CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

I was curious to know if reading a movie review (or multiple reviews) tends to dictate your decision on watching it in theaters?

Movie critics tend to have more "refined" tastes as opposed to a lot us, since they've seen a lot more movies than we have. So I usually take that into consideration when I hear them give an average or below-average review. But sometimes their decisions might help me if I am clueless on the movie overall.

Though there are a few movies that I enjoy, when after looking at what is given in the Rottentomatoes site, were found to be "bad" among the critics.

All movies have their detractors. Although I have a refined taste (art-house movies and such) I tend to like the less artsy movies as well.

I don't listen to critics. I listen to my friends -- I know their tastes somewhat, and can gauge my reaction to their opinion accordingly. There have been many movies I liked that critics dissed, and many movies that critics raved about that I didn't care for.

Yeah, I'm with the wolf on this one. If anything, I'll read the professional reviews *after* I watch the movie and my opinion is formed. And I watch things in the first place because I either saw the trailer or I heard about it by word of mouth.

in my experience, if a critic says a movie is good, it's good... if they say it's bad... it still might be good

Somtimes I listen to them, somtimes I don't. Most times it takes seeing a film myself before I can really cast judgement on a movie. And most of the time I don't agree with major critics.

There are a few critics I pay attention to. This isn't because I like their opinions, but because in my experience I can tell quite a bit about a movie based on their reactions (when some of them don't like certain things I assume I'll probably like them). But overall this is secondary to feedback from my peers with similar tastes.

Though it matters very little because I see movies so very rarely.

My taste never seem to match theirs

It's all a matter of tastes, no matter how many bad reviews a movie gets there is going to be at least one person who likes it.

That said, no. I do not often agree with professional critics.

i will listen to them everyonce in a while but most of the time i go with friends

Allegro wrote:I was curious to know if reading a movie review (or multiple reviews) tends to dictate your decision on watching it in theaters?

Movie critics tend to have more "refined" tastes as opposed to a lot us, since they've seen a lot more movies than we have. So I usually take that into consideration when I hear them give an average or below-average review. But sometimes their decisions might help me if I am clueless on the movie overall.

Though there are a few movies that I enjoy, when after looking at what is given in the Rottentomatoes site, were found to be "bad" among the critics.

The best way to deal with critics is to use their opinions to your advantage. If you find one whose opinion parallels yours quite often, then you can usually trust their judgment. I can usually trust Roger Ebert's reviews]The Butterfly Effect[/i] a mediocre review, while I enjoyed it immensely.

Basically, a critic that you trust can be a good starting point.

No,primarily because I strongly feel that one should go with one's own tastes in these matters and not what some idiot in New York,Chicago or Los Angeles says.
In any case all critics have their own personal preferences and prejudices and a lot of what they say is based in that.There can't be such a thing as a really objective review of anything as the said reviewers personal tastes and prejudices will always tend to surface sooner or later.

One thing I would very much like to see is a website with movie reviews from a broad variety of places... except that you could choose the rating. For each movie, you could link to a critic that gave it one, two, three, or four stars, depending upon whether you want to like the movie or not. I doubt many people would use it (unless for the variety of opinion), but it would make an interesting statement.

I think word of mouth is the best way of knowing how good or bad a movie is,if you know someone who has seen the movie already and they know what you like you're more likely to get an honest idea of what the movie is like than from reading it in the paper or online.

uc pseudonym wrote:One thing I would very much like to see is a website with movie reviews from a broad variety of places... except that you could choose the rating. For each movie, you could link to a critic that gave it one, two, three, or four stars, depending upon whether you want to like the movie or not. I doubt many people would use it (unless for the variety of opinion), but it would make an interesting statement.

IMDB.com has user reviews, as well as Amazon.com. They aren't professional reviews, just average joes.

Generally, it's a good idea to read a few of the reviews by the people who gave the movie 1 or 2 stars, because quite often they do so out of spite and quite obviously didn't "get" the movie in the least. The problem is that when the "average" rating indicates the "arithmetical mean" rating, a few very low marks can skew the entire rating of the movie.

Out of curiosity, I did some looking for the type of sight you were describing, and found none. The only list of critical reviews I could find were for "Top 100" lists and the like.

I usually don't read any reviews made by the critics. Half of them say a movie is great and two thumbs up then the other half says it is the worst movie they have ever seen. But as i said before i don't read a whole ton of them so maybe its different than i think.

Often I agree with critics, though not always. There are some movies that get bad critics but I like, but this often depends on what genre it is; often I find comedy funny to watch even though it might get bad critics.

Nope, I don't bother listening to the critics. The critics gave Artificial Intelligence fantastic reviews, but I hated that movie. XD At the same time, critics have given bad reviews to movies that I liked, so I don't really listen to them at all. I just watch what looks good, and if I enjoy it, I enjoy it, but if I don't, then I don't.

Critics from most newspapers and the like will go for anything that looks immoral and praise it, it seems. I don't read their columns anymore.

usually i have much different tastes then critics, but we usually agree on big box office hits (LOTR, SW, etc.)

for example, i saw some reviews giving flightplan a 6 or 7 out of 10... i gave it a 2. horrible plot development...

I'll admit that I do watch the Ebert and Roeper show on Sunday nights. It's funny how when one of them disagrees on a movie, drama immediately unfolds between the two critics. So usually supporting just one critic for a movie decision doesn't help as much as knowing their individual tastes.

No way. I never listen to movie critics ^_^. 90% of them gave bad reviews to the Pokemon movies. I almost never read movie reviews until AFTER I've seen a movie

Well Pokemon isn't exactly Shakespeare, but then again Shakespeare isn't all that great either! (lol)

I follow the same method as quite a few of the others who have posted here. I tend to listen to the opinions of my friends and if they're really into a movie I will probably go and see it if I get the chance (usually when it comes out on DVD though ).

However, since I don't really know anyone who is really into anime and manga I tend to use the reviews on CAA and I've found that my opinions have matched the reviewers on the anime I've watched so far. I also got into quite a few anime due to people's enthusiasm over the CAA, too. So for mainstream movies I'll use my friends for reviews, but for anime I'll check out the CAA more. I guess I'm a bit of both.