Donal Clarke Top 10 movies 2015 comment

matc66

This comment really irritates me.
Why is there an automatic asumption that good movies (or anything) are popular? Or the corollary that popular things are good?

Nervous Wreck

You linked to an entire article. What comment?

matc66

When I click it links straight to the comment. It's by Billydog.
"It would be an interesting article if it was about films that anyone had actually seen."

Cookie_Monster

When things are popular there is a far larger audience to judge them as good or bad. Picking some obscure film with extremely limited viewing and reviewing and proclaiming it better than all others is a bit rich. If it actually was that good it would become more popular by word of mouth alone.

johnny_ultimate

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

If it actually was that good it would become more popular by word of mouth alone.

Nonsense. Dozens if not hundreds of amazing films every year dwell in absolute obscurity. Some are 'difficult', experimental, international (near instant commercial limitation, sadly): the sort destined to never find a mainstream audience. Others again would likely win over a larger audience if they got a decent shot at even provoking word of mouth, but limited releases or other factors prevent that from happening. If every great film reached the audience it deserved, there'd be literally thousands of films that would be much more widely viewed than they are. And yeah, I'd point the finger at the viewers too - there are lots of audience members who will never stray off the beaten track. More sympathetically, other viewers don't even get the opportunity to stray off the beaten track (although huzzah for digital in that regard).

But hell Clarke's list isn't even that obscure anyway :pac: Every one of them was critically acclaimed, and all of them got a decent commercial release (cinema, VOD or DVD - a couple haven't made it beyond the Dublin arthouse circuit just yet, granted). I saw all but one of them on release in Dublin cinemas, and the only one I didn't - Catch Me Daddy - is because I simply didn't get around to it.

Sad Professor

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

When things are popular there is a far larger audience to judge them as good or bad. Picking some obscure film with extremely limited viewing and reviewing and proclaiming it better than all others is a bit rich. If it actually was that good it would become more popular by word of mouth alone.

That takes time. Sometimes years, decades even. We’re talking about movies that came out in the last 12 months, which may have only played in two or three locations in Dublin for two weeks at best. And critics play an important role in spreading word of mouth. By putting these films on their top 10 lists, they are drawing attention to them, thus word of mouth about them might spread. Assuming they are as good as the critic claims.

I like seeing films I haven’t heard of in top 10 lists. Better than seeing the same dozen films over and over again.

Arghus

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

When things are popular there is a far larger audience to judge them as good or bad. Picking some obscure film with extremely limited viewing and reviewing and proclaiming it better than all others is a bit rich. If it actually was that good it would become more popular by word of mouth alone.

I don't really get your point here. Are you saying the actual amount of people who can judge whether a film is good or not - after seeing it - is the key element of judging its merit? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Donald Clarke sees everything. That's his job. I don't see how it's a failure on his part to report honestly on what he thought were the ten best films of the year. I don't see how the pure numbers of people who caught the release matters in this case. I'm the only one of my friends who's seen the original The Taking of Pelham 123. Does that mean that the film wasn't as brilliant as I thought it was: because I'm the only one who has seen it?

And don't forget he has to review literally hundreds of movies every year. When it comes to compiling best of the year lists, movies that are a satisfying break from the norm are probably going to stick out in his mind a lot more than some others. And, being honest, he could have been way, way more obscure if he had wanted to be. I could question his taste, but I don't think he's being willfully esoteric. I remember him giving Looper his nod for film of the year a few years back, which I think shows he's not prejudiced against mainstream releases. Just maybe rightfully jaded at a lot of the dross that’s out there.

I think your point about things becoming popular enough if they're good enough is totally wrong. Things break through sometimes and become mainstream hits: if they're given a chance to run in the cinemas in the first place. I live in a part of the country where we get "big" art house films for runs of a couple of weeks. But usually most left-field acclaimed films I read about, I never get to see in the cinema. There's no space for them, because the latest enourmobuster is playing on multiple screens at once. Cinemas want to program things they know people will spend their money on, they're businesses after all. The other stuff falls through the cracks a lot of the time. A lot of movies don’t get even the opportunity for the attention they deserve. And also, it must be said that a lot of people don't like to step outside their comfort zone when it comes to movie choices. I know people who call themselves film fans who won't watch a subtitled movie, no matter how good you may say it is. In this case Donald Clarke should probably be commended as he's giving people genuine recommendations. He's bigging up movies he saw, that he thought were good, because he wants you to see them too! I'd rather have that, than have Empire give me twenty movies I've seen already, in their order of preference.


And as for the first comment on the article: Guy was probably a troll who was licking his lips at the chance to be the first naysayer.

e_e

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

If it actually was that good it would become more popular by word of mouth alone.

Nope because simply put the best film/music/literature is rarely, if ever, the easiest and most audience baiting. As many people that would absolutely loathe a film like Stalker, Jeanne Dielman or Satantango it doesn't make them any less amazing for what they achieve and just how much they have film fans wrapped up in their worlds. Box office takings or some vague measure of "popularity" should never ever factor into a film's quality. Hell in one of my top 5 of the year (Horse Money) at least half the audience got up and left, doesn't not make it one of the best things I'd seen in 2015.

We should resist looking at things from such an accountants perspective, making hundreds of millions weren't the reasons Inside Out and Fury Road were great in the same way only playing in one cinema didn't make Taxi some precious jewel too good for the multiplex audience.

pixelburp

Ha; I used to read the comments sections on newspaper websites, YouTube etc. - then I realised this was a miserable, draining experience that eroded my humanity
Installed the Shut up extension for Chrome & the internet seems a happier, more inclusive place now

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

[...] If it actually was that good it would become more popular by word of mouth alone.

Ok, it has been said about 5 times already in direct response to your comment, but that's patently simplistic and reductionist: yes word of mouth often pulls a film out of obscurity into the public consciousness & isn't that fantastic really? However, plenty of films - and not just those people might consider 'arthouse' so they can be instantly ignored, it happens to mainstream flicks too - never mange to get the publicity or traction they deserved.

Maybe it's bad marketing; maybe it's bad timing; maybe it's a bad distributor; maybe whatever the subject matter simply wasn't 'in' at the time. Heck, maybe it's just plain bad luck, but not everything gets its time in the limelight & if by the end of the year those were the films that stuck in a reviewers head, he or she wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't highlight those films that resonated with them.