Styles of Movie Watching

Over the years of watching film I have come to realize that there has to be varying degrees of movie watching. With advertising and the internet being so prevalent it is almost impossible to watch a film without having some preconceived feeling of what the film will be or what ones response to the film will be.

To be completely honest my viewpoint is almost always biased. When I hear that a movie is gaining Oscar buzz I tend to give the film more leeway as it relates to our critique points. When my cohort on this blog gives a raving review I go into the film with a positive light. Now that's not to say that I don't completely disagree with professional critics (i.e. I completely despise Pulp Fiction) at times or on the rare occasion Derek (Gran Torino), but I go into the movie looking for ways to find the good aspects of the film and not completely subjective as one should.

I think a case in point for this is Derek's review of The Happening. He had heard from me how horrible it was, and from everyone else for that matter, so he approached the movie expecting the absolute worst and he found the redeeming qualities instead.

So all that to ask, what is the resolution to this problem?

I am not sure there is an answer. I guess to get an absolute true opinion one must watch a film having seen no preview and having heard nor read a review of the film unfortunately for the average movie fan this is not an option. So maybe the answer comes from gauging our expectations. Maybe we set up a scale that we expect a movie to hit when we start and then rate the film based on what it provides based on that scale. This might keep us from finding that sneaky hidden gem (think Once or Diving Bell and the Butterfly), but it may also help us judge movies for what they are. Remember this is all a form of entertainment and all actors and actresses take different films for the paycheck. They all mail it in occasionally.

So obviously this whole thought process stems from something. Well, by my wife's choice I spent this evening watching Bride Wars, now my expectations going in were low and in the end even those expectations were too high. Even Anne Hathaway could not come close to saving this disaster of a film, but it got me thinking that maybe there should be a sliding scale for rating movies. Maybe going in for movies that we have a preconceived estimate in our head we rate how the movie did at meeting those expectations.

I don't think anyone goes into movies like the aforementioned Bride Wars or say Fools Gold, another Kate Hudson classic, expecting to see Oscar worthy performances, state-of-the-art camera work, or amazing special effects they just want to be entertained and some will find those films entertaining. I on one hand loved the first Mummy movie even though Brendan Fraser should not be seen anywhere near an Oscar stage (Yes, I have seen Crash and yes the rating is deteriorating for me daily). Watching the movie back there are lots of issues, but it is entertaining and maybe that should be rated on a different scale than say The Departed or Revolutionary Road. Of course as it stands our scale is open to all classes and varieties of film and unfortunately that means a VERY low rating for the likes of Bride Wars (it could be on a two point scale and it would still be rated poorly). I think though for someone out there if you based the scale not on the quality of the overall picture from a critical standpoint, but maybe completely how entertained they were for a film, that they were not expecting Oscar worthy performances, than someone out there might rate that move higher, but its not me.