AQ Redux: The inner workings of the movie geek

Being the self-described movie geek that I am, I am conscious of the image us somewhat volatile folk can be. In 2002 I discovered Joblo.com and along with it, the message board.

I thought "hey, a place where I can share my love of movies with others like me? Sign me up!"

Under the moniker of Rated R I posted regularly for six years with only occasional absences. Looking back on my early posts I am embarrassed at what I was willing to print even if it was anonymous. At least here, I am posting as myself and not an alias.

The internet has seriously hurt art critique by giving everyone the option of being their own personal critic. Lost are the days of looking for a well written piece on the depths of cinema or the flashing lights of a masterful action film. Now it's all about the statistics.

If a movie has a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, that's all you need to know it's supposed to be great. The problem is a lack of context. By just looking at a number you lose nuance expressed by the writer and instead focus on a an arbitrary number that can not sum up the film properly.

The worst part of the message board is how piss poor the spelling and grammar is. I can understand the occasional typo, but some of these posts are littered with the demolition of language. Like Isaac told me -- which I assume he got from somewhere else -- "the internet is like the world's largest public bathroom. Through the power of anonymity people will write anything they please. Would they ever say these things in their own home or in the face of the person they're insulting? Never." That is, of course, paraphrasing.


The inner workings of the movie geek
by Jason Wilson

The movie geek, like the music aficionado and literary nut, is obsessive and cares way too much about what the layman refers to as 'entertainment.' Films are more than time killers to these people.

I would consider myself a recovering movie geek, although that would indicate that I am no longer am or wish to be one. Neither of which is true.

Films can represent life and reflect values of what is dear and important. If you're watching Meet the Spartans this isn't the case but filmmaking is an art that is so often discarded as mere flashing lights. What's worse is that these bells-and-whistles pictures are the most successful at the box office.

There has to be balance in the media for both art and escapism. Sometimes the two cross over. If every film released was a harrowing look at the ills of humanity, we'd all be refilling Zoloft prescriptions daily.

If every movie was directed by Michael Bay, we would be completely desensitized to senseless violence and we'd lose all comprehension of basic human emotions. Without our physical self changing we would become like Roy Batty and the replicants in Blade Runner. We would look human, maybe even want to be human, but we wouldn't be able to grasp what it means to be human -- although we may not even know what it means anyway, which might be the point of Blade Runner.

If you look at the grand scheme of filmmaking and analyze the whole as its own organism, it makes sense. Our bodies are littered with bacteria. The film world's version of the bowel region is made up of Uwe Boll, Dane Cook and Julia Roberts among many others -- in music, it's the entire Emo genre.

The human body is also resilient, which is way the bacteria are more of a nuisance than anything. Sadly it's a necessary nuisance.

Movie geeks don't always accept this. On movie message boards and the intenet at large people expunge cruelty toward artists(?) they don't like. Why would anyone take the time out of his day to say Tom Cruise should kill himself? What is the point? It's baffling and people who write crap like that should seriously re-examine their lives.

Dane Cook is one of my least favourite "actors." Any time he's on screen I cringe. And yea, I got a kick out of his violent fate in Mr. Brooks. But my solution is to not watch any of his movies on my own dime...simple.

The flip side -- the side most people don't seem to separate from their image of what makes a fanboy -- is that because of the film geek's obsession, a new world is opened. Without watching Goodfellas, The Godfather, Platoon and other classics at a young age, the path to Fellini, Godard and Kurosawa* might never have come.

The expression and communication of ideas is one of the most important parts of life. Film is one of the ways we communicate but film critics have been devolved into grading machines. Chances are if you read a review, it will be apparent how the critic felt about it. Instead, we want everything faster. Immediately.

Give me a rating out of 10 because I can't be bothered to read a few hundred words about it.

Rotten Tomatoes is a good resource in principle. It should be a collection of essays on film and what each individual film means as well as their quality. While links to the full reviews are there, there are only one or two-sentence blurbs summing them up. Next to it is an image indicating whether the film is considered "fresh" or "rotten."

The percentage rating is not representative of context. For the most part, horror movies are destroyed by critics. Horror movies are made with a specific audience in mind and there is art behind it.

Ask most horror fans, they'll watch pretty much any horror movie but they do not love the films blindly. Horror fans are probably the most honest and to the point about the movies they love, critics be damned.

There needs to be balance. As a movie geek I am willing to admit mindless entertainment has its place and I can enjoy it. All I'm asking is that the rest of you meet us half way so the art gets equal play.

I rate this column 5/10

*Just because it's foreign doesn't mean it's good. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.