I have. And I always note in my review if I’ve bailed out or made iuse of the FF button.
Why continue to watch a film that is obviously a piece of crap?
If it’s well-acted/directed/photographed but doesn’t engage me, I will give it the benefit of the doubt & watch to the end, but if it’s poorly acted/directed & the photography is hopeless – if it’s Untalented Amateur Night through and through, no.
And as long as the writer is not trying to pass off his/her reviews as being based on viewing the entire film, I don’t have aproblem with it.
I couldn’t stand 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her and had to turn it off. I completely hated it, so why torture myself and finish it? I’m not a masochist.
I also finished Limits of Control, but I stopped paying attention. I would have walked out, but I was with friends. So I just looked at my thumbs in the light, that was wholly more interesting to me than that film.
I have to really hate a film to stop watching it.
@Glemaud
Ditto on The Limits of Control
Also:
Whenever I get the sense that I’ve been working hard to pay attention for the bulk of a film’s running time, or if I get the idea that “I should pause the film until I’ve digested all the critical commentary that tells me why I should love the film” that’s when I call a film a failure. Works should stand on their own strength: tittilating, entertaining, edifying, diverting, changing thoughts, imparting ideas, etc. Side texts, lengthy explanation, and critical commentary are fine, but they are beside the point.
Watching a film, I want to feel or think about something (or simply believe I have done either of those things). If nothing happens, and the overall experience feels like wading through dullness, the film isn’t successful; it is dead time where I could have seen something better, or vacuumed, or done laundry, or walked the dog, and felt more ahead in the game of life.
that would be an absolute sin to not finish and review, shocking
Films should provoke an emotion.
As a counterexample, Martyrs felt like being beaten up. It didn’t feel like a slog. That film inspired fright and anxiety in me and was throughly unpleasant, but well done.
The aforementioned three (Nadja, Trash, Weekend) felt irredeemably dull. I fast forwarded through the last third and checked the final scenes, but didn’t feel like I missed much.
I powered through an entire screening of The Limits of Control because of my abiding love of Jarmsuch’s style, contemporaries, and influences. Jarmusch’s stock took a dive. It seems like he and Isaach took a vacation in Spain and bankrolled it by making a “film.”
Aesthetic jujitsu to overcome a Bush-era caricature? Floating through fortifications on the love of ahhhrt? Limits of Control references plenty of great films (Suspicion, The Lady from Shanghai, In a Lonely Place, Stalker, Mystery Train, Ghost Dog), but reminded more of a theauteurs.com list than a film in its own right.
Den, I agree (well, maybe not that it’s a SIN, but…). Essentially, if you want to stop watching a movie, that’s all fine and dandy – just the other day I stopped watching The Tracey Fragments myself. Really, though, to RATE a movie while having not even completed it is worse, I think. In a review, you can kind of say, “Eh, I didn’t like what I saw of it.” Rating it, though, is a different matter, because it clearly shows that you took the time and effort to sit through the whole thing, and now you can ultimately say that, yes, the movie was indeed THAT bad, and that it got even worse, perhaps, as it went along.
Really, I don’t like either of them (especially when someone turns off a film after five minutes and then writes a review), but I think rating a film is far worse than reviewing it in those circumstances (maybe “review” is the wrong word; I guess, basically, just in talking about the film).
Savvy
things can always pick up
fyi i had a hard time with the tracey fragments too
Den, it looked like someone had a little too much fun in the editing process… :P
Savvy
>> that would be an absolute sin to not finish and review, shocking
When expressing disapproval at a lack of follow-through, it is more effective when said disapproval is conveyed in complete sentences.
@ZPB
Eh. Why is rating a matter of fully completed films for you? Why not go further, and say all the extras, the gag reel, and two pieces of critical appraisal must be read in order for a work to be fully appreciated for what it is and what it is not? I understand you not taking kindly to someone who watches a scene or 5 minutes, and decides to rate a film as an authority. But endurance of an entire work end-to-end isn’t an arbiter. Otherwise, endurance would be the mark of appraising a good film, and experience of it, masochism.
I put a single star on things that have wasted my time, and don’t plan to revisit them; most I finished, others I gave it 2/3rds. Put another way, why should my ratings apply to your standards of critical purity?
that is slightly amusing vel
but even when watching a film all the way thorough, sometimes the film has a lack of follow through
>> that would be an absolute sin to not finish and review, shocking<<
Fine. You watch GRAVE MISTAKE all the way through to the end.
It may rival BATTLESHIP POTEMPKIN by the mid-point but up until then it makes Ed Wood look like a genius.
@Den
>>but even when watching a film all the way thorough, sometimes the film has a lack of follow through
Exactly. That’s why I give up in act III (or V) if everything that has gone before is a slog and it seems that the rest will be more of the same.
i dont mind giving up on it
what i mind is reviewing it afterward
but festivals are full of critics who walked out early and wrote reviews
Vallam, well, you are right that your standards are not my standards, but, seriously, we’re looking at works as a whole here. Sure, usually one can make the assumption that, if a movie has been so bad thus far, it’s probably not going to be getting so much better; then, though, you never know. It all depends. Some movies can have some damn good stuff happen in that last third which therefore exists for you to question everything that has come before. Hell, maybe the movie was made “incompetently” up until that point for a purpose which shows up right at the end of the film. Why knows? Yes, most movies aren’t that smart, but I just think it unwise to rate something which you couldn’t even tell me how it ended. Not going to lie – in MY book, your rating then becomes null and void.
I hope that I am not sounding like a bastard here, or some guy who thinks he’s above others: clearly, I am not, and I will be the first one to tell you that. I guess that I’m always just surprised by how many movies people don’t finish, and how many people still rate those movies. Frankly, The Tracey Fragments is the ONLY movie, I think, in my whole life that I have purposefully not finished, but I won’t stand here and say it was a bad movie. I have never walked out of a theater in my life during a film, and I like to think that every viewing experience is something new, whether it be good or bad. I don’t know. Maybe I’m nuts.
Savvy
I always finish the movie. Even if I’m hating it. I’ve never once in my life walked out on a film I set out to watch, and It’s not because I believe it might get better, as I don’t remember a single film I hated that was saved by its ending. Usually they just get worse as they go. If the movie is a piece of crap, it sort of becomes a personal dare to me to finish it and I feel the movie will win if I bail. I’ll get cranky for the rest of day because of it, but by God, I WILL finish it. Of course, there are times when I’m too tired or sleepy to finish a film in one sitting, but when that happens I just stop to get some rest and finish it the next day, sometimes even re-watching the parts I’ve already watched.
I give every film an hour to grab my attention. After an hour of Limits of Control and 2 or 3 Things, I’m still not captured, why even bother? I hated the first hour, so nothing — NOTHING — will change my mind on the time remaining. Even something like Mulholland Dr. which was purposefully bad early on held my attention, because I was enraptured by the mystery, but if I don’t care what happens to the protagonist, nor the what happens in the story, why keep watching? I still remember the raging hatred I held for the first hour, so I’m still going to hate it at the end.
But like I’ve said, I rarely do that. It’s happened twice last year, and I can’t remember when it happened before that. I’m very selective in what I watch, so for the most part I’ll like what I’m watching.
>>Yes, most movies aren’t that smart, but I just think it unwise to rate something which you couldn’t even tell me how it ended. Not going to lie – in MY book, your rating then becomes null and void.
I fast forward to the end. I watch the last third either at X1.5 speed or X5, and save myself on average 15 minutes of wasted life per failed film.
In your book, you’d have to know which ratings I’m impure for, which is a mixed bag, since I’ve seen most of my 1-star ratings, and those are the only ones I don’t finish: films without redeeming qualities. Those films that I listed above annoyed me, because I went ready to experience, maybe even tried more than once (Weekend), read commentary on, gave up (i.e. fast forwarded through or caught the final scene), felt cheated of my time, and now am puzzled when I hear good things about them.
>>Frankly, The Tracey Fragments is the ONLY movie, I think, in my whole life that I have purposefully not finished,
I think you need to see more movies in order to develop a more discerning judgement, instead a single rule based on purity or endurance.
Glem, well, okay. Like I said, it’s fine not to finish a movie – people do that all the time. It’s just mostly the rating of a film that I have an issue with.
Savvy
“Even something like Mulholland Dr. which was purposefully bad early on held my attention, because I was enraptured by the mystery”
But if someone else was watching it and said “this is bad. The acting is horrible, it’s cliché, I can’t stand it!” and turned it off and wrote a review based on that much information, it would be a travesty, am I right?
I would type a long opinion here but overall I agree with everything that’s been said for giving something a full chance before reviewing it.
That would be a travesty, Matt, and hopefully I don’t find myself in a similar situation, which is why I always give a film an hour. (Mulholland began to unravel by the hour mark, so I wouldn’t have experienced that hypothetical situation.)
I would never watch something for five minutes and stop watching and rate. I agree with you, Zach, on that stance, but I can watch something for an hour and rate it, that’s wholly possible, I’ve seen enough films to know where things are going. Only if I love the director (like I did with Mulholland and Lynch) will I power through a film. I don’t love Jarmusch, I don’t love Godard, so I’m fine with quitting half way through a film of theirs.
I’vee never rated a. Film that I’ve just STOPPED watching but some films I’ve watched half heartedly or not paid attention to it completely and rated it. Funnily enough only if I like it. It’s usually some stupid comedy I watched with my friends.
Criticizing The Tracey Fragments for being overedited is like criticizing Last Year at Marienbad for being too narratively ambiguous. Whether or not you think it was successful, that embellishment was the point, and the only thing making it interesting.
I don’t agree with the examples but I would walk out if it were too excruciating – it makes the most utilitarian sense.
Bruce, no, that’s fine. I wasn’t saying that it was wrong. I was just saying that I didn’t like it.
Savvy
To be honest, I often rate films about halfway through. I try not to, but I just can’t help myself. On only one occasion have I ever changed the rating after the ending, so I guess it doesn’t make a difference anyways.
the end does not justify the means
its possible that yr opinion doesn’t change because u already made it up halfway thru
and that is kinda sad imo no offense
That isn’t why. I expected someone to say that but that definitely is not the case…
“I give every film an hour to grab my attention”
Some of the best films will never “grab” your attention and don’t really give a shit about grabbing your attention. Grab your attention how? The problem with waiting for your attention to be grabbed is that if a film is doing something completely different you may not even realize it until the end. Typically, things that grab people’s attention are cliches they’ve seen before that are repacked in cool and shallow ways.
Also, your boredom may have less to do with the films shortcomings than with your own, or even with personal distractions which prevent you from paying enough “attention” to revolutionary, but not obvious, genius.
@Mike Spence
>>Also, your boredom may have less to do with the films shortcomings than with your own, or even with personal distractions which prevent you from paying enough “attention” to revolutionary, but not obvious, genius.
I agree. And then there is also the existence of cinematic garbage. It could be great or it could be crap. The problem is that you posit that the film would never be crap, and if someone judged a film as such before the last reel, it could only be because of character flaw. That could be true, or the film could indeed suck. Either way making one mind up and not listening to the critical echo chamber is key.
Zachary Phillip Brailsford
I was just looking through some reviews on one film’s page, and I saw that someone had only watched a small portion of a film, which he found boring, and then he turned it off and wrote that it was boring. Or, perhaps, someone might turn off a film in the middle and then give it a rating of up until that point (although in most films the ending is a necessary ingredient to the entirety of the viewing experience).
Have any of you ever done this? If so, please tell why, because I most certainly cannot figure it out.
Savvy