Disney's A Wrinkle in Time | 9th March, 2018 | Frozen's Jennifer Lee writing, Ava DuVernay directing. 45% on RT

[La Binoche]

 

[ban1o]

4 minutes ago, La Binoche said:

 

the review embargo isnt' even lifted. People need to calm down lmao. It's like people want this to fail lmao. 

Edited February 27, 2018 by ban1o

[MrGamer]

2 minutes ago, ban1o said:

the embargo isnt' even lifted. People need to calm down lmao. It's like people want this to fail lmao. 

Social media embargo lifted last night. The fact that film Twitter isn't talking about it is a bit concerning. 

[ban1o]

According to the av club reviewer there is genuine confusion on then the social media embargo was lifted lmao 

 

 

[Valonqar]

I think this will do better with GA than with twitter and critics (though I expect reviews to be positive). It's supposedly very emotional ("wears its heart as its shirt") and GA doesn't care if emotional is cheesy af. It's a family story, kids try to find their dad, that resonates. I mean, Interstellar had pretty dreadful father/daughter story and was too long for its own good and it played very well with GA cause daddies with daughters cried like babies. 

Edited February 27, 2018 by Valonqar

[marveldcfox]

Anyone who thinks this will get trashed does not know anything about hollywood/critics. Critics, most of the time, give a pass to anything directed by their favorite director.

In the current climate we are living in, supporting a woman for her big tent-pole project is very important in order to pave the way for women to get bigger projects in hollywood. In this case, it's a bigger deal as here is an African american woman trying to get in the big league film making with the backing of Disney. It also helps that she is well liked within film community and critics. Not to mention the star cast of this film is primarily African american. Lots of things worth rooting for and supporting even if the movie isn't good. It happens...sometimes one has to give fake praise for greater cause. 

Edited February 27, 2018 by marveldcfox

[Valonqar]

Just now, marveldcfox said:

Anyone who thinks this will get trashed does not know anything about hollywood/critics. Critics, most of the time, give a pass to anything directed by their favorite director. In the current climate we are living in, supporting a woman for her big tentpole project is very important in order to pave the way for women to get bigger projects in hollywood. In this case, it's a bigger deal as here is an African american woman trying to get in the big league film making. It also helps that she is well liked within film community and critics. Having the disney backing is also big. Not to mention the star cast of this film is primarily african american. Lots of things worth rooting for and supporting even if the movie isn't good. It happens...sometimes one has to give fake praise for greater cause. 

And are harsher to directors they hate than they would be to those they like. I mean, they gave Pacitifc Rim a pass cause GdT that even charming first Transformers didn't get cause Bay, and TFwas so much better than PR - way better characters, way better effects, same non-sense story as PR.  

[Porthos]

2 minutes ago, marveldcfox said:

Anyone who thinks this will get trashed does not know anything about hollywood/critics. Critics, most of the time, give a pass to anything directed by their favorite director. In the current climate we are living in, supporting a woman for her big tentpole project is very important in order to pave the way for women to get bigger projects in hollywood. In this case, it's a bigger deal as here is an African american woman trying to get in the big league film making. It also helps that she is well liked within film community and critics. Having the disney backing is also big. Not to mention the star cast of this film is primarily african american. Lots of things worth rooting for and supporting even if the movie isn't good. It happens...sometimes one has to give fake praise for greater cause. 

[Firepower]

Lol, the movie might be so bad that even "critics", who give high marks to weak movies only because of director's sex/race, have no word to say about it. They might be affraid to be labeled as racists/sexists and at the same time the movie is so bad they can't push it to at least 6/10 mark, so all they can do is remain silent. But maybe they'll push it to 6-7/10 mark after all with huge efforts like they did with Ghostbusters reboot.

8 minutes ago, marveldcfox said:

Anyone who thinks this will get trashed does not know anything about hollywood/critics. Critics, most of the time, give a pass to anything directed by their favorite director.

In the current climate we are living in, supporting a woman for her big tent-pole project is very important in order to pave the way for women to get bigger projects in hollywood. In this case, it's a bigger deal as here is an African american woman trying to get in the big league film making with the backing of Disney. It also helps that she is well liked within film community and critics. Not to mention the star cast of this film is primarily African american. Lots of things worth rooting for and supporting even if the movie isn't good. It happens...sometimes one has to give fake praise for greater cause. 

There's nothing good in praising shitty movie because of director's/cast' race/sex. This shit destroyes art and destroyed Academy Awards as a serious award.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Firepower

[grim22]

8 minutes ago, Porthos said:

 

You know he's right. I am fully expecting the number of 3/5 fresh reviews on RT to be a record for this. Most critics will just not be able to make themselves give an Ava Duvernay movie with a diverse cast a bad review. It will end up high on RT just thanks to critics sucking up to Ava. They all went in wanting to like the movie as opposed to many times when they can't wait to tear a movie apart, that alone will earn the movie the fresh rating.

[Goffe]

folks can we at least wait for the reviews to drop before making such claims

Edited February 27, 2018 by Goffe

[cookie]

1 minute ago, grim22 said:

 

You know he's right. I am fully expecting the number of 3/5 fresh reviews on RT to be a record for this. Most critics will just not be able to make themselves give an Ava Duvernay movie with a diverse cast a bad review. It will end up high on RT just thanks to critics sucking up to Ava. They all went in wanting to like the movie as opposed to many times when they can't wait to tear a movie apart, that alone will earn the movie the fresh rating.

[Fancyarcher]

The idea that critics are afraid of giving this film a negative remove is pretty ridiculous. There's just confusion about the embargo. Once its lifts, critics will grade the film based off whether they liked it or not. There's no conspiracy.

[Deja23]

24 minutes ago, ban1o said:

According to the av club reviewer there is genuine confusion on then the social media embargo was lifted lmao 

 

 

Yeah, it does seem they were told not to give reactions, but some are doing so anyway because it’s expected that social media embargo for Disney movies typically lift immediately after the premiere. 

They told us not to say anything until next week! I don't know why. If I were them I would roll the dice.

— Todd VanDerWerff (@tvoti) February 27, 2018

Edited February 27, 2018 by Deja23

[Zakiyyah6]

Any critic who says that they didn't know that the embargo was up is a damn liar. I'm not a critic and I knew. The excuses are hilarious.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Zakiyyah6

[Barnack]

1 hour ago, marveldcfox said:

Critics, most of the time, give a pass to anything directed by their favorite director. 

They can also be harsh on director they love because of higher expectation:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_to_Song#Critical_response

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York,_New_York_(1977_film)#Reception

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_from_the_Heart#Critical_reception

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_(film)#Critical_response

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1941_(film)#Reception

 

With some of their strength sometime getting taken for granted and getting people asking for more (Spielberg being a bit like that, arguably Micheal  Bay also, he got out of the loved auteur with is movies receiving the Criterion format/Champion of diversity after a while).

 

1 hour ago, marveldcfox said:

Anyone who thinks this will get trashed

It will be very polite for sure, always pointing at some positive element and not engage in the worst movie of all time type of hyperbole like they would for a Depp / David Ayer / Max Landis entry (and I doubt a Disney movie would fit those, it does not try something that give it a chance to be), but it could still be vastly receiving 4/10, 5/10 score around.

 

There is also a notion about the cause you are mentioning than overpraising can hurt it long term (like it did for female comics in some market in the 90s were big humor festival installed quota, it took year after the talent pool got really good for audience to stop seeing them as the token female comic), doing so would also reinforce the positive critics they gave for projects they really loved and find that it advanced storytelling language like Mudbound.

 

Not saying you are wrong here (Birth of a Nation reviews before and after it became ok to not love it would be an example pointing that you could be right), but once a couple of very successful mostly black cast movie, critically, commercially or both like Compton, Hidden Figures, Creed, Mudbound, Black Panther and so on and that they will stop being an events by itself (arguably getting to be the case) that critics fearing backlash will stop to be a reality, if you can point to 3 recent black cast / director movie you loved just the year before on your rotten tomatoes page you will stop worrying allegation of racism/sexism for just one bad review for just one movie.

 

They will become just movies (and those movies will expend the range of what they will be able to say, they will stop needing to have any positive/representative notion in them and become with larger possible art), I think it is getting close to that, still far from being bold enough to trash/be impolite/bitchy in the reviews and that is not necessarily a bad thing, but not feeling fear to give it a rotten score I would think so (Proud Mary just got a 25% RT score and many thought it would receive an automatic pass for a recent example).

Edited February 27, 2018 by Barnack

[Valonqar]

Eh, critics were like that since forever. or otherwise, how the heck drek like King Kong and STiD and Super Bland, er, Eight ended up with good reviews? They loved post-LOTR PJ and JJ cause he created Lost so their shit movies coattailed on those others successes. Like, I bet they didn't like TLJ all that much but they just wanted Rian Johnson to be a success so they went full fanboy. You know when reviews are not honest because they gloss over problems that they should be hung up on. And you know that there's sabotage when they are hung up on something that usually isn't treated as a big deal. Like, show me a SH movie where heroes don't cause much more damage than villain ever could (any car chase, any brawl on the streets, any Hulk-can't-be-controlled-smashes-100 condos, etc) yet somehow Superman's rampage in MoS became "OMG worst thing ever!" reason: Snyder. That doesn't make MoS a good movie but numerous movies got a pass for doing exactly the same. They simply hate that one and that's that. 

[cookie]

1 minute ago, Valonqar said:

And you know that there's sabotage when they are hung up on something that usually isn't treated as a big deal. Like, show me a SH movie where heroes don't cause much more damage than villain ever could (any car chase, any brawl on the streets, any Hulk-can't-be-controlled-smashes-100 condos, etc) yet somehow Superman's rampage in MoS became "OMG worst thing ever!" reason: Snyder. That doesn't make MoS a good movie but numerous movies got a pass for doing exactly the same. They simply hate that one and that's that. 

You assume it was just critics that got hung up on the last act of Man of Steel.

[marveldcfox]

10 minutes ago, grim22 said:

 

You know he's right. I am fully expecting the number of 3/5 fresh reviews on RT to be a record for this. Most critics will just not be able to make themselves give an Ava Duvernay movie with a diverse cast a bad review. It will end up high on RT just thanks to critics sucking up to Ava. They all went in wanting to like the movie as opposed to many times when they can't wait to tear a movie apart, that alone will earn the movie the fresh rating.

well......grim22 agreeing with what I said feels weird and awkward. 

 

[Barnack]

16 minutes ago, Valonqar said:

You know when reviews are not honest because they gloss over problems that they should be hung up on. And you know that there's sabotage when they are hung up on something that usually isn't treated as a big deal

I think that is more because it is really hard to know why we like a movie or not and we tend to come up with reasons ad-hoc.

 

The movie energy, flow, clicking, the ensemble of all the cinematic tool used to told the story/theme matching together, the running time seem to have been made for the story (and not needed to have cut it or added to it), but the movie being 30 second too short, just loving the characters is usually what happen but we need to try to find reason and words to talk about it.

 

Those problem you are talking about would not have mattered in a "good" movie it is true, the very fact that as an audience member we do not get easily over them is a proof we do not like the movie, not the reason, but we will think they are a significant part of why we do not love the movie.

 

In a movie that work for us we will go for crazy proposition and bent our reality to make it work, quite far and vice versa for when we do not like them.

 

Giving an example, in Civil War people fighting in an airport just for fun while destroying for millions of property, breaking people flight schedule, etc... bothered me or Iron Man bringing a teenager still kiddish to the fight when part of is motivation was guilt over the death of a child in Ultron. It would have not mattered to me I imagine if I was excited to see them cosplay fighting and just say let's go who care for reasons, it is not the reason at all I didn't love the movie, it is symptom of not loving it. But if asked to write a review, those are the kind of points I would bring, not being able to know in reality what didn't click for me.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Barnack