Most film critics are failed directors…

I give your comment 3 stars

prepared for the downvotes here, but I cut my teeth in journalism in arts criticism and deeply respect some of the people I've known in the field.

I think this kind of opinion - and the irony does not escape me that I'm performing a sort of criticism here - is rather misinformed.

Yes, anyone can be a critic in the same way that anyone who can, slowly and haltingly, play a C Major scale, can be a musician.

But I believe, like my metaphor, that if you were to dive into successful and recognized critic's (/musicians) work you'd find a lot more depth than you'd expect.

If any — Who are the critics you dislike, and why? If any — who are the critics you do like (even begrudgingly), and why?

You suck!

Consider yourself critiqued! That'll be $50.

The only qualifications to being a critic is having people listen to you.

I was too young to watch Moonlighting when it was on TV, so I never knew Bruce Willis as anything other than an action and drama guy until he was on Friends for a few episodes, and then I thought he was out of place.

I never watched the office so I don't have that impression of him, but his face just looks too much like a Pixar character for me to take him seriously as an action hero. I did enjoy Jack Ryan but I felt like a different actor would've been better.

I feel that way about Jack Black. I could not take him seriously in King Kong.

I don't know about game critics, but movie critics have (usually) studied film on an academic level, and watched a whole fuck ton of movies for the purpose of breaking them down and analyzing them. They're not watching and/or thinking about movies like most people. Of course they will judge them differently.

The problem is critics are people who always value the new and interesting, and good acting. Because they watch a lot of movies, day in day out.

Sometimes normal viewers just want something dumb that's exactly what they expect.

For me, it's not Bruce that's great in Die Hard. It's Rickman. Die Hard 3 does better on the protagonist side because of the chemistry between Jackson and Willis, but again it's the classically trained theatre actor doing a lot of the heavy lifting, single-handedly stopping it from turning into an episode of Blue's Clues.

My belief is that at least half of the reviewers for anything are just really desperate to be distinguished and taken serious, so if a thing has too much mass appeal and/or it’s too low brow they can’t like it on principle.

"This thing doesn't have a single horse? What's up with that?!"

Lots of critical have liked lots of good movies

For example, Deuce Bigelow, European Gigolo

On Rotten tomatoes the movies I've disliked most have 90s and my favourite movies are below 50

I understand how, in retrospect, it may feel like it isn’t groundbreaking, but do consider that before Die Hard, there really wasn’t anything quite like it.

A quote straight from Wikipedia:

It is considered to have revitalized the action genre, largely due to its depiction of McClane as a vulnerable and fallible protagonist, in contrast to the muscle-bound and invincible heroes of other films of the period.

While it did sort of fall apart and away from what made it great in the later sequels, I think it’s important to put the film into the context of when it was released and what it did to the genre.

All that to say, Die Hard fucking rules.

it was so different because he was an anti-hero, and he got visibly beat thoroughly and never stopped being a smart ass about it.

That's because it set the mould, and dozens of copy cats followed the formula thereafter.

My kids watched it for the first time ever last weekend. They had no nostalgia or frame of reference for it and yet they both loved it - “the dumbest fun movie I’ve seen in ages”. We’re watching #2 tonight.

That's the thing, it WAS different to other action movies at the time. Im not going to say you are wrong not to like it, but it can't be denied that it blazed a trail for a new type of action movie and, as a result, is loved by millions.

I mean nobody is going to call it some high art cinematic masterpiece. But it is a fun entertaining movie.

The audience loved those movies, thats why they became classics. But movie reviewers were much more pretentious back then. Nowadays it is more socially acceptable for a movie critic to say they had fun with a mainstream action movie.