Turns out it was all just a dream of Frankie's

February 8, 2005 10:41 AM

SPOILER ALERT: There's a movie out now that, like The Crying Game, depends for much of its impact on a plot twist. Are critics honor-bound not to blab that development to readers? (More Inside, including, duh, spoilers)
posted by soyjoy (65 comments total)

Michael Medved believes the issue newly raised is too important to be quiet about. But Roger Ebert says no, shut up Michael, let people experience the surprise in the narrative. Tim Rutten of the LA Times seems to answer Ebert a week later (without, oddly, mentioning him) with a What's the big deal? attitude. Given that trailers these days show no qualms about giving away their movies' endings, or at least most of the plot, and given that anyone who wants to spoil their own experience has resources aplenty to do so, where should critics draw the line? (The
the movie in question was somewhat glancingly discussed here.)
posted by soyjoy at 10:41 AM on February 8, 2005

I think reviewers give away far too much of movies in general bit just potential spoilers.

I don;t want a synopsis of the plot when I read a review. I want to know if the movie is worth seeing and has value but the particulars of teh plot has, to my mind, no place in a review.

Recently a Globe and Mail reviewer gave away the details of a pivitol plot moment in the latest Kevin Bacon flick. It doesn;'t appear to have had any importance on the review but the writier just appears to have wanted to discuss it as part of his discussion of the film. End result of course is that a piviol moment in the film was immediately ruined for anyone reading the review.

I tend not to read most reviewers anymore for this very reason
posted by pixelgeek at 10:50 AM on February 8, 2005

The Movie Spoiler is an invaluable resource for someone like me, who wants to know just how far Robert DeNiro has fallen, and by reading the "twist" ending of Hide and Seek, realizing he's never coming back.
posted by unsupervised at 10:53 AM on February 8, 2005

I am trying to remember if it was Ebert that lost it when Siskel gave the twist in the Crying Game away, or vice versa.
posted by Danf at 10:57 AM on February 8, 2005

Disclaimer: I shared a professor with Roger Ebert, and I'm an acquaintance of the Movie Geek.

I'll be surprised if anyone comes out in favor of critics revealing the twist to films, no matter how urgent or topical. A film critic, even Roger Ebert, is a guide, not a diarist.

Michael Medved's lead quote kinda gives it all away:
"The Oscar nominations announced Tuesday illustrate Hollywood's profound, almost pathological discomfort with the traditional religiosity embraced by most of its mass audience."

Clearly, like Dennis Miller, he's decided to throw in with the winning side. More power to him, but like Armstrong Williams, Dennis Miller and so on, once he's made that public move, he shouldn't ever expect to be taken seriously as a member of his former profession again.
posted by felix at 10:59 AM on February 8, 2005

I review movies, and this is something I think about a lot. One of the best things about the job is the chance to see new films completely unencumbered--just the press release (which I try to not read too closely before the film.) No other reviews, no hype, no TV interviews, no trailers, no magazine articles, nothing. It's not so much the big ending capital-S spoilers that I think ruin the experience, but the smaller twists and turns that are regularly given away casually by reviewers: what Sam Morton's character does at the very beginning of Morvern Callar, for instance. I saw Memento without having been warned about its structure--a mindbending experience that you can't quite have if you have been told how it works beforehand. AO Scott's review of "Maria Full of Grace" gave a complete run-down of the entire movie. Much of the PR industry surrounding movies is aimed at pre-selling the product to such a degree that you know exactly what you're getting going in. The Sideways trailer, which I saw long after the movie, was a real shock to me--a terrible tell-all piece of pap. Especially with the smaller art house releases I concentrate on, this "bring 'em in at any cost" attitude can be deadly.

There are ways of writing reviews that give very little of the actual plot and instead convey an idea of the tone and style of the movie, maybe mentioning elements or alluding to twists without ruining the film. Regurgitating the plot always seems like a cop out to fill the space, and denies people the chance to experience the movie first-hand, without too many preconceived notions.
posted by muckster at 11:04 AM on February 8, 2005

As a general rule, it shouldn't be revealed. In cases like that of The Forgotten, I'm all for it.
posted by Gyan at 11:05 AM on February 8, 2005

I remember hearing about Rosie O'Donnell hating Fight Club so much that she spoiled the movie right after it was released.

People who spoil movies are assholes and any critic that purposely spoiles a movie without warning should be permanently relagated to blurbs for Adam Sandler movies status.

What Felix said, Medved should no longer be considered a movie critic.
posted by Arch Stanton at 11:09 AM on February 8, 2005

BTW, whenever there's a real shocker ending, the press flak for the movie will ask reviewers not to spoil it. Lately, I've seen this request with Open Water and (seriously) The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. I disliked Open Water so much I toyed with revealing it in my review, but I won't give away Wild Parrots. But as I said above, it's really not the big endings that are the problem, it's all the other stuff bad reviewers routinely tell you that diludes the movies' impact.
posted by muckster at 11:09 AM on February 8, 2005

After reading this I went over to Plugged In to check out what they said about it. If you were unaware, Plugged In is the movie/music/book review for Focus on the Family. I read their reviews before I see a film for kicks and sometimes find a lot of interesting things there. Over the last couple of years, the reviews seem to make a lot of sense from the perspective they are trying to cover.

So, anyway, to get to the point, I think did this way better than Medved did while trying to cater to much the same audience.
posted by Captaintripps at 11:19 AM on February 8, 2005

Medved's a dick especially because


SPOILER


SPOILER

...

..

.

it's a fucking boxing movie and only one of the three main characters is a boxer, how can you possibly write about it saying that "one of the characters becomes a quadriplegic" without giving out the ending??? of course it's Swank.

wtf?
the StemCell folk just hate it when a non-preachy, non-Bible-thumping movie like that gets good press. simple as that.
posted by matteo at 11:21 AM on February 8, 2005

Those who would willingly reveal the end of a movie are the same types who would drive a gas-guzzling SUV into a natural preserve and litter the landscape, reveal the hidden location of Shangri-La (thinking little of the sociological consequences) and reveal all details of a private conversation with a mutual friend. They cannot be trusted. They are the very antitheses of mensches.

These types are hopeless myopics of the first order, possessing as much integrity as an Enron executive. They think little of privacy, intrigue, imagination and the wonderful subtleties of human intimacy.
posted by ed at 11:23 AM on February 8, 2005

I was spoiled for this movie when I went to see it (by the headline for a New York Times article, not the article itself). I viewed the film differently because of this--that is, I was looking for clues that would give away the fact that the "brutal" plot twist was coming. The warning I got that something was going to happen came not so much from the film itself, but from familiarity with other sports films in the vein of Rocky and The Karate Kid, in which something of this nature (if not its severity) always happens at a certain point. But other than a series of shots beforehand involving a certain inanimate object that plays a vital role in the twist, the twist comes out of nowhere. It's not so much that knowing the twist changes your interpretation of events in the first 100 minutes of the film, but that the twist changes the last 30 minutes of the movie into something from a completely different genre.

The odd thing is that Million Dollar Baby has such a cursory and ham-handed examination of the political issue that it purports to bring up that I'm not sure why the filmmakers decided to include it in the first place. The question of whether a certain character would have a fulfilling life after the twist certainly could have been asked through subtler and less severe methods. And leaving the viewer to imagine how another certain character dealt with the consequences of his or her actions seemed like a copout to me.

(Did I spoil anything there? I hope not.)

On preview: matteo beat me to the spoiling, but he warned you. And MeFi could use spoiler tags for its next pony.
posted by Prospero at 11:23 AM on February 8, 2005

This discussion reminds me of the two types of readers in the world:

1) Those who will turn ahead several chapters, if not to the final chapter, to see how the story ends before they are done reading the book;

2) Those who consider the above activity to be tantamount to corpse fucking.

I am covered by point #2 above; I know people (including my spouse) who regularly want to know what's going to happen before it happens. It's almost like any level of suspense causes such discomfort to them, that they can't focus on the story itself.

Print critics can place "spoiler ahead" messages in their columns, and it works for both types of viewers; if I don't want to know how the movie turns out, I can stop reading. My spouse can dive into the spoiler and sit comfortably in her chair in the theatre.

Radio and TV critics need to be more circumspect, I think. It's easy to stop reading an article. It's less easy to change the channel or station before they blurt out, "DARTH VADER IS LUKE'S FATHER!".

(If the above was a spoiler for you, welcome back to Earth after your long cryogenic slumber.)
posted by Darkman at 11:25 AM on February 8, 2005

I like that you mentioned the trailers giving away endings, soyjoy. Add that with what Muckster said about giving away smaller plot points and that's why I don't watch trailers for movies I want to see. I see the Spiderman 2 trailer and I just sit in the theater and wait for the scene where Doc Ock is going to throw a car through the cafe window.

The New York Times spoiled Million Dollar Baby in an article about the controversy. Instead of writing in cryptic terms and generalities, it just up and spoiled the movie in the headline and second paragraph. I went to CatholicExchange.com (the most popular catholic site on the internet) and they spoiled the movie in the headline as well, then actually saw the movie and reviewed it two weeks later with spoiler warnings. If someone is spoiling Million Dollar Baby, more often than not there's an agenda behind it.
posted by Arch Stanton at 11:25 AM on February 8, 2005

Million Dollar Baby doesn't depend on its twist the way Memento or Fight Club or even Open Water does, which is a good thing because it telegraphs it from a mile away. I enjoyed it, mind you - here's a real spoiler: it's funny! - but it doesn't keep its hands very close to its chest, I don't think, and all I knew going into it was that it was a depressing movie. I wasn't even looking at inanimate objects.
posted by furiousthought at 11:30 AM on February 8, 2005

Darkman: believe it or not, I recently watched The Empire Strikes Back with someone who'd never seen the movie, and who genuinely didn't know about that spoiler. Since I think that I myself was spoiled when I saw ESB for the first time, having that experience of vicarious surprise was all the more entertaining.
posted by Prospero at 11:37 AM on February 8, 2005

maybe i'm weird but i had absolutely no interest in seeing Million Dollar Baby, it looks so heavy-handed and dramatic and obvious. But the spoiler i accidentally just read makes me wanna see it. so i'm probly of the minority but thanks for that! now i'm actually mildly interested in this film..
posted by rollerball at 11:41 AM on February 8, 2005

Gur Pyvag Rnfgjbbq punenpgre vf npghnyyl n ergverq XTO ntrag frnepuvat sbe ybfg Anmv tbyq.
posted by Smart Dalek at 11:46 AM on February 8, 2005

Nf n znwbe cebcbarag bs bar'f evtug gb qvr, V gbb zvtug or vapyvarq gb jngpu gur zbivr, jurernf orsber V jnfa'g gur yrnfg ovg vagrerfgrq.
posted by shoepal at 11:52 AM on February 8, 2005

I'll be surprised if anyone comes out in favor of critics revealing the twist to films, no matter how urgent or topical.

Other than Medved and his ilk, I agree, which is why I didn't post this when I read the original Ebert article. But when I saw the Rutten thing today (via Radosh.net, I should probably mention) I was appalled at the casual illogic of the writer's defense of spoiling. The climax of his argument compares spoiling a movie - a narrative, storytelling, unfolding-through-time form - with verbally describing a shocking painting, a form that is different in every crucial way. It's one of the most fatuous arguments I've seen by a newspaper columnist in a while - and believe me, I see plenty of 'em.

And it's interesting to me that the overall giving-away-the-plot phenomenon seems to be going in two directions at once. Twenty-five years ago, movie trailers were by and large pretty scrupulous about not destroying the movie's storytelling. Comedy trailers, then as now, tended to give away the big sight gags and laugh lines, but the scenes would be presented in way to try to convey the tone, subject matter and general appeal of the movie without telling the exact story. Meanwhile, critics would routinely go 3/4 or 4/5 of the way through a movie, only omitting the final scene or last plot twist, assuming (I guess) that if you're reading the review, you want to know what happens in the movie. I always just wanted to know if it was good or not, and nothing else (I'm the kind of guy who doesn't even read the jacket blurb on a novel I'm reading if I can possibly avoid it).

Nowadays the situation seems to be reversed - critics are much more conscious of the concept of "spoilers" (though many still, IMO, spend more time than necessary explaining the story), while trailers more and more often are little Reader's Digest Condensed Versions of the movie itself, starting at the beginning and delivering all the major plot points. It's just odd, I think.
posted by soyjoy at 11:55 AM on February 8, 2005

Smart Dalek and shoepal - I know you're being wry and all, but I did warn people that the More Inside would include spoilers.

And yeah, duh, "spoilers" would have been a good tag for this thread, huh? (*forehead smack*) Hopefully at least it'll pick up from the first word of the text.
posted by soyjoy at 12:00 PM on February 8, 2005

I know people (including my spouse) who regularly want to know what's going to happen before it happens. It's almost like any level of suspense causes such discomfort to them, that they can't focus on the story itself.

Just to point out a third option:

I usually don't care much either way. I might skim ahead in a book to see if it picks up past the slow bit I'm reading. I might not. I usually feel no urge to do so, but it's better than corpse-fucking.

But there's a class of movies and books that depend on the twist, that are in large part about the twist, like The Crying Game or any of Shyamalan's movies.

With these, I often find the THERE'S A BIG SECRET! IT'S A TWIST! really tedious; the least interesting part of the movie. Tired and tedious the way that it is when the villain/monster gets up one last time for a quick BOOGA!!! shot. So when I know that THERE'S A BIG TWIST!!!!, I'll often go check it out ahead of time and, from the beginning, watch the movie with an eye towards how they're building up the twist.

As you might guess, I loathe whodunits.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:05 PM on February 8, 2005

Enough reviewers made a point of mentioning a twist that it adversely affected my experience of watching MDB... I kept watching for it. (I know I once greatly altered an experience for a friend of mine when I told him that Eric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach was about a murder/suicide. Perhaps this was my karmic reward...)

I was one of the people who did not see Crying Game right away but intended to see it eventually. Friends were very good not to give away the secret.

The movie had been out for about 9 months when I went to see the Kids in the Hall live in a fairly large hall. They did a "Pit of Ultimate Darkness" sketch, in which one character attempts boasts how evil he is, giving examples.

I would say half the audience had seen TCG and had dutifully not told their friends the secret.

When Dave Foley said 'You know that movie The Crying Game? The chick is a guy," a thousand jaws dropped and about half the audience exclaimed "EVIL!!!" in unison.

It was an effective joke.
posted by KS at 12:07 PM on February 8, 2005

So many "reviews" seem to be just rote recitations of the plot, which leaves little room for the reviewer's actual opinions of the movie. (It's supposed to be a review, not a TV Guide synopsis.) So it's no wonder that critics wrestle with whether to include spoilers. But to me, these "this happened and then this" reviews are lazy, and don't help me decide whether to go or not.
posted by ajblust at 12:08 PM on February 8, 2005

KS

When Dave Foley said 'You know that movie The Crying Game? The chick is a guy," a thousand jaws dropped and about half the audience exclaimed "EVIL!!!" in unison.

KS, meet kcds. kcds, meet KS.

There are also movies that contain spoilers for other movies - I think it was one of the Naked Gun movies that contained within the credits the line "The chick in The Crying Game is really a guy". Anyone else remember that?
posted by kcds at 12:30 PM on February 8, 2005

It's a sled.
posted by Vidiot at 12:36 PM on February 8, 2005

I don't remember that one, but I do remember Chief Wiggum saying it to a public audience at one point on The Simpsons. It was in an episode focusing on Marge. Anybody? Anybody?
posted by soyjoy at 12:36 PM on February 8, 2005

Actually, Vidiot, I also remember that one from The Simpsons. I don't think they were the same episode, though.
posted by soyjoy at 12:40 PM on February 8, 2005

I saw Million Dollar Baby without even knowing there was a twist (and before all the media spoiler hoopla). I didn't even think of the "twist" as a twist -- just something that happened in the movie. Granted, I was surprised because I was watching what I otherwise thought was a pretty standard sports drama, but I'd hardly rank Million Dollar Baby up there with The Crying Game or The Sixth Sense as far as movies go in which the "twist" is the point of the movie.
posted by Robot Johnny at 12:40 PM on February 8, 2005

Many years ago as I was waiting in line to see Sixth Sense, I was witness to a nice fight that started when a guy coming out of the theatre yelled THE KID SEES HIM BECAUSE HE'S DEAD.
posted by jeffmik at 12:45 PM on February 8, 2005

Jeff: CRAP. THANKS A LOT MAN.

I want to buy a sports car and put on it a bumpersticker that says "warning: *spoiler*"

That is all.
posted by dougunderscorenelso at 12:46 PM on February 8, 2005

This reminds me of the family guy. Where he tapes over the beginning of some boring movie. He inserts a clip of himself in the first two minutes giving away the ending of the move, and then saying "There! I just saved you two boring boobless hours!"

There are a couple movies I wish had that type of edit. (The Amazing Mr Ripley comes to mind)
posted by gummo at 12:57 PM on February 8, 2005

I really hated it when all those religious sites spoiled the ending of The Passion of the Christ for me.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 12:57 PM on February 8, 2005

[Not so much on preview, more like, after I posted.]

Vidiot: You beat me to it.
Soyjoy: The sled is the Family Guy one.
posted by gummo at 1:00 PM on February 8, 2005

Personally, anyone who thinks that Million Dollar Baby is *just* about boxing, or *just* about The Big Thing at The End, is not really trying very hard. To paraphrase and add to Clint Eastwood on this one, the same people that think this film is "sympathetic" to The Issue are the same people that think that seeing Hamlet makes you want to go home and bone your mom.
posted by Medieval Maven at 1:08 PM on February 8, 2005

Why is the sucker punch a twist? It's not an O Henry thing - no one bought combs with the money from selling a watch fob. It's a big, dramatic story arc, sure. But boxers get injured all the time; some of them die. It's not like aliens suddenly started cavorting around the ring, or Frankie turned out to be an android or something.
posted by beezy at 1:09 PM on February 8, 2005

Two Tangents

A) on the Kids in the Hall TV show, they also did that "Pit of Ultimate Darkness" sketch, but the movie they spoiled was Presumed Innocent with Harrison Ford.

and B)
This discussion reminds me of the two types of readers in the world:

1) Those who will turn ahead several chapters, if not to the final chapter, to see how the story ends before they are done reading the book;

2) Those who consider the above activity to be tantamount to corpse fucking.

What about people that disagree with choice 1, but happen to be necrophiliacs?

The mind wobbles...
posted by stifford at 1:11 PM on February 8, 2005

My mom totally gave away the twist on the phone yesterday, and neither of us had even seen it.

Grrrr.

It's not important that it's not the ending. I'd like to be as surprised as possible throughout the movie when a certain issue like X suddenly appears in it, and to not know what decisions are going to be made.

Last night my roommate and I were watching The Hitcher, a cult classic horror film from the 80's. Ebert DESPISED that movie, and gave it zero stars - worse, he felt it gave him license to give away a crucial shocking moment as an example of how wrong the movie is.

For one, The Hitcher is a surprisingly good horror movie, which genuinely plays like a nightmare. For another, that particular moment made my roommate jump into the ceiling out of shock, whereas I knew it was coming and was denied that pleasure. It's not a twist ending, it was just a moment that relied on suspense, and boom, out the window.

GRRRR.
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:20 PM on February 8, 2005

Peanuts spoiled Citized Kane for me - Lucy told Linus the "twist" - long before I even knew what Citizen Kane was.

(which is mentioned in the comments here, which is having a similar discussion to what we're talking about.)
posted by jazon at 1:20 PM on February 8, 2005

I saw the movie, and the first thing I said when we left the theater was, "I'm glad they didn't spoil the third act by putting it in the trailer."
posted by robbie01 at 1:23 PM on February 8, 2005

I don't see how the MDB one is such a huge "twist". If the movie has so little going for it that such hamhanded irony is its main selling point, perhaps there's something wrong here.

It's like spoiling Raging Bull by saying that De Niro's character gets fat.
posted by neckro23 at 1:33 PM on February 8, 2005

Here, soyjoy, from "Marge In Chains," Mayor Quimby says:
"Let the word go forth from this time and place, Marge Simpson is a shop lifter. In other news, the chick in the Crying Game is really a man." [crowd boos] "I mean, man, is that a good movie."

Oh, and at the end of Million Dollar Baby the Clint Eastwood character goes out for pie....
posted by Floydd at 1:44 PM on February 8, 2005

I saw the movie, and the first thing I said when we left the theater was, "I'm glad they didn't spoil the third act by putting it in the trailer."

Precisely. None of this is about hamhanded irony or whiz-bang twist endings. It's just about not being able to hear a story without knowing where it's going to go. Because the third act of MDB isn't simply some twist, but part of the dramatic arc, it should be kept secret for those who wish to see it on their own.

Some of us like going to the movies not feeling like they read a libretto beforehand.
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:51 PM on February 8, 2005

Clearly, like Dennis Miller, he's decided to throw in with the winning side.

Michael Medved has been on the "Holywood has no family/religious values" side for decades. This is not new or inconsistent of him.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 2:02 PM on February 8, 2005

It's like spoiling Raging Bull by saying that De Niro's character gets fat.

NECKRO23 YOU BASTARD!!!

(tosses dvd in growing pile of fly-blown spoiled movies)
posted by Darkman at 2:08 PM on February 8, 2005

Thanks, Floydd. jazon, maybe I was thinking of that "Peanuts" and it wasn't the Simpsons. I know I didn't see it on "The Family Guy," which I don't watch.

As to the "twist" question, I probably phrased the FPP sloppily - this twist is not literally like the Crying Game in that a big surprise is revealed. But it's a "twist" in that the story arc is going along a supposedly conventional boxing-movie path, and then the movie very suddenly becomes about something else. If not "twist," how about "lurch?"
posted by soyjoy at 2:09 PM on February 8, 2005

When I had to watch the Crying Game for a class freshman year, the TA pointed out the Boy George song over the credits and said, "there's a reason Boy George is on the soundtrack," at which point I (and other students) figured out what the twist was going to be.

I had Fight Club spoiled for me as well, but it meant that I was able to see how the twist was set up throughout the early parts of the movie. In both cases, though, we were watching the films for a class, so I didn't mind. It gives you a far better base to interpret the film from, especially if you're discussing craft.

(All this said, the only reason I forgave the TA is because he wears a D. Brown jersey to watch New England sports games. And he wound up being a friend of mine randomly four years later)
posted by thecaddy at 2:39 PM on February 8, 2005

I didn't know anything about MDB when I went to see it with my wife. If I had known that Morgan Freeman was a narrator in the movie, I would have refused to go.

The movie was so slow that I just wanted the thing to be over. Near the end, I asked my wife what was gonna happen and she said that the girl becomes a quadriplegic. I was thinking, "oh, okay. whatever."

I agree with all the accusations above about the movie being ham-fisted. And I'll throw in boring, too.

Twist or no, it was a very uninteresting movie for me.
posted by bryce at 3:04 PM on February 8, 2005

I guess it depends on what you think the critic's job is. Is it to be a sort of glorified consumer-guide writer, to tell people what's worth seeing and what's not? Or is it to create writing about films that's valuable in and of itself? I understand why people don't like to be "spoiled," but saying that critics can't ever write about the endings of movies seems like a major concession to the studios. If the critics always marked spoilers as such, would those of you who object still have a problem with it?
posted by transona5 at 3:52 PM on February 8, 2005

In defense of the film (and Ebert's take of it, which I agree with completely), characters make choices one may object to in real life, sure -- but no one seemed to bring up the other "disabled" character in the film, who though ridiculed and will never achieve their dream, comes back after a humiliating and degrading event to keep on trying.

So you have a "champion" that chooses death, and a "loser" that chooses hope. Interesting how no one seems to pick up on this.
posted by linux at 4:41 PM on February 8, 2005

SPOILER!

SPOILER!!

SPOILER!!!

We like her spunk.
She gets beat up.
Her nose gets broken.
Her mom abandons her.
She gets beat up some more.
She gets paralyzed.
They cut off her leg.
Her mom tries to rip her off.
They kill her.
Her killer goes out for pie.

If you like this kind of movie, then this is the kind of movie you'd like.

Me? I felt manipulated. And pissed off.

And linux? The reason no one picks up on that secondary plot is because it wasn't given nearly the weight that it should have been given if it was meant to be all that significant.
posted by Floydd at 4:49 PM on February 8, 2005

Twists are lame and should be kept for short stories. Or crap films.
posted by fire&wings at 4:49 PM on February 8, 2005

transona5, it's the critic's job to make a reasoned aesthetic judgement. This can be framed as the answer to any number of questions: Was the movie worth making? Is it successful on its own terms? Is it successful on my terms? What sets it apart from similar movies? How does it fit into the director's body of work? Who is the intended audience? Almost as a by-product, you answer the basic questions "is it any good?" and "is it worth seeing?"

I said reasoned aesthetic judgement. Unless you're the person who assigns the star ratings for the cable listings, you'll have to explain why you consider the movie a failure or a success--and you have to do it without spoiling the movie. Basically, you're telling people all about the cat in the bag without being able to use the words "cat" and "bag." Or something like that.

Sure, there's film criticism that assumes that the reader has already seen the movie; you can subscribe to Film Comment for that. Generally, though, the intended audience for a review hasn't seen the movie yet, and as a reviewer, it ties your hands. The trick is to make your argument without screwing up their experience, should they decide to go.

So, yeah, a vote for glorified consumer-guide writer: reviews of new films definitely serve a utilitarian purpose. That doesn't mean they can't do it in a way that's interesting, elegant, creative, fresh, surprising, astute, funny, incisive, etc. etc.
posted by muckster at 5:01 PM on February 8, 2005

Those who would willingly reveal the end of a movie are the same types who would drive a gas-guzzling SUV into a natural preserve and litter the landscape, reveal the hidden location of Shangri-La (thinking little of the sociological consequences) and reveal all details of a private conversation with a mutual friend. They cannot be trusted. They are the very antitheses of mensches.

Ummmm.... we're talking about a MOVIE. The fact that someone might reveal something about a movie reflects in no way on whether the person is trustworthy and/or cares about the environment. Gawd, what a leap!
posted by Doohickie at 6:17 PM on February 8, 2005

"It's almost like any level of suspense causes such discomfort"

Actually... I love horror movies. I have loved horror movies ever since discovering the 11:30 Friday night monster flick when I was 7 y.o. However, my heart disease has progressed to the point that horror and high suspense really does cause me pain, and the only way I can watch these movies, even mid-afternoon in the comfort of my own home, is to know the complete plot up front.

However, even my case does not excuse reviewers spoiling movies. My pet peeve in this regard is on imdb. Granted, the site requires spoiler alerts, but I don't think any spoilers should be allowed there during the first year of a film's release.
posted by mischief at 7:16 PM on February 8, 2005

Anyone see last week's Scrubs? All about spoiling plots. First the Sixth Sense gets spoiled, then the results of the big Lakers-Heat game. Of course, by telling you this, I just spoiled the episode. Funny, though.
posted by graventy at 9:48 PM on February 8, 2005

I hadn't planned on viewing Million Dollar Baby, but after reading that legthy article on it, I certainly will pick it up.
posted by Plinko at 10:36 PM on February 8, 2005

I remember when The Crying Game was out, David Letterman being the asshole that he his, boasted that he knew what the secret of the movie was. "It's a guy!", he yelled into the camera. I was pissed, and I was a fan of Letterman's. Seem to remember he got some flak in the press over that.
posted by zardoz at 11:52 PM on February 8, 2005

Well, a little late to the game but sometimes a review destroys it for me bythe mere mention of 'spoiler'. Because now I know there's gonna be a twist. I saw both Sixth Sense and Memento without any prior knowledge and truely think that if I had know the mere presence of a twist at the end, it would have lessened my enjoyment. I like to be fully suprised, not just surprised by the application of a surprise.

But I don't see any way around that.

And to say Medved is no longer a critic because he gave the ending away is asinine. He's still a critic just not one that you will ever pay attention to. Others will listen to him precisely for the reason you found so distasteful
posted by Dagobert at 12:14 AM on February 9, 2005

"
So you have a "champion" that chooses death, and a "loser" that chooses
hope. Interesting how no one seems to pick up on this."


I spent much of the movie glad that I was watching it now and not 5 years
ago having just broken a knee. People die all the time. I have way too many
friends and acquaintances that have put _everything_ on hold in pursuit of
their Olympic Dream and, when it was all said and done, walked away feeling
like they had retained nothing of value.

It's hard to explain just how much of one's self gets sacrificed in any
credible attempt at banausic greatness. I know too many people, myself
included perhaps, who have left the pool or track or gym and gone.....
nowhere.

Of the few friends I have who will talk about it most admit to having
stepped down from the pedestal during the day only to return to worship at
it's base when their eyes close. To perform in any discipline at a world
venue requires, and encourages, the same sense of displaced self associated
with the narcissism of the stage. We love the 9.8 sprinters and the
welterweight title holders and the pennant winners. We really really love
them.

We just don't care much for the lives they lead once they step out of the
spotlight. Once a 9.8 always a 9.8.

No the movie may have telegraphed much of it's intentions and pulled a few
nattered aces from the proverbial sleeve but the characters are interesting
and the plot devices leave a lot of room to play with the ideas of identity,
developmental risk and hero worship. If it comes across as heavy handed than I think you're paying too much attention to the technique and not enough to the reason why it may have been considered necessary. Take from it what you may but this reviewer doesn't see any plot twist at all.
posted by mce at 1:00 AM on February 9, 2005

There's another form of spoiler that's really annoying me at present, and it's the menu on the DVD version. Back in the day the menu used to be over little more than the poster of the film. These days that's just not enough apparently.

For example, last week I watched Collateral - **spoiler alert ** . The menu that comes up has Tom Cruise holding onto the back of the underground train. So for a film that's set in a taxi I now know it's at smoepoint going to move to the undergound. This turns out to be the final scene, so everything that happens above ground or in the taxi doesn't bother me because I know he's going to live long enopugh to jump on that train.

This is happening with so many films these days, with menu designers desperate to show off their skills with pretty collages of movie scenes. Well just STOP IT.
posted by ciderwoman at 5:28 AM on February 9, 2005

Floydd - the last scene is from the perspective of Freeman. The last interaction is between Danger and Freeman's character - I thought that was enough weight right there.
posted by linux at 11:37 AM on February 9, 2005

You know, the thing that pisses me off about posts like this is that I wouldn't have even known there was a spoiler. That is enough to lessen the moviegoing experience for me.
posted by malaprohibita at 7:22 AM on February 21, 2005

I knew the twist -- and kept telling people, "She's a dude" -- and still enjoyed the hell out of that movie. Wow. I would probably weep watching those three actors perform a Wendy's commercial.

Weirdly enough, both my mom and girlfriend had interpreted the kerfuffle over the "twist" to believe that Maggie would have a learning disability. Did anyone else think this could be the case?
posted by subgenius at 8:18 PM on February 21, 2005