Peter Griffin: Wide world of film criticism waiting on the web

COMMENT

Reviewing anything - from paintings to plays, rock albums to gadgets - is a subjective and therefore dicey business.

But movie reviewing, as I found out recently when talking to the producer of a local, Film Commission-funded movie, has to be the diciest reviewing of all.

That's because movies are often trying to appeal to a broad audience and because so much money rides on their pulling the viewers.

Big things were expected for the local theatre run of this particular movie until "your paper" threw a spanner in the works in the form of an unflattering review, the producer told me, trying to lighten the mood with a weak laugh.

The poor soul, who took a second hit when the Sunday Star-Times ran a similarly disparaging review of the film, said it was now crucial that his film sold well overseas to make up for the disappointing local box office takings that had resulted on the weekend the reviews were published.

Ouch, all of that just from a couple of bad reviews?

Well yes. Reviewers have incredible power, especially in a small market like New Zealand and where increasingly busy people are reluctant to throw two hours away on some drivel masquerading as cinema.

A night at the movies isn't cheap these days. As an adult you will generally be stung $12 to $14 if you go in the evenings or weekend. There is the $9 cheap night on Tuesdays but it's cheap for a reason - people want to do other things on Tuesday.

But if you think our local movie reviewers are a bunch of jaded cynics, help may be at hand - on the web.

The internet has become a fertile and free source of film criticism penned by the most respected critics in the game, through to the average couch potato with an opinion.

Chances are, a reviewer sitting in London or New York will be just as jaded and cynical, but casting the net wider will give you a better idea about a movie's watchability.

No longer do cinemagoers or those heading for the Video Ezy have to depend on the newspaper, their friends or a copy of the weighty Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide to steer their viewing agenda.

The starting point has to be the Internet Movie Database, which lists hundreds of thousands of movies, swathes of information about the cast, characters and plot, but also extensive criticism under "external reviews".

On a big movie like Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, IMDB will link to all the "respected" reviewers.

Top of the list is usually Roger Ebert, the man who has seen and commented on just about every movie.

Ebert has his own little corner of the web as a longtime reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times.

The impressive Film Critic has a strong following and a database of more than 4000 movies, but the ultimate in pure criticism is Metacritic.

It assigns a "metascore" to a movie - a weighted average of all the scores assigned by the elite of film critics. Metascores range from 0 to 100 - the higher the score the better the movie.

For example Jane Campion's latest movie In the Cut spanned the entire range of review scores, with Entertainment Weekly giving a score of 0 and the San Francisco Chronicle giving it 100 - according to the metascore system. In the Cut averaged a yellow 46.

I've found Metacritic to be a pretty good judge of movies and the colour coding (red for dreadful, yellow for average and green for good) gives you a quick idea of what a film is like.

If you haven't time even for that, check out the Four Word Film Review website. Like the "tagline" that appears on a movie poster and sums up what the film is about, FWFR gives a succinct four-word description.

In the case of Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, one of the reviews read: "Christ, this is violent!"

It's here that the credibility of internet film criticism begins to disappear, but also the pretension of highbrow movie reviewing.

If the movie sucks because there isn't enough bedroom action, these reviewers will tell you.

There's Mutant Reviewers, formed in the late nineties by "bored college students with a lack of proper grammar fundamentals"."In short, we were sick of the stainless, emotionless corporate skyscrapers of most movie critics," the mutants claim. Their slant is towards tacky old cult movies, which have a strong following mainly because of their tackiness.

Indeed, the reviewers at Bad Movie Night make a point of watching and critiquing the worst of cinema.

For reviews straddling the middle ground of informed opinion and informal rambling, JoBlo and Ain't It Cool News should be prime targets.

Still, when it comes to locally made movies, international criticism will be limited unless they're noticed on the festival circuit or have Hollywood buy-in. The IMDB has dozens of reviews of Whale Rider and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but not a single listing for Kombi Nation.

For them our local pool of critics, who should really know New Zealand film the best, are still our first port of call. Start with the Herald's film section.