People are saying good things. ‘First Man’ Reviews Praise Damien Chazelle’s Revelatory, Gritty Space Drama
I feel like a lot of people soured on Chazelle (stupidly) after La La Land, am I crazy? Regardless, this is still one of my most anticipated of the fall, even more so now.
La La Land is more than enough reason to not get excited about a filmmaker's next film, especially when their career is pretty new to begin with. However, directors have recovered from worse.
You know that a lot of people who liked Whiplash didn't like La La Land. The risk, as we have seen time and time again with new filmmakers, is that they become attracted to the Oscar light and keep making films in that direction. Some directors run away from that light (the Coen brothers followed up their two most award-winning films with very offbeat comedies), but some stay there. When you see a "based on a true story" film, coming out during awards season, and starring one of his La La Land actors (who is almost always in bad films), people are going to be skeptical.
La La Land was insanely successful, both critically and financially. Chazelle is 33-years-old and is one of the best young directors in film And Ryan Gosling is literally one of the best actors (i'd argue the best) of our generation. What is happening in here?
Can we stop pretending La La Land was anything remotely approaching a bad movie? It's pretty masterful any way you look at it, especially from such a young director. First Man looks amazing.
There are people who thought it was good and people who thought it was bad. That is what makes talking about movies fun; if everyone has to fall in line on an opinion there is not much else to discuss.
I mean, like any film, people are going to think it's bad. But La La Land was overwhelmingly ridiculously well-received. It's a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes with an insane 400 reviews. It's also a 81% on users liking it. It's an 8.8 on IMDB with 370,000 votes. You literally said 'directors have recovered from worse' in regards to making a follow-up film to La La Land, which again, was WILDLY successful in so many aspects. It's not like he directed Freddy Got Fingered after Whiplash and is trying to make a comeback. This is silly.
I disagree. It literally shows what critics and fans think about a film. I may not always agree with the ratings, but it usually reflects the majority. I guess I'm not sure what else to go off of in terms of judging what vast majority of critics or fans think of a film then.
To go off that, if I'm looking forward to seeing a film (or TV show), I get WAY more excited to see it when I see it's doing well on RT or IMDB and if it's not doing well on either of those, I'll still see the film (or TV show), but may not make it as high of a priority as before or wait until long after its released to watch it.
Okay, yes, it does show that. It's just that I don't think that's worth caring about, especially IMDB.
I think IMDB has been over-saturated - but back in the early to mid-2000s when it wasn't as popular of a website, I found it to be a pretty good resource. Now, it's gotten ridiculous because every movie that comes out is either like a 9 right away or a 5 with thousands upon thousands of people voting instantly without even thinking much about the film. I think it takes years and years and years to get a truly sincere rating for a film, but sometimes the ratings start off so high (or low), they don't move much. So the past 5-10 years, I've put less stock in IMDB and more into Rotten Tomatoes. Neither is something I really care about - as you said, but it's obviously a reflection of what critics and fans are thinking of a film. I don't think it can be tossed away as something that is irrelevant.
There was a lot of criticism of La La Land. You can go back to the original thread if you want. However, I would rather watch Freddy Got Fingered.