Am I Starting to Like Everything?

My main contribution to this blog has been movie reviews. Many of you have been kind to say that they are good. In some ways, I've been compared to other critics and so forth, which I find laughable at times, simply because I don't consider myself a part of that crowd. If you read most reviews, they seem extremely pompous to me and many times I feel like they try too hard to be clever. Of course, I myself have attempted to throw in some clever barbs at bad movies at times, but hopefully they don't sound like everyone else's.

But looking down the line of the past few that I've done, I've noticed...man, I'm liking these movies in record numbers. Take a look at Rotten Tomatoes, and you'll see I'm in the minority on quite a few of these films. I'm wondering if I'm beginning to sound like one of those critics on morning TV who likes everything.

This week I crossed the 150 mark in total movies seen this year, and a great many of them are borderline. And it's hard to convey "mixed" in a review--I usually jump the ship and say I liked it or didn't. I think it's a cheat to say, "Well, it's hard to come up with a true opinion of this movie." I also make sure I don't read reviews prior to writing them, so that it doesn't influence my own. I was shocked at the extremely low percentages of Get Rich or Die Tryin and Derailed--I expected them to be around 50 percent (or the 40s at least). But I also understand them. This year has been bad, and when you see movies like this that have been done over and over before you definitely want some originality--and those movies definitely don't have it. But at the same time, I felt they were done fairly well. I've been cautious with the language so as not to convey, unless I really hated or really liked something, that Derailed is like what I feel about Lord of the Rings.

In general, I hope that if I give a positive review for something, it isn't equated with "best film of all time," unless I make mention of its greatness. Thus far, I would say my top 10 is filled with movies that probably won't be there by year's end. In fact, I could probably only name 5 or 6 this year that truly belong there.

Anyway, I will spout something you rarely hear these days and state that I do care what everyone thinks. I can't say that the popular opinion, negative or positive, would sway the way I do things--but I'm open for feedback. Because one thing is I don't want to sway people wrongly (and there's debate on whether reviews are meant to be a form of advertisement, rather than an academic discussion), and I don't want to come off like I think I know everything there is to know about "grading" movies. Obviously, we've had these discussions before, the way a movie hits any one person is going to be different. I'm not worried that my opinions are "wrong," but I am worried that I come off sounding a certain way that I didn't mean.

You know what I mean?