Changing the Dialogue: How Digital Creators Are Reshaping Film Criticism

Hazel Hayes

Air Force One (1997) 79% is an atrociously wonderful film. It just unabashedly and un-ironically uses every single action movie trope there is, and isn’t ashamed to do so. It’s predictable as hell, I just love it, because I love Die Hard. Die Hard is, legitimately, one of my favorite films. And it’s like a parody of Die Hard, but on a plane. Every line, you’ve heard in something before. Every line is a cliché. Every scene is a cliché. And yet, somehow, I always wanna watch it through to the end.

Chris Stuckmann

Angelina Jolie’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) 20% is fairly bad but I’ve always liked it. It hit that level for me of so bad that it’s good. My wife loves it too, and it was one of those things we actually bonded over before we got married. It’s a video game movie about a woman who is basically raiding tombs, looking for artifacts. This doesn’t have to be a classic. I think they really did a good job with it from what they had and it’s a blast.

CinemaSins

CHRIS ATKINSON: Ocean's Twelve (2004) 55%. If you asked the stars about that movie, they are going to say that they just did it so they could get a vacation and shoot a movie on vacation, basically. They made Ocean’s Thirteen as a ‘sorry’ for Ocean’s Twelve. It is so self aware and so ridiculous, it doesn’t feel like it is at all put together like the Ocean’s Eleven is. But any time that it is either on, I love watching it.

JEREMY SCOTT: I love the movie Demolition Man (1993) 63% like it was one of my brothers. It’s this ’90s, terrible, cheesy, futuristic action movie with Stallone and Wesley Snipes where Taco Bell is the only restaurant in existence. It was poorly reviewed. It made a decent amount of money because it had big stars in it, but I don’t think anyone critically looks at that movie with anything positive to say. I would watch it right now if you put it in front of me.

Lindsay Ellis

I can’t get enough Showgirls (1995) 23%. It is one of the worst movies ever made. I think there is a sort of thing people like that was that big resurgence of irony in the late Bush years where we were like, “Oh, I love this movie ironically.” The older I get the more I realize there is no such thing as ironic love — you either love the thing or you don’t. Showgirls was always one of those movies for me.

Black Men
Can’t Jump

JAMES III: I think I’m having a lot of trouble answering this question, because my taste in movies is generally frowned upon by most people. For the sake of recent argument, I will have to say Jurassic World (2015) 72%. Only because I don’t like the movie so much now, I actually have trouble watching it, but I enjoyed it so much when I saw it the first night. It hit every single nostalgia button that I needed — I needed to see the dinosaurs, I needed to see them going crazy. But it’s a bad movie.

JONATHAN BRAYLOCK: I really did like the first Transformers (2007) 57% movie a lot.

JERAH MILLIGAN: I really like Batman Returns (1992) 82%. I know it was not respectable at all, but I think that Michelle Pfeiffer was great in it. I think Danny DeVito was so scary in it. I think it was what a comic book movie and a real movie should be like. It was still campy, but it was dark.

History Buffs

Gladiator (2000) 80%. From a historical angle, that is a film that I should not like. It’s under the guise of historical fiction, but it comes across more as a fantasy. Yet, there is just something about it that just works on every level.

Alachia Queen

Deadpool (2016) 85%. It was personally just really fun. It flies in the face of all the tropes that you’re familiar with. It takes all the things that you think are very politically correct about how you do film and throws it out the window and saying, “We’re just gonna have fun with it.”

It was a film that was really made without all of the red tape involved, without the studio interference. It was just made out of love and passion, and just wanting to tell a really funny story that doesn’t appeal to the general audience, but just a very particular subset, which is kind of nice. It didn’t seem like it was made to make a ton of money, but it did end up making money, but it was just actually made out of love. And I loved that it was produced that way.

The Worst Idea
of All Time

TIM BATT: Short Circuit (1986) 62%. A robot gets struck by lightning, develops its own consciousness, and it has to prove to everyone that it’s alive while the military are chasing it to try and destroy it. I love that movie so much. And I think it’s pretty critically bad.

GUY MONTGOMERY: If I watch a movie on a plane, it is very difficult for that movie not to come across as the biggest breakthrough in cinema in the last few years. I am the most forgiving cinema goer at altitudes. It is staggering. Recently, I flew and watched Why Him? (2016) 40% with Bryan Cranston and James Franco. James Franco was a bad son-in-law and Bryan Cranston was an uptight dad. And I watched this movie on a plane and I just laughed all the way to touch-down and told everyone I knew how great this movie was and got a wave of hatred from the people I’d referred to this film because they were like, “Absolutely not.” And I’m never going to revisit that movie because I know that in the moment I was watching it I really enjoyed it, and that’s all I need to know.