Do you find movies you criticize and movies you like separate from each other?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I mean like, does your liking to the movie depend on your critical outlook of it, or do you find yourself being critical of movies you like as well?

[Admiral X]

I have movies I know are bad in the artistic sense that I still like, enjoy, or are otherwise entertained by. Take The Keep, for example. Very poor in terms of plot and as an adaptation, at least partly because it was a 3.5 hour movie cut down to 1.5 hours. Yet there's enough there to intrigue me, some of the overacting is hilarious, and the combination of WWII and '80s synth is oddly appealing and just manages to fit the weirdness of the story.

[Karha of Honor]

I mean like, does your liking to the movie depend on your critical outlook of it, or do you find yourself being critical of movies you like as well?

I like plenty of imperfect and cliche movies.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The practice of more formal film criticism tends to be divorced from general enjoyability of a movie. Talking on the internet though I don't really get that same sort of distinction between the two impressions. Like if I'm in comment sections or on forums, I usually get the sense that people complaining about movies goes hand in hand with their enjoyment level, and like possibly that objective criticism mainly is employed to justify how they didn't enjoy it.

Speaking subjectively, I'm really easy going on most movies. The practice of formal film criticism is rather left-handed to me.

[Admiral X]

I think that's because a lot of internet critics don't actually understand what film critique actually is. They just take it as their own personal enjoyment rather than how well the craft was done. Almost as if they don't understand that there is a craft involved. For me, it's like looking at a car and recognizing that it has a good solid design, was well built, etc., but I just don't like the styling, the features, etc. For them they just take that dislike of the design and all that and just dismiss the car as being a bad design. Some seem to view criticism as simply talking down and/or making fun of something they personally didn't enjoy, like they all want to be like MST3K without understanding that that isn't what critique is.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I think that's because a lot of internet critics don't actually understand what film critique actually is. They just take it as their own personal enjoyment rather than how well the craft was done. Almost as if they don't understand that there is a craft involved. For me, it's like looking at a car and recognizing that it has a good solid design, was well built, etc., but I just don't like the styling, the features, etc. For them they just take that dislike of the design and all that and just dismiss the car as being a bad design. Some seem to view criticism as simply talking down and/or making fun of something they personally didn't enjoy, like they all want to be like MST3K without understanding that that isn't what critique is.

Quite the communication breakdown potential.