We will be having a double-feature premiere of our newest two short films, “Forgive Me” and “Director’s Cut” this month.

We have a 500-seat auditorium to fill up and admission is free, so if you are in the Houston area, please drop by.

WHERE
River Oaks Theater
2009 West Gray
Houston, Tx 77019
Google Map

WHEN
7 - 9pm
Thursday, February 28th, 2008

We hope to see you there!!

First of all, i apologize for the scarcity of my posts recently. But before I explain my excuses, let’s just dive right into what I want to talk about…

Have you ever gone to a movie based on what you heard a movie critic say? From what you heard, this was going to be the best film of the year, but once you watched it, you were thinking, “what?” 

I’ve heard lots of my friends say that they disagree with the critics so often, that they will choose films based on the opposite of the critics choices. I’m not so sure that that really works, but maybe it does for some. Why is this the case?  

In my last several posts, I have been talking about creativity and film, and the fact that film is an art form.

You and I probably wouldn’t pick out the same paint color for our living room. If we had an unlimited budget, we probably wouldn’t pick out the same car. Most importantly, if we were both looking at a Monet painting, we probably wouldn’t have the same opinion about it. Is it a great work of art? Does it look like my 3-year-old could have painted it?

Our opinions about art are as different as our lives. Everyone has different things that “speak” to them creatively.  

Another thing that makes our tastes different is our familiarity with the art form. If you never pay attention to paintings, then you could be easily fascinated with the local artist down the street for painting some really realistic trees or something. But if you are a student of art and are familiar with all the masters, then it might look amateurish.  Hence, the more paintings you look at, the more critical you are of them. 

All of this translates over into the area of film. Besides the basic differences in every person’s tastes, the amount of films you watch has an impact on what you like. This is why there is such a disconnect with professional movie critics and everyday normal movie-goers.

The more films you watch, the more familiar you get with story structures and character arcs, and you very quickly get to the point where you know where the story is going way before it comes. And then when it happens the exact way you thought it would, you get bored because it seems like you’ve seen this before, so what’s the point?  I think this is why critics end up liking movies with what most would call weird or quirky elements. Because to them, it caught them off guard, surprised them, or showed them something they haven’t seen before.

Of course, to the rest of us, it just seems weird or quirky.

So, why do we care what the critics say? Many of us just don’t have $8 a ticket we can just throw away on a bad movie, so we want someone else to tell us what to see. But even when you get the recommendation from a friend, many times you will walk away with a very different opinion than was given to you.

My point is this: every human being on the planet is going to have a different experience when watching a film. Everyone filters things through their life experiences. There is no way to categorically say, “this film is bad” or, “this film is good,” because it’s all relative. 

At this point, I don’t even see the value of listening to critics at all. Fundamentally, there job is telling the world what they’re opinion is of the art - one person in a world of 6.6 billion people. That’s one opinion out of 6.6 billion opinions.

I guess if you need help choosing what to watch, the best thing to do is find someone you agree with most of the time, and take your chances.