btw

I think the primary issue is that you see being positive as bootlicking corpos and being negative as true intellectual engagement. That's a common, but very very wrong notion.

COVxy posted...

I think the primary issue is that you see being positive as bootlicking corpos and being negative as true intellectual engagement. That's a common, but very very wrong notion.

I feel like if anything it's much more common to view speaking negatively about a film as haughty pseudo-intellectualism.

Zithers posted...

you can read reviews after you see a movie. i do this all the time.

tell your friend to watch stuff on turner classic movies or the criterion channel btw

He's watched a lot of the criterion collection on Hulu. He's very well-versed in the world of film.

It's not like he can't enjoy movies at all, he's always had the deepest analytical skills of our friend group due to his professional aspirations, I'm just saying that after he got formal training/skills in filmology he noticeably enjoyed watching stuff less and became hypercritical.

As for watching or reading reviews afterwards, sure, I could do that, but I also just don't give a shit?

Unless it's funny, the only review I watched was a guy reviewing God's Not Dead cause a clip I saw was hilarious.

I think there's definitely a problem with a lot of modern critics where they think it's their job to make a statement on the piece itself, rather than provide easy to understand commentary for a standard viewer/reader/player. It's obviously a case by case basis, but a lot of the stereotype of self-important reviewers completely missing the mark on how the general audience feels seems to stem from that.

COVxy posted...

I think the primary issue is that you see being positive as bootlicking corpos and being negative as true intellectual engagement. That's a common, but very very wrong notion.

wait who said this. do i have them blocked itt

Zithers posted...

i mean, a real critic would not waffle between trying to be nice to studios (so that they can be paid by them like tiktok kids do - as they would have no conflict of interest) and giving some negative criticism. roger ebert would savage movies all the time.

This seems very strongly to imply what I stated.

Armond White is the greatest film critic of all time

COVxy posted...

This seems very strongly to imply what I stated.

you are inferring incorrectly

a critic should simply not care about what the studio reaction to their criticism would be, whereas tiktokers have to factor it in because it could mean losing thousands of dollars (the piece said those interviewed have been paid as much as $30k for sponcon(!!!!)). it doesn't have to be negative obviously, as critics love cinema and are fans of movies as much as anyone else, otherwise they wouldnt be in the line of work.

lmao one of the ppl quoted in the piece is doing the whole reactionary anti-snow white thing

https://twitter.com/JohnDiLillo/status/1691564822792380802

another is literally just describing the plot of a movie and saying to go watch it... just not interesting or insightful or anything idgi

https://twitter.com/labuzamovies/status/1691577544989143148

bonus third tweet just for fun

https://twitter.com/NickPinkerton/status/1691499205053870080

Whether or not you give a fuck about snobby film critics, what those TikTokers saying is just... nothingness.

I'm not going to blame this on the youth or anything. A lot of people of all generations just don't engage with anything. They watch pretty colors and hear nice sounds and move on to the next thing. I've seen it from all kinds of people. I'd love to understand the psychology behind it.

I wouldn't be surprised if Millennials end up becoming the spiritual successors to Boomers and end up taking advantage of how irredeemably stupid so many Zoomers are. Imagine how much money could be made off them having no media literacy or tech literacy.

CRON posted...

I wouldn't be surprised if Millennials end up becoming the spiritual successors to Boomers and end up taking advantage of how irredeemably stupid so many Zoomers are. Imagine how much money could be made off them having no media literacy or tech literacy.

i've seen the tech literacy thing mentioned a lot. like zoomers don't know where files are hidden on a computer or how to make a pdf or something. feel like this can't possibly be true and that they are the most tech literate of anyone. or are they just phone ninjas. someone explain please.

btw in that tweet of snow white - its actually a thread. further down there's a video of the pixar easter egg guy saying power of the dog was 2.5-3 hours and inaccessible to average viewer even tho the movie is only 128 minutes and also... not some inscrutable, oblique drama or anything. its pretty straight forward.

bump

Tik Tok thinks capsule reviews are a new thing, do they?

Maltin and Christgau doing it since the 1960s . . .

Zithers posted...

i've seen the tech literacy thing mentioned a lot. like zoomers don't know where files are hidden on a computer or how to make a pdf or something. feel like this can't possibly be true and that they are the most tech literate of anyone. or are they just phone ninjas. someone explain please.

btw in that tweet of snow white - its actually a thread. further down there's a video of the pixar easter egg guy saying power of the dog was 2.5-3 hours and inaccessible to average viewer even tho the movie is only 128 minutes and also... not some inscrutable, oblique drama or anything. its pretty straight forward.

A lot of tech "work" done in a year is professional (I'm using work here to mean anything other than simply consuming). Nothing that the average Zoomer does in a year will prepare them for that because modern tech is so simple. Therefore, there will be a knowledge gap between millennials and Zoomers.

It's sort of like cars. They're very dependable now, so even a lot of millennials are not very car savvy compared to generations before them. But did they "gain" any knowledge to make them better drivers than older generations because they grew up with it? I don't think so.

So I think that zoomers will be less technologically able in the workforce than millennials, but it'll probably be by a small amount and be more or less forgettable. There are some fringe questions: If you have to write a large number of words, can a zoomer type as fast as a millennial? Stepping back, does typing need to be the way info is created, or is there a new way? Stepping back, is the large number of words required, or is there a new way? But who even cares?

Some people may compare it to punch cards, oh old people used to use punch cards. But the punch card to PC transition was more like going from horse and buggy to car. Millennials who grew up looking at HTML (myspace), well HTML is still really similar. So I don't think we'll hit the same knowledge gap as older generations. Millennials really were more computer literate than the generations before them because they were the first generation to recreationally use computers. That established a knowledge base at a young age at a wide level, whereas older generations learned as needed, such as typing, basic troubleshooting (no help desk to rely on), etc. But for zoomers to be more tech literate, they need to create a bigger baseline. Are zoomers recreationally researching and verifying information, or being asked to do so in school, above what millennials did?

It's sad how people think they need to "justify" their media choices. I've got some pretty low self esteem at times, but I can't imagine it being so low that I need to have someone else's opinion as permission to like something.

animebop posted...

A lot of tech "work" done in a year is professional (I'm using work here to mean anything other than simply consuming). Nothing that the average Zoomer does in a year will prepare them for that because modern tech is so simple. Therefore, there will be a knowledge gap between millennials and Zoomers.

It's sort of like cars. They're very dependable now, so even a lot of millennials are not very car savvy compared to generations before them. But did they "gain" any knowledge to make them better drivers than older generations because they grew up with it? I don't think so.

So I think that zoomers will be less technologically able in the workforce than millennials, but it'll probably be by a small amount and be more or less forgettable. There are some fringe questions: If you have to write a large number of words, can a zoomer type as fast as a millennial? Stepping back, does typing need to be the way info is created, or is there a new way? Stepping back, is the large number of words required, or is there a new way? But who even cares?

Some people may compare it to punch cards, oh old people used to use punch cards. But the punch card to PC transition was more like going from horse and buggy to car. Millennials who grew up looking at HTML (myspace), well HTML is still really similar. So I don't think we'll hit the same knowledge gap as older generations. Millennials really were more computer literate than the generations before them because they were the first generation to recreationally use computers. That established a knowledge base at a young age at a wide level, whereas older generations learned as needed, such as typing, basic troubleshooting (no help desk to rely on), etc. But for zoomers to be more tech literate, they need to create a bigger baseline. Are zoomers recreationally researching and verifying information, or being asked to do so in school, above what millennials did?

millennials stay winning i guess

harley2280 posted...

It's sad how people think they need to "justify" their media choices. I've got some pretty low self esteem at times, but I can't imagine it being so low that I need to have someone else's opinion as permission to like something.

i don't think anyone is doing this

I trust the opinion of people on YouTube and Twitter whom I've already been following way more than I trust the word of dedicated review writers.

https://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/call-it-what-it-is-movietok-creators-are-corrupt.php

neat little article about this