Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

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I don't want a critic to tell me what I SHOULD be watching. I rely on them to tell me what I will like. I can't watch every movie, the movie critic is meant to be a filter.

Historically movie critics judged a film based on its relative value. That's why you see a positive review on a cheesy rom-com and a negative review on a more ambitious flawed work of art. The rom-com review is viewed in the context of other rom-coms. For a positive review, it's saying "if you like rom-coms and their premise, this rom-com is good". I want it to be more prescriptive to what I will actually think when I watch the movie.

Most people use movie reviews to tell them whether they'll like a movie given its genre. That's why people say "I trust this person's reviews". They mean if the critic says the movie is worth watching and I decide to watch it, I will not be disappointed

But telling a person what they will like is a much more personalized endeavor suited for automated recommendation systems.

Any random person could like objectively bad movies.

But a critic can only recommend things objectively good. That means they can only try to filter out good movies, which are movies you should watch but may not like because your tastes are not objectively universal.

Critics are not qualified to tell me what I should watch towards developing my own character. The disconnect between what they push as best and what audiences like as good, illustrates the postmodern critic's lack of relevance. Critics are pushers of entitled cynicism and ideology, not meaningful content.

But critics should be experts in the field (of movies), and at the very least have seen it all. Therefore they can commentate on what's been done before and what is actually new.

> Critics are not qualified to tell me what I should watch towards developing my own character.

Well yes since everyone is different critics can never satisfy that for everyone.

Requiring to have seen it all is a big problem if you identify as a critic, in all senses of the words. It's easy to be pulled in by irrelevant novelty that is not meaningful to viewers, or become disenchanted and find your critical sensibilities turn against what viewers find meaningful. There's an ideological and philosophical component here that is at the rift between critics and viewers.

> suited for automated recommendation systems.

Realistically, current automated recommendation systems all sux.

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