Critical Mass

When you were first starting to listen to popular music (if you ever did such a thing---perhaps you still enjoy strains of Chopin or Stravinksky), did you listen the the top 10? Maybe you had an older brother or sister or music afficianado buddies who steered you to more obscure treats. But maybe you were listening to Mariah Carey or Backstreet Boys, before someone said take a listen to Arcade Fire, or The Shins, or Punjabi MC, or the husky Portuguese croonings of Cape Verde's Cesaria Evora.

Music is usually the first entertainment medium that we begin to stray from pop dictates. It's not hard to see why. Turn on the radio station, and listen for an hour. The same seven songs play over and over and over. And over. To be forced to listen to some song that has a catchy hook hundreds of times over a months kills any coolness that the song has. It becomes saturated in the brains. We're more receptive to any music off the beaten path, if only to make Whitney Houston shut up.
(Cuz eye-ee-eye will alwayz punch yoo-HOO-ooo!)

And there's so much to listen to. Once upon a time, which really amounts to the 80s, white folks listened "white" music (U2 and the like) and black folks listened to "black" music (Sugar Hill Gang), and the twain didn't meet that often. This is, of course, a historical fiction, but I knew plenty of white folks who found rap to be filled with talentless people who couldn't even sing, having to rap out words over other people's songs ("Can't Touch This!"). They'd rather listen to their Axl Rose and Metallica, thank you.

But the 90s changed that. Post-grunge listeners are more likely to listen to rap as they are to ska maiden, Gwen Stefani. My buddies who are white, are often listening to Outkast and Enimem as they are likely to listen to Coldplay or Sarah McLachlan. I mean, I just saw a group I had never heard of (Black Eyed Peas) on a Best Buy ad, and now I'm intrigued!

I can't say I listen and appreciate music the way most people do. They fill their Ipods with music that spans many a genre, with groups that I know I haven't heard of. I dabble in this music and that, and let my breathern pick stuff I should listen to. I know, I know. It's not pure. I should listen to what I listen to, and enjoy it because I want to enjoy it. But c'mon, be serious. Listening to music is almost as much about social pressure as anything. Remember when your friend made fun of you for listening to Britney (but, but, she is talented!), and introduced you to Sharon Jones (or Norah Jones for that matter). And you thought, "hey, that is good", and then your buddies took you to the 9:30 club so you could hear local bands likes Dismemberment Plan (before they got dismembered).

Food is probably the second entertainment where maybe you pushed yourself out of the safe confines of burgers and chicken mcnuggets. Want tandoori chicken? Or lemongrass beef? Or a hot bowl of pho or udon? Want injera? Or jerk chicken? Or pad thai? With so many good international restaurants out there, you can have Indian, Thai, Carribean, Burmese, Ethiopian, or any number of cuisines. You don't have to settle for that chicken from Popeye's.

When sushi became the hit of Silicon Valley culture, allowing programmers to show off their newfound bling, and their taste for something out of the ordinary, the rest of the US benefitted. When Japanese was the new Chinese, and Thai the new Japanese, and Indian, the new Thai, we were given a whirlwind tour of Asia through its cuisine, so that ordering a samosa became as easy as ordering fries ("so long and come again").

But the one area of resistance to the new, the untried are movies. OK, so most of us don't read what food critics have to say, and many more of us don't even know book critics exist. We all know about movie critics. Be it Roger Ebert, or Gene Shalit, or Leonard Maltin, or Manohla Dargis, the average moviegoers disdains the critics. Critics have to write sharp reviews. They can't preface every review with IMO, because it makes for weak writing. And they hate movies we seem to love.

No where was this as evident as during Chris Rock's segment during this year's Oscars where he goes to the Magic Johnson theaters to interview various patrons, all of them African American. Not a one of them had seen any of the five nominees, whereas all of them had seen White Chicks (even Albert Brooks!). It was hard to tell what Rock was saying. Perhaps the films that get nominated aren't what America, particular what black America watches.

Even though most intelligent people (for some definitions of intelligent) value their ability to make up their own minds, when it comes to picking films, intelligent people often rely on critics while the average Joanne relies on film trailers. What's so wrong with listening to critics? If you were to buy wine or buy electronic goods, you might defer to an expert. Why is it so hard to defer to an expert with films? They say hundreds of films a year, and you might see 10 or 20.

For a long time, I'd read movie reviews on the Internet. Whether it was Scott Renshaw, James Berardinelli, or my favorite, Mike D'Angelo, I loved to read reviews. Going to the movies, well, that was expensive, and I didn't want to make the effort to locate the films and watch them. This made me a bit of an oddball, but for my money, reviews are some of the best short essays that are in public consumption.

I've long thought about writing reviews for movies, and now that I see a lot more movies (thank you Landmark! thank you AFI! thank you netflix!), I can actually do it.

Except.

Except it's hard to write reviews. Most people can't write reviews. They don't remember enough from the movie to write anything. They leave the film with a sense that it was cool, or that it was boring, or that it stunk, but when pressed to give details, they can't tell you. It takes a certain kind of person who pays attention and yes, even takes notes, while watching a movie to write a review.

The easiest review, and therefore the least useful, is the review that basically summarizes the film. There's no reason for you to summarize the film. I want to go see it. I want to be surprised. Stop summarizing! And yet when I write my own reviews I can't help but summarize. It's so much easier to summarize than to tell you what I think of the film.

This is why I believe in the mostly spoilerless review, and why I think I have a good way to learn how to write movie reviews. Here's how you do it. First, I want you to assume your audience has seen the film, possibly several times. Don't summarize the film. They've seen it. Next, restrict yourself to 50 words. Finally, tell me did you like it or not, and if you liked it, why, and if you didn't why not? By not summarizing, by being brief and to the point (unlike me), you will learn how to write film criticism.

Here are some useful questions to answer when writing a review. What's the meaning of the movie's title? Who did a good job acting? Who did a bad job acting? If you were to change something about the movie, what would it be? What part made no sense to you? Did the movie start well and end badly, or vice versa? Who were the good guys? Who were the bad guys? What genre is the film (romantic comedy, thriller)? How was the music? How was the movie direction? How was the pacing? OK, fine, summarize the film.

If you can identify what the movie did well, and what it did badly, you are beginning to be a critic. And remember, the audience you are writing to isn't those who might or might not watch the film, it's to those who've seen it. If you keep that in mind, you'll write far more insightful reviews, and avoid the crutch of summarization.