Question for Movie Bob watchers

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aba1

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Mar 18, 2010
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Dr_Horrible said:
I usually don't see a movie until a few weeks after a movie opens, because I prefer near-empty theaters (I dislike crowds), plus if it's just me and my friends can MST3K the hell out of a movie without complaints.

Back on topic, I usually end up watching the reviews first, just because of timing.

(also, was I the only one who thought this thread would be some moviebob hate thread?)
I am the exact same way.
 

Marter

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Oct 27, 2009
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His reviews? I don't use them as a guide at any time.

I watch them because, uh, actually, I don't know any more. We usually disagree on the movies, and there's not much he'll say that I won't already know.

But whatever, it kills 5 minutes. That's probably why I watch them.
 

Thedayrecker

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Jun 23, 2010
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I haven't been to the movies in ages.

If he says it's good, and I see it somewhere (on DVD), I might get it.
 

Ursus Buckler

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Apr 15, 2011
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I don't really have much cash to sling around, so yeah. Bob's recommendation is as good as any, so long as it costs like £20 a movie :L
 

Julianking93

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May 16, 2009
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I tend to only watch reviews after I've seen the film.
Unless I'm particularly skeptical about a movie or a game, I'll watch them after to have some sort of discussion value added or something like that.

Now, his reviews?
Never.
I never watch them as a guide nor do I ever really watch them.
Can't stand them in the least, to be honest.
Not bashing the guy (even though I easily could), but I don't like his reviews.

And why is my captcha here Gregory Peck? I just was talking about To Kill a Mocking Bird yesterday >.>
 
Aug 25, 2009
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I watch a lot of his reviews in lieu of seeing the film because I don't want to watch the film. If I really can't decide I'll watch to help me, but mostly I know long in advance if I'm going to see a film or not. I knew I was going to see Harry Potter, knew I was going to see Toy Story 3, so I didn't really care what he thought, I formed my own opiniong then watched his to see what he thought.

Have to say though, Green Lantern I decided not to see off his review, and Expendables and Scott Pilgrim I watched because of his reviews, and I wanted to see whether they were really as good/bad as he said they were.

For the record, I hate Scott Pilgrim with a burning passion, and Expendables wasn't so much bad as it was boring, and at least had the decency to be actually funny unlike Scott Pilgrim, where I didn't crack a smile from start to finish.

I have to watch an advert to put in the captcha? Expect to not see me posting on the Escapist until they fix such a stupid fucking system.

It's even telling me to get out? Fuck you captcha, you get out.
 

Vault Citizen

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May 8, 2008
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I think it depends on the movie for me, I didn't watch his Book of Eli review beforehand because he gave a spoiler warning and I wanted to see the movie first.
 

Senaro

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Jan 5, 2008
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I go to the theaters maybe two or three times a year. Chances are, I'm not going to see any movies until long after they're out of theaters. I watch his reviews to at least get a little insight and entertainment in my day.
 

Stammer

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Apr 16, 2008
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I tend to watch his reviews after I've seen the movie unless I know I'm never going to see the movie myself. Reasons being, sometimes he gives away major spoilers, and I also like to go into movies with as little prior knowledge to it as possible. eg: When I saw True Grit I didn't even know what GENRE of movie it was let alone what it was about.

It's also interesting to watch his reviews afterwards so I have some kind of bearing of where he's coming from and can compare my opinions with his.

In fact I do this with Yahtzee's reviews too. I barely find his reviews a fraction as entertaining if I haven't played the game yet.
 

Ryu-Kage

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May 6, 2011
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For movies I don't intend to go watch, I just watch the reviews.

For ones that I DO want to see, I don't watch the review until after I've seen it (like Super 8) unless he says somewhere outside it that the movie is really bad. (I was going to see Green Lantern, but if it's that bad a movie... I'm just gonna wait until it comes to Netflix or something to see for myself.)

The films I want to watch, usually I want to see for myself unless there are swarms of negative reviews of the film (could I have cancelled my tickets before watching The Last Airbender?). And even then, sometimes curiosity won't kill the cat, but it can maim him badly.
 

ascorbius

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Nov 18, 2009
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I'll watch his review then decide whether to watch the movie - sometimes.

I find he's pretty much on the nail about certain things and has at least an opinion worth listening to even if I don't fully agree with on others.
 

ReservoirAngel

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Nov 6, 2010
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I don't watch many movies, so I just watch the reviews regardless of if I've seen the film, haven't seen it or want to see it. But if it's a review of a film I really want to see and he throws up the spoiler warning, I will turn the video off.
 

Crazy Zaul

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Oct 5, 2010
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I watch them after seeing the film to see whether he likes them. Movies critics are always either idiots who are wrong about everything or they're right about everything. Bob is a weird mix of both.
 

CorvusFerreum

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Jun 13, 2011
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I watch them mostly before I see the movie, if I'm gonna see it anyway. I usualy visit movies when they are out a while. And I'm not going to the movie's that often.

But the cause of the fact, that the mayority of comments on a review come from people who saw a movie is that people who didn't see it normaly don't have much to say about it.
 

Eclectic Dreck

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Sep 3, 2008
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In spite of living a few minutes from a theater, having quality internet access and a Netflix account, and owning nearly 400 different movies (across ~700 discs if I assume my binders are full), I really don't watch movies often. Most of those discs were collected when I was in the Army and desperately in need of something to do. I don't know what the reason for it, but I simply cannot be bothered to see a movie in any venue among any company unless it is forced upon me. When this inevitably occurs, I often enjoy myself of course, but I think that I have, in part, reviews to thank.

I often know next to nothing about the movies playing at the moment. Not having cable combined with rarely attending movies ensures I don't even know what's coming out much less anything about them. Thus, when it comes time to pick movies, I generally look to see what is playing, look at the trailers for what's playing, then when one looks interesting, seeing what reviewers say about said movie. It isn't that I am incapable of forming my own opinion but rather that I am so divorced from movies that I simply have no opinion until I see the film. And since movie watching is so very rare for me, it stands to reason I ought to at least check and see if a movie was savaged by the wider press.

In terms of Movie Bob in particular, I would simply point that he, like any other professional movie critic, tends to reward novelty with more praise than it truly deserves while savaging banality more than is necessary. Like Yahtzee, after seeing a movie I tend to agree with his argument in a very general way even if I cannot get on board with the specifics. For example, while Transformers was by no stretch a good movie (nor even a movie I would see more than once), I found it to be worth my time to watch. If I took bob's claim literally, that I did not rally in the streets against this film would prove that I am somehow an idiot because the movie was so terrible at every level only brain damage could explain such a thought. I didn't think it was good, but neither was I willing to deliver a scathing indictment of everyone involved in it's production and eventual success.

On the other side of the coin, I found Scott Pilgrim to be the very epitome of over-rated. It was seemingly made for people like me, praise was heaped upon it by Bob (among many others) and yet I found the movie almost unbearable. I only sat through it because of a girl I had not seen in 7 years, who it should be noted was briefly my girlfriend while I was on leave before deploying to Iraq at the time, asked me to go to her apartment to watch it after we had dinner and drinks. I sat through that film for the same reason so many of my peers sat through Titanic when we were 14: because of the off chance I would get laid as a result.

What I guess it comes down to is that our different perspectives are to blame. As a child, I did not care about Transformers even a tiny bit (and I'm only a hair younger than Bob I'd bet) and thus I had no expectation of greatness from a Transformers film. Its trespasses were thus less grievous because I had no emotional attachment. By contrast, I loved the Predator, Alien(s), and the Terminator and yet each of these franchises produced movies that, were I a professional reviewer, I would have savaged at least as badly as Bob did Transformers. In producing a bad version of something I once loved it was as though I was personally betrayed. It is that personal connection that made my reaction so vitriolic, and I suspect the same could be said of Bob.

Thus, I do what I always do with such things. I take the basic gist of what they say about a film and pay attention to that. The specifics aren't terribly important because such things are often exacerbated by expectation and experience or unnecessarily muted by hard jading experience.
 

BoredDragon

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Feb 9, 2011
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For reviews in general, I sometimes watch them as a guide but most of the time it's to compare notes of what I thought about a game/movie.

Of coarse this doesn't apply to MovieBob. I used to watch him, but then I realized... let's say how unprofessional he can be so I stopped respecting him as a critic. Btw to anyone who tries to say that he's not trying to be a serious critic, I remember him cracking many jokes in his videos.
 

Innocent Bystander

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Jan 29, 2012
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KrabbiPatty said:
This. I've noticed all of these things with Bob, and I've noticed his tendency to over think (I know, it's his thing) games and movies to be really aggravating. I mean, why can't he just dislike a movie because it's a bad movie, with poor acting and a laughable plot? Why does he always have to insist that it's some sort of metaphor for misogyny and that everybody involved are white supremacists?

(Note: I'm generalizing his reactions. I don't know if he's actually said things like that about a movie, it just sounds like something he would)