NY Film Critics Circle gives RotK "Best Picture"

Franz Schubert · Post by **Franz Schubert** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 11:23 am

According to this article, the NY Film Critics Circle gave Return of the King best picture award. Who would have thought? This is the first time they've given anything remotely fantasy the award, since they usually give the award to real artsy films. Here's what one of the Critics said:

"It's just beautifully made, it's pure cinema, it does everything," said Johnston, a critic for Radar magazine. "It's got amazing, epic scope to the drama, to the battle scenes, a lot of strong emotional stuff, really complex, well-rendered characters and effective comic relief where it needs it."

Sounds pretty good... and now that the Critics have praised it, maybe even atoga can accept this movie!

Radoteur · Post by **Radoteur** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 12:17 pm

I'm surprised.

Can anyone find a single bad review for this movie?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 4:57 pm

I haven't seen it, but I'm still turned off by the wooden dialogue in the first two. Everyone says this one is amazing, but I'm skeptical.

S4ur0n27 · Post by **S4ur0n27** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 7:16 pm

Franz_Schubert wrote:"a lot of strong emotional stuff

You shitty scenes with that Tyler-whore?

I'm sure everything else is great tho.

atoga · Post by **atoga** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 9:34 pm

Lord of the Rings is overrated. It is good, but there's no reason at all why it should be considered *spectacular*. Get over it.

iohkus · Post by **iohkus** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 10:28 pm

i haven't seen any of them, they seem over hyped... i might read the books first sometime though then decide if i want to see the movie...

SuperH · Post by **SuperH** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 10:37 pm

Subhuman wrote:I haven't seen it, but I'm still turned off by the wooden dialogue in the first two. Everyone says this one is amazing, but I'm skeptical.

That's because it's straight out of the books. "Epic" and boring.

OnTheBounce · Post by **OnTheBounce** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 10:44 pm

Franz_Schubert wrote:...[A]nd now that the Critics have praised it, maybe even atoga can accept this movie!

Is it just me, or film criticism becoming "democratized"? I remember back when I was in my early teens Siskel and Ebert would get together once a week to lambast the latest crop of shitty camp fare (back in the early '80s, which seems to have produced more than its fair share of that sort of fare). You rarely ever heard them say anything that could even remotely be construed as "postive".

Then, in the '90s they suddenly started raving about everything, giving it "two thumbs up!". (Perhaps Siskel's death was the Muse's revenge for that...) They definitely were playing to popular sentiment rather the standards they had set in their earlier work.

Just something to think about.

OTB

iohkus · Post by **iohkus** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 10:52 pm

critics have to be fucking critical. but i've noticed in the mainstream it's less about being critical and more about serving the needs of the majority like you just mentioned. argh...

Megatron · Post by **Megatron** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 11:27 pm

Yeah, I never 'got' the whole lotr hype or the over-priced dvds or any of the other crap. I suppose it's a good(ish) story, but there's better stuff. Generally it's just sent out shockwaves of suckiness, like the king-kong remake, derks whining about how they read the book before it was cool and everyone else saying how fucking great it is?

Yeah well...it's not. It's just braveheart and conan the barbarian, and it's still too long. At least if you're going to make a 9+ hour film trilogy, choose something better than lotr.

Oh well. I might see it tommorow but I'm not really that bothered. If I had something better to do...

meh

Doyle · Post by **Doyle** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 12:11 am

Rotten Tomatoes managed to find a bad review.

atoga · Post by **atoga** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 3:14 am

OTB wrote:Then, in the '90s they suddenly started raving about everything, giving it "two thumbs up!". (Perhaps Siskel's death was the Muse's revenge for that...) They definitely were playing to popular sentiment rather the standards they had set in their earlier work.

Siskel & Ebert (and that new guy who replaced Siskel) totally suck. They just give this lame consumer guide to the movies. In fact, most critics do that nowadays. The only film critics I really like are Anthony Lane (he writes for the New Yorker, and I don't usually agree with his opinions, but his critiques are really funny) and Jay Scott, who wrote for the Globe & Mail but is dead now.

Franz Schubert · Post by **Franz Schubert** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 3:44 am

Ebert is full of shit. He gives good/great movies bad reviews.

Turan · Post by **Turan** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 6:04 am

Franz_Schubert wrote:Ebert is full of shit. He gives good/great movies bad reviews.

He likes commercial films. It brings him back to his youth, and gets a kick out of diging for meaning in meaningless films. Ive actually met him, nice guy.

Franz Schubert · Post by **Franz Schubert** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 8:12 am

Then why does he pan great movies like Road Warrior and Big Trouble in Little China? And Resident Evil and Blade and such.

Radoteur · Post by **Radoteur** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 10:39 am

Well, I think it's pretty much subjective. Isn't it? I mean, a critic just says what they think about the movie and the viewer takes that and either ignores it or agrees with it. I think a way to get the most bang for your critical buck is to find a critic or a group of critics that you usually agree with and listen to what they have to say. If you find yourself disagreeing with a critic, stop respecting their opinon. Seems pretty simple to me.

I guess critics can try to be objective, but I see that as futile.

Menno · Post by **Menno** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 11:21 am

Franz_Schubert wrote:Ebert is full of shit. He gives good/great movies bad reviews.

Haha, yeah he really is. I remember rummaging through my brother's old videocassetes years ago and I came across a tape of one of the Siskel & Ebert review shows [my brother works in the film industry so he has a wide assortment of all things related to film; he's one of those directors that makes those cheesy straight-to-video movies]. Anyway, as I was fast-forwarding through it, I noticed they did a review of that 80's film 'Cobra', with Sly Stallone.

For those of you who haven't seen 'Cobra', its your typical 80's action-flick with your cliched "Violent but honest cop with no personal life who is hated by his peers but loves his job" killing punks, rapists, murderers, etc. It's so cliched that Sly Stallone wears shades (both day and night and indoors) for about 75% of the film. So by no means could you give this film great reviews...But surprisingly, Siskel and Ebert both gave it thumbs-up! Their reasoning behind it was the fact that Cobra was "a film made for the victims of urban crime and brought them justice in which the courts couldn't do" and Ebert remarked something along the lines of "I actually cheered when Cobra [Stallone] killed each punk and murderer" and Siskel nodded his head in approval. Haha, you could tell both these dweebs spent most of their highschool years getting stuffed into lockers and probably sodomized, which would explain their excitement over 'Cobra' going on a vigilante-spree killing all the "bullies". That's when Siskel and Ebert lost all credibility with me.

OnTheBounce · Post by **OnTheBounce** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 12:22 pm

Menno wrote:For those of you who haven't seen 'Cobra', its your typical 80's action-flick with your cliched...

I say through it once. My old man loves that flick. The scene that sticks out to me is one near the beginning when he tells some perp that, "You're a disease, and I'm the cure." Whoever wrote that dialogue...well, hangin's too good for 'em...

Menno wrote:...But surprisingly, Siskel and Ebert both gave it thumbs-up!

You've got to be shitting me! (Please don't stoop to the level of Cobra's dialogue and tell me that you wouldn't because I'm your favorite turd.

)

I remember the first show of theirs I saw they were busy ripping apart Krull and Maelstrom: The Destruction of... (something or other). They ripped into both of them and called them pretty much everything except a complete, total and utter waste of celluloid. (Then again, I'm of the mind that flicks like that are a complete waste of time to sit around a review, but if you can get paid to do it, I suppose...)

At any rate, I still say that they softened considerably in the '90s.

I agree w/Radoteur on critics, to a certain extent, but I'd like to add that sometimes you can actually do the opposite. Namely, you can also find critics whose opinions you are literally a polar opposite too, and use their panning a movie as a recommendation. (The more options you have, the more likely you are to find what you're looking for.)

Cheers,

OTB

Menno · Post by **Menno** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 12:34 pm

OnTheBounce wrote:I say through it once. My old man loves that flick. The scene that sticks out to me is one near the beginning when he tells some perp that, "You're a disease, and I'm the cure." Whoever wrote that dialogue...well, hangin's too good for 'em...

Haha, I actually loved Cobra also. Only in 80's films such as 'Cobra' do you see police sending in one lone man wearing shades for a hostage rescue attempt at a supermarket (with no lights on), running while getting shot at by a guy with a shotgun several times just to reach an intercom speaker system to say [in Sly's dull voice] "You know buddy, you're a real lousy shot." Haha, or when the same hostage taker threatens to blow up the building, Stallone replies "Hey Dirtbag. Go ahead. I don't shop here."

You've got to be shitting me! (Please don't stoop to the level of Cobra's dialogue and tell me that you wouldn't because I'm your favorite turd. )

Haha, I kid you not. I'm 100% sure that Ebert gave it thumbs up, but I'm only 85% sure Siskel did, but he was speaking glowingly about it along with Ebert so that's why I think he gave it thumbs up also. Keep in mind that when I say "glowingly" they didn't necessarily say it was a well-made film, they just enjoyed it very much. Haha, remember, these were our "feel good" movies of the 80's. Nowadays you got romantic comedies like 'Love Actually' that are called "feel good films of the year"; in the 80's you had films like Death Wish where Charles Bronson kills rapists, 'Dirty Harry' where Clint Eastwood kills serial killers, and movies like 'Commando' and 'Red Heat' where Arnold just about kills everyone. Haha, those were our feel good movies in that era with all the amount of crime we had in the US. You could tell they approved of this film strictly because it came out during the United States extremely high crime years and they just loved these vigilante movies.

Tagline: Crime is the disease. Meet the Cure.

If you want to see the trailer: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0090859/trailers

I remember the first show of theirs I saw they were busy ripping apart Krull and Maelstrom: The Destruction of... (something or other). They ripped into both of them and called them pretty much everything except a complete, total and utter waste of celluloid. (Then again, I'm of the mind that flicks like that are a complete waste of time to sit around a review, but if you can get paid to do it, I suppose...)

At any rate, I still say that they softened considerably in the '90s.

I actually liked Krull (but I was young when I saw it, so it probably won't hold up), but I agree with you in that they were more critical of films during the 80's; it just seemed as if they gave a bit too much credit to the 80's vigilante flicks. Or then again maybe Gene and Siskel liked 'Cobra' due to the fact that it has a chick with D-cups in it.

S4ur0n27 · Post by **S4ur0n27** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 3:17 pm

Those 80's action movie were entertaining. They aren't GOOD movies but they are fun to watch. Cobra, Red Heat, Raw Deal, Commando. I was like 10 in those years, but I still enjoy watching these movies on TV now. Red Heat was good, Arnold is such a badass with his HUGE cannon.

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NY Film Critics Circle gives RotK "Best Picture"

NY Film Critics Circle gives RotK "Best Picture"

Re: NY Film Critics Circle gives RotK "Best Picture&quo

Re: NY Film Critics Circle gives RotK "Best Picture&quo