Controversial Movie Reviews

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Permalink Reply by Slappy on July 14, 2008 at 6:25am

Did you give them a low review? Sometimes fans will mark a negative review not helpful only because they don't agree with the opinion. I guess technically if you do really like a movie a bad review would not be helpful. I don't use this feature very often, usually only if the review makes no sense or is misleading. I have made very few reviews and I haven't even thought to checked out how they faired lol.

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl Bailey on July 14, 2008 at 7:49am

If you go to my sight you will see I give reasons why I rate a movie a certain way. Sometimes I even start out by saying I know this is controversial and explain why and never do I write the above comments that when I see on a site I usually flag as "not a review".

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl Bailey on July 14, 2008 at 7:44am

I went back to view and found out of all of them I gave only a couple one and two stars. The rest were 3-5 stars.

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Permalink Reply by Spindaddydad on July 14, 2008 at 7:06am

I do not consider "net helpful" votes for my reviews as meaning the review was controversial.

More often than not, I think people mark reviews "not helpful" when they are trying to help their own review, or when they disagree with a review. If you've ever given a comic book adaptation a negative review, then you'll know what I mean.

I only mark a review "not helpful" if the content in the review did not help me make a decision about renting the film.

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl Bailey on July 14, 2008 at 7:55am

I did give The Happening two stars because I thought it was really a bad movie, but many of the ones I rated four and five stars got unhelpfuls. Maybe some people just go down the list and rate unhelpful? For You Can't Take it With You I got one out of seven stars and I gave it 5 stars and explained why I really liked it. Go figure.

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Permalink Reply by ewd76 on July 14, 2008 at 8:21am

I did give The Happening two stars because I thought it was really a bad movie, but many of the ones I rated four and five stars got unhelpfuls.

Can you link to it? I will give you a helpful.

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl Bailey on July 14, 2008 at 10:12am

I don't know how to do that yet, not too computer savy.

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Permalink Reply by ewd76 on July 14, 2008 at 7:59am

I would think the only reason to mark it unhelpful would be either when you have not seen the movie and the review tells you nothing which helps you make a determination as to whether you would be interested, or if you had seen it and know that the review is way off base in its description or not relevant to the movie at all.

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl Bailey on July 14, 2008 at 8:12am

I totally agree, that is why I don't get it. I willl look at some reveiws that say " great comedy " or something similar and get lots of helpfuls when i usually talk more about why I liked it or not with specifics.

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Permalink Reply by Signfire on July 14, 2008 at 10:09am

Yep... My reviews of Spike Lee Films usually garner me low ratings. My review of When The Levees Broke is the lowest rated review in my list. Then comes my review of Malcom X. I found that the movie tried to be all things at once; controversial, intense, dramatic, cinemagraphically excellent, a historical epic etc... And as such failed to be any one thing completely. It would have been much better if Spike Lee's ego was not in the way.

I think if people knew me, they wouldn't have their guard up when considering my reviews. I'm actually a very liberal guy who has watched many "black films" and (however rhetorical this may sound) has best friends who are black.

I just don't think Spike Lee is a great director... yet... I think he is getting better but I don't feel like we should give him good reviews just because he's hollywood's token black director... it's like some kind of bizarre "affirmative action" that people are willing to lower their standards for Black Directors.

The same can be said for Tyler Perry... his movies are terrible (although at times very funny) and to give him a good review is really just lowering the standards for African American filmmakers. But what's worse about Tyler Perry's films is that black pundits will refute bad reviews as the rantings of white people who "just don't get it"... That's an insult to the intelligence of people who paid to see the film... It's up to the director to MAKE US get it.

That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it... so bring on the "not helpfuls"!

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl Bailey on July 14, 2008 at 10:15am

I see what you mean. When I reviewed Expelled lots of people either loved or hated it and although I got lots of people reading my review the number of helpfuls vs. unhelpfuls was split down the middle.

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl Bailey on July 14, 2008 at 10:36am

By the way, I did go back and reread The Happening. I will admit I think this was one of the most negative I wrote but actually it did not receive as many negatives as Atonement or Expelled. However, I am wondering if the negatives really matter that much as long as people are reading your reviews at all. I went from number 620 to 459 this week.

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