Thanks For Saying It, Rog…
Honestly, I didn’t really read much of the drama around Roger Ebert’s “review” of a small indie that ran last week. Our Ray Pride picked up some of the headlines on the front page of MCN. It was only when I saw the apology for running a review based on 8 minutes of a DVD that I was struck.
It’s really simple.
There is no excuse, ever, for reviewing any feature based on 8 minutes, 28 minutes or 48 minutes. A review of part of a movie is not a review. Period.
But more significantly in play here, there is, in my opinion, no room for panning any film at all unless you have sat there through every single second of the film until credits roll. I don’t care if it is a 30 minute soft-porn Cinemax entry or a 23 hour documentary.
Even on the MCN front page, where we do headlines, if we do not read every article we link to up to the end, we are prone to make a bad mistake in how we editorialize as we post. Just the other day, there was a blog entry online – to stay unnamed – that was about 15 paragraphs long and was dead stupid for about 13 of them… and then the author flipped and pointed out how wrongheaded the rest of the entry was. Bad writing, but our attack headline was wrong as a result and we quickly removed it.
Just yesterday, the AP story headllined as a new poll showing the presidential race dead even was completely misleading, the evidence of which was buried after about 5 graphs. Turns out that the survey was dramatically skewed to one side and while it did show a fair picture of how evangelicals feel about Obama, it was not an honest overall survey as a result.
So thanks for the backing off, Roger. You remain a mensch. And the red mark from the slap on the hand was fading by days end yesterday,
I actually think critics should have the right to write a review of WHAT THey SAW if they feel compelled to do so.
For example: I’m a big fan of the 1983 Pinter adaptation Betrayal. I’m also quite fond of Kael’s review of the movie. What makes the review a small classic is that she only reviews the movie up to the point where she walked out.
Granted, I don’t think critics should make this a regular thing, but I thought Ebert had built up enough good will that he could write that review.
If anyone but Ebert had done it, it would have pissed me off. Sometimes I think Anthony Lane does this and just doesn’t own up to it. Ebert’s self-correction was classy as usual.
In an oblique way, the original review functioned as a criticism of the entire Earnest, Low-Budget Gay-Themed indie genre that has blighted art houses with its ineptitude for years.
I also agree that if a critic wants to review a film they walked out on they can as long as they mention at the beginning of the review that they only watched x minutes. Personally, I’ll stop reading at that point because I’m not interested in the opinion of someone who only saw a partial film.
One reviewer who I sometimes read does this all the time (they’ll usually mention the walkout at the end) and it drives me nuts. It also bothers me when they continue to criticize the movie in subsequent mention because they never mention the fact they walked out in those. That starts bordering on unethical IMO.
Dave, isnt this almost the exact same thing you did a while ago with ‘Hostel II’ that caused all that Eli Roth backlash? Or is it ok to review based on an unfinished cut of a bootleg dvd?
Pauline Kael walked out of The Monkee’s HEAD.
Christian, that’s a great visual (if you replace “Monkee’s HEAD” with “monkey’s head”).
So what’s the excuse for sitting through a whole movie but watching so inattentively that you get major details wrong? Has Ebert or Lane or whoever ever apologized for that?
“There is no excuse, ever, for reviewing any feature based on 8 minutes, 28 minutes or 48 minutes. A review of part of a movie is not a review. Period.”
Wrong! There are movies out there where you, as critic can say that NO MATTER what comes next it will never justify what happened before. Critics should be allowed to say, I don’t want the audience to sit through what I just sat through even if what follows is the much better or sheds new light on what just happened. Some things can NEVER be justified.
This requires an experienced and an intelligent reviewer and one who isn’t likely to quit on a movie out of sheer boredom like Ebert did (i.e. the content has to be truly repulsive).
And It is enough to sample movies like I Spit on Your Grave, Salo, Chaos (the new one), etc to know that
Yes, objectively speaking it’s only part of the picture but there is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with this reasoning as long as the reviewer admits he stopped watching after a certain point.
This way the viewer has all the information and can decide for him or herself.
Note that this isn’t the same as reviewing a film you haven’t seen – a pracise I absolutley abhor.
Ebert’s mistakes were not emphasizing the facts in the beginning and seamingly quit only out of pure boredom (now that’s inexusible).
“Even on the MCN front page, where we do headlines, if we do not read every article we link to up to the end, we are prone to make a bad mistake in how we editorialize as we post.”
David, your article analogy doesn’t work, because as a reader you always have the option skimming or skipping over paragraphs while as a paying viewer in a movie theater you have no option of fast forwarding through parts you don’t want to see.
Look… it’s up for anyone to have an opinion here.
But, ironically, Roger happens to have been a stickler about this stuff throughout his career. He knows – and to some degree, taught me by his example – that rules matter. And the self-indulgence of the critic in expressing loathing can easily become something outside of the standards of criticism.
I am completely fine with someone writing, “In just a few minutes, this film pushed every button I have and I could not stand another minute. Here are my buttons, here is how they pushed them, and if you choose to, you will decide for yourself.”
Point is, a movie that you choose to walk out of as a professional critic because it so offends you is a movie that is hitting YOU in a bad way. We all have our issues. And we have all watched a lot of shitty movies to the very end.
It is ironic that Roger’s situation came down to 8 minutes, since I seem to recall that this was the same time period I cited years ago to Jeff Wells when he just couldn’t stand another minute of Eight Legged Freaks. And then, as now, my position is clear… you can say you walked out on a movie… you can explain that you cannot stand that genre (Jeff’s circumstance) or specific things about it (more Roger’s), but then, you are done. No beating on the film in detail, no pretending you know what was coming, etc.
Moreover, it is a professional
Speaking of H.E. Who Shall Not Be Named, anyone else catch that J.W. entry this past summer about how he was actively getting up and leaving films he LIKED at the 15-minutes-to-go mark, because he had enjoyed himself enough and wanted to leave before anything had a chance at the end to ruin it for him?
Yeah. (I seem to remember him saying this about “Zohan.”)
Jeffrey has become nothing more or less than a sideshow freak and has had some success at it. What is amazing is that people still get caught by surprise because even his pretend-id writing doesn’t express just how far into the darkness he is capable of going, primarily in self-loating.
After 21 months without reading him or engaging with him privately, I am 100% sure it was the right choice, though I am still sad and embarrassed that I am not strong enough to reamin in contact and unscathed by the darkness. giving up on people is not something I do easily.
Yeah I officially decided that I was done with Wells a little over a month ago and haven’t regretted it for a second. It got to the point where just about everything I was reading on his site was just making me feel horrible about humanity – not really what you’re looking for in a movie pundit.
But speaking of movie pundits (as I know Dave doesn’t want this to turn into a Wells pile-on) I have to ask – great jumpin’ Jiminy Crickets, did anyone catch that Rex Reed review of the new Charlie Kaufman flick? I know Reed has become kind of a joke in recent years and the movie isn’t particularly well-liked, but I didn’t think he had this kind of vitriol in him. Surely nothing Charlie has done before is worthy of that kind of animosity – love him or don’t, I can’t see anyone gathering the negative energy to wish him harm (as Reed seems to stop just short of).
Like wow.
Who knows, maybe the movie sucks (I haven’t seen it, obviously) but what he wrote is nothing short of embarrassing.
The guy who played with himself in MYRA BRECKENRIDGE has no bidness slamming any film ever again…
He’s so consistently wrong-headed that a Reed pan is as good as gold.
“So what’s the excuse for sitting through a whole movie but watching so inattentively that you get major details wrong? Has Ebert or Lane or whoever ever apologized for that?”
A great sadness for me was Roger’s pan of LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA–not because he hated it, which was certainly his right, but because he spent most of the review talking about other things, and what little he actually wrote about the film was either extremely generalized or indicative of inattention (he wasn’t sure if the aliens were married, even though they refer to each other as “my husband” and “my wife” throughout the picture). I’d like to believe he simply wasn’t feeling well that day, but were that the case, I wish he’d just spiked the review rather than just ramble like he did.
Watching old reviews of Siskel and Ebert on YouTube and you’ll see that they routinely make mistakes about actors and characters and plot turns.
Not to pile on Rog, but his PRIDE AND GLORY review seems to have A WHOPPER of an error in its fourth paragraph.
This is not a spoiler, but Rog says something about Norton’s ex-wife, played by Carmen Ejogo, receiving a visit from an extremely shady character on XMas Day. Huh???? Ejogo only has TWO SCENES IN THE FILM, neither of which involve such an encounter.
Instead, Colin Farrell’s wife, played by Lake Bell, observes Farrell getting a visit from a shifty dealer at Christmas.
The actresses look NOTHING alike (and are, in fact, of different races, to boot), and this gaffe is so far off, it’s questionable what movie Ebert was even watching.
For the record, that should’ve read that Ebert claims Ejogo sees NORTON receiving a visit from said shady dude…
In any case, it’s Farrell and his family in the scene Roger’s talking about, unless his wording is just really, really odd.