zlacker

>>tortil+(OP)
Rotten tomatoes is actually very useful if you know the magic formula:

* If tomatometer & audience score are within 5% of each other, you can trust the ratings to give you a decent indiciation of movie quality.

* If tomatometer is more than 15%+ higher than audience score, it means it's an artsy fartsy movie that critics like and movies don't.

* If audience score is 15%+ higher than tomatometer, it's a fun movie even if it's not oscar worthy. (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/old_school is a perfect example)

>>ernest+d93
Okay, let's give that a whirl

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The Last Jedi

Tomatometer 91% Audience 41%: Artsy Fartsy

[Really?]

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The Greatest Showman

Tomatometer 56% Audience 86%: Fun, not oscar worthy

[Won Oscar for Best Original Song]

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EDIT: Truthfully, it was the release of these two films (both Dec 2017) that caused the Tomatormeter and I to part ways. Simply indefensible, IMO.

>>pauldd+8d3
I can't comment on "The Greatest Showman" since I haven't seen it, but on a certain level "The Last Jedi" was kind of artsy fartsy; Rian Johnson spent so much time on cinematography and color grading[0] that he ended up with a movie that was visually very striking, without any plot fundamentals that felt like a deep betrayal to the universe.

[0] Think space-walrus cliffs, or red-salt Hoth, or lightspeed kamikazee, or the Snoke throne room battle

>>eindir+ng3
> but on a certain level "The Last Jedi" was kind of artsy fartsy

While I agree with your criticisms of The Last Jedi, I don't think you can under any circumstances consider this movie "artsy fartsy".

The Last Jedi is the anti-artsy fartsy movie, otherwise the term loses all meaning. It doesn't mean "bad", and an artsy-fartsy movie can be good. Focusing on just the technical or glossy aspects doesn't make a movie artsy, it just makes it bad.

>>the_af+ep3
TLJ is super-ultra (about 99%) artsy fartsy, just the Euroartrash type which most non-critics aren't familiar with. This type is utterly obsessed with controlling, subverting and deconstructing expectations, so everything needs to be the opposite of what the movie-goer is supposed to expect. Except that too is a kind of convention, so a Euroartrash movie going long enough will eventually subvert itself. It's basically a 'sophisticated' type of trolling.

Critics love these movies, because first they see lots of movies, and something doing different, even if the different doesn't really have anything behind it, is refreshing. Also, since there isn't really any plan, you can read everything behind it, which allows you to write whatever you want very easily.

Especially for the SW universe which is getting stale, and the sequel trilogy was stale from the beginning. Euroartrash allows the illusion of a new path. An illusion, since if the movie went the way some critics imagined it, a certain character had to make the other choice at the end. But you wouldn't subvert the viewer if they had.

Viewers don't like them anywhere as much - turns out trying to confuse the viewer for the sake of it doesn't make for a good experience - and it's a bad fit for a movie universe. They really picked the wrong directors for that trilogy.

>>yyyk+EU9
> TLJ is super-ultra (about 99%) artsy fartsy, just the Euroartrash type which most non-critics aren't familiar with

Hard disagree. First, I'm familiar with many kinds of European cinema, and second, by no means is anything Star Wars artsy-fartsy, or "Euroartrash" or whatever silly made up category.

It can be bad cinema, but that's unrelated. Star Wars is, and will always be, about entertainment first; not a single Star Wars movie or TV show escapes this fact. Not a lot artsy about it.

Subverting (some) expectations has nothing to do with being artsy. And it's not like the new trilogy was particularly gutsy either; it just wasn't very good.

We agree on one essential thing though: my main criticism of Star Wars is that it's mostly played out, with very little left to say (with some honorable exceptions). Time to give this corpse of a movie universe a rest, instead of keep milking the cash cow.