Dan Mooney

Why do we call them movie reviews, and not movie previews? And movie reviewers, not movie previewers? Who are these little chestnuts written for, anyway?

Well, to start, how would I describe a movie review? I’d say it’s something a prospective moviegoer reads to get a sense of what some unseen movie is about, the crux of the plot, a hint of a theme, probably a take on the nuts-and-bolts of it all, the technique or the performances, all of this arranged for explanatory purposes, sure, but also argumentative ones. It’s one person’s judgment of whether a cinematic experience matches or exceeds the value of the money it’d take for another person to get in the theater.

I might also say a review is just about all it takes to ruin that same moviegoing experience. Spoiler alerts notwithstanding, some of the freshness of the surprise is surely drained by reading a review.

Let me try this, then: a hands-off style review of the movie Primer (2004).

I’d never heard of it until I saw an entry about Mindfuck movies on the famous aggregator site kottke.org. Two of the three movies mentioned at the top of the post were Dark City and Memento, so I clicked through to see which others made the list provided by the link. Some I’d seen, some I hadn’t. Further down was the little write-up of Primer. But I didn’t read anything about it. Didn’t watch the trailer. Its title and its place on the list made it interesting enough, and a small note of support at the original post led me to queue it up quickly.

What a great, freeing, unique experience this would be, watching a movie without knowing much of anything about it! I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know, the premise, who was in it, anything more than I did, which was only that at some point some guy in a shirt and tie would do something or have something happen to him, or probably both. My only thought was that it reminded me of a Pink Floyd cover, which seemed okay to me.

So I watched it. And I’m not going to tell you what happened. But I recommend it.

Unsatisfied with that?

I would be too. Seems pointless, a review like that. But that’s more or less what it’s like to go into a movie with few if any preconceived notions about it. Unusual. So often I’d read seasonal movie previews, watch trailers, IMDb the living hell out of all these new movies so that by the time I ever got around to seeing any of them, I’d already nearly taken the journey upon which the movie is supposed to lead me. The experience was always compromised, though I also actively aided in compromising it.

So, fed up, I stopped watching trailers, and for the trailers of the movies I most anticipated I was doing all I could not to see a second of them except for actually leaving the theatre for those few minutes. Childish, embarrassing, effective things.

Time ticked on. Still I’d read up on new movies. I’d see what projects were in whatever director’s pipeline. And layer upon layer notions and expectations would pile up. And then when I saw a particular movie, the poor thing was fighting at a disadvantage because of whatever expectations I had. Often my assessment of a movie was not of the thing in itself but mostly whether it matched my expectations. Doesn’t seem fair.

But then, experience is part of it. Context, hard as it is for me to admit, is part of it. That which you know might enhance the experience even more than it detracts from the experience. Maybe expectations are part of the joy, when a movie is truly enjoyed. Maybe a movie that doesn’t meet expectations just isn’t very good. Maybe those that get a bum rap are fewer and farther between than I think.

So, after all this: the conclusion I’ve reached is that in my own mind, movie “reviews” are just what they sound like: a writer views a movie, then “re-views” the movie in his mind, writing about it, adjudicating the experience and passing along word of mouth as he or she thinks the movie deserves. They’re not just marketing tools, though they certainly can be. They serve a purpose, and I do think that purpose can shift from person to person. Now, I read one really only after having seen the movie, so I can agree or disagree and in continuing to think about it, also eking a little more out of those ten or twelve dollars than I thought I would. Maybe I’ll write them with an eye towards those more open-minded than I.

Now, what I really thought of Primer, in broad strokes:

It’s a short movie, without a whole lot of time between my hitting play and scratching my head at the end of it. I was satisfied when, maybe a third of the way through, the main characters didn’t even know what was going on. There’s an image on the internet explaining just what the hell happens, and I couldn’t even understand that. But I can say that I understood enough, and it was enough for me to enjoy it, and to recommend it. I don’t always think that movies that require multiple viewings are successful, more often than not it’s just ineffective, unclear storytelling that I’m not able to grasp the first go-round. I’d compare this to Mulholland Drive, a wildly different movie in almost every way except in that I know I like both, I’m pretty sure I can say both are well-made movies, but that I can’t explain either and instead of trying would rather just go back and watch either again right now. To me, that’s a good sign.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 11:51 pm and is filed under All Movie Reviews, At Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.