Current Events > I'm watching old Siskel and Ebert reviews. Geez these guys were haters.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Im watching their reviews of classic movies on youtube and usually one if not both give it a thumbs down. Usually Siskel is the fun-hating snob, but sometimes they mix it up and Ebert is the one shitting on a great film. No wonder they gave critics a bad name for decades.

Beeteljuice:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_O73mexIIps

Big Lebowski:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NNTL64Ah1Bw&pp=ygUMU2lza2VsIGViZXJ0

Big Trouble in Little China:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4DIF20s3-IY&pp=ygUYU2lza2VsIGViZXJ0IGJpZyB0cm91Ymxl

Poltergeist:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9KyaAm8lXzA&pp=ygUZc2lza2VsIGViZXJ0IHBvbHRlcmdlaXN0IA%3D%3D

Full Metal Jacket:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OIa8wfo6k3Q&pp=ygUec2lza2VsIGViZXJ0IGZ1bGwgbWV0YWwgamFja2V0

Theres a ton more examples.

Uh... They popularized the concept of a movie critic and they're beloved. They also give reasoning for this takes, even if shitty, so they're not trolling.

They were literally the reason from a young age I learned to ignore critics when it came to both movies and games.

They love a ton of classics too. I disagree with both a lot but I can't say they didn't have educated opinions on the subject and I've found a lot of great hidden gems from their reviews

Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods

This is like the 4th topic on Siskel and Ebert I have seen on CE in the last month

no one bats 1.00

Zero_Destroyer posted...

They love a ton of classics too. I disagree with both a lot but I can't say they didn't have educated opinions on the subject and I've found a lot of great hidden gems from their reviews

Yeah, I don't mind them. And I loved Ebert when he started doing his blog. Whether they liked a movie or not was usually irrelevant to me, it's how they were able to succinctly describe their how they felt or their issues with it.

You can still respect opinions you disagree with.

hockeybabe89 posted...

This is like the 4th topic on Siskel and Ebert I have seen on CE in the last month

I just realized Ive been watching their segments because of the CE topic about their Ghostbusters II review.

I keep watching their reviews so obviously Im being entertained (although its mostly to see how their opinions matched up with the films legacies). But my huge gripe with them as critics is their total inability to, in their words, review a film on its own terms. For example, Ebert disliked Back to the Future 3 because its not a realistic gritty western. It wasnt trying to be!

sabin017 posted...

You can still respect opinions you disagree with.

sure, but calling Beetlejuice a "Ghostbusters clone" is about as wrong as you can get...

Yeah upon rewatching some clips, they sometimes do give an edgy/hot take about beloved movies and they know full well that when they were making fun of a movie/being negative they would get higher ratings so they always leaned more into that direction. With that said, they were incredibly inspirational for the new generation of content creators we see on youtube when it comes to media reviews in general, even though youtube rewards negative reviews better than positive ones.

To be fair, most of those movies were reviled at the time.

radical_rhino posted...

No wonder they gave critics a bad name for decades.

What? They did the exact opposite, and are still praised as among the best to this day.

Always found it kinda funny how Ebert seems to hate any Godzilla movie on a fundamental level but loved the 90s Gamera movie, citing how funny it was that Gamera flies by "farting" >_>

Regardless, they were always entertaining to watch. Didn't care if I agreed with them, they seemed to genuinely love movies and were fun to listen to

Their complaint about Beetlejuice was they expected it to be The Money Pit with ghosts--the reason for their Ghostbusters knock-off comparisons. It was not that.
.

It's like when Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times) and Canby (New York Times) snubbed Carpenter's The Thing (1982) for being a terrible, gore-fest remake of Hawkes' The Thing from Another World (1951). What made it terrible for them was their expectations for the movie. Carpenter's movie was a new adaptation of Campbell's "Who Goes There" (1938) novella, not a remake of Hawkes' earlier adaptation of Campbell's novella.

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-thing-1982/critic-reviews/

tl;dr: They were disliking a sandwich for not being a hotdog.
.

Btw, anyone pointing to the burn-away opening title as proof that The Thing is a remake didn't realize that it was Universal, the film's distributor, not Carpenter, who made that title.

https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/the-thing/

They were fun to watch and I'm not gonna fault them for not liking everything I like

archizzy posted...

They were literally the reason from a young age I learned to ignore critics when it came to both movies and games.

Same. I quickly learned I enjoyed a lot of the movies they shit on. Its great that people enjoyed them, but I found no reason to continue watching them rip something apart if I was going to watch it anyway because I couldn't rely on their take. I carried that forward to video games. If I thinks it looks good, I will plays it. Anyone elses reaction or critique is moot and pointless to me.

You don't think you should delve deeper into why you have your particular preferences and apply a more focused analysis?

_Valigarmanda_ posted...

They were fun to watch and I'm not gonna fault them for not liking everything I like

They are so fun to watch. And no critic is ever going to like or hate everything I hate or like. It would be foolish of me to think so

They kept comparing Beetlejuice to Ghostbusters like they didn't watch either movie.

elizajanegirl posted...

They are so fun to watch. And no critic is ever going to like or hate everything I hate or like. It would be foolish of me to think so

The fact that they gave Freeway, one of my favorite cult dark comedies a two thumbs up will always hold cache with me

They were and still are the most entertaining critics to watch by far. Even when they don't like a movie I love, I can respect their opinion on it.

It's a shame Ebert isn't around in this YouTube critic day and age. I bet he would've had a film review channel if he were still alive, and probably some entertaining collabs.

I'd say when it comes to them both giving a Thumbs Up, it's funny that it was Beavis and Butthead Do America. Favorite of mine, but it could have easily been something they wouldn't go for.

Half the time, they were more fun to watch than the movies they reviewed. They were under contractual obligations to give a thumbs down to anything horror-related. And Ebert disliked action movies. He straight up went on record to say that he disliked movies that glamorized violence. Once you accept that and move on with the reviews, they could be funny and insightful. Their banter and back-and-forth argumentation made them fun to watch whether or not you agreed with their opinions.

I find it funny that, between Blue Velvet and Eraserhead, they each liked one David Lynch film and hated the other. Sometimes, their opinions could be unpredictable. Before I realized that Ebert straight up disliked action as a concept, their respective patterns told me what Die Hard was going to be like.

me: "I'm calling it now. Ebert's gonna like it. Siskel's gonna hate it."
*video clip begins with Siskel praising Die Hard*
me: "I guess they're both going to like it."
*Ebert trashes the film and centers his argument on the stupidity of the cops and the unlikelihood that the building could withstand the explosions*
me: "Gene! Talk sense into Roger." <__<

That was part of the fun though. You never knew what their opinions were going to be. There could be a film that everyone else loved and they were would find a sophisticated way of saying that it was pretentious crap. It was also interesting to hear Ebert take a feminist stance on many films, then turn around and talk about how you can't adapt King Lear, add feminist themes, and not have someone at fault. I'm kinda curious how social media would have regarded had they been around today. But then the internet really makes it unnecessary to have film critics beyond answering the simple question of: Is this film for you personally?

@FortuneCookie

But then the internet really makes it unnecessary to have film critics beyond answering the simple question of: Is this film for you personally?

Still even if you don't take their opinion into consideration, there is still appeal in how they make their assessments entertaining. Especially when they disagreed with each other. Good case is Home Alone 3.

When it comes to movie critics, Jay Sherman will always be the best

They hated slasher movies even when they were good
With the exception of halloween but they trashed so many slashers which are bona-fide classics now
And despite claiming they hated it because they were sexist they still chose to only release the address of Mrs Voorhees actress and told their fans to send her hate mail

Antiyonder posted...

@FortuneCookie

Still even if you don't take their opinion into consideration, there is still appeal in how they make their assessments entertaining. Especially when they disagreed with each other. Good case is Home Alone 3.

*watches the video on YouTube*
Ebert: "This is the one where they finally got it right. I liked it better than the other two."
Siskel: "...than the original Home Alone???"

lol. Siskel has this look on his face like he's just a heard a murder confession; like half of him is in disbelief of what he's hearing and half of him is wondering if he's going to be silenced as a witness.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/f/ff1c8731.jpg

Here is their Die Hard Review.

And I can't help put to think that Ebert did not know much about police.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gnauAwWk5c&ab_channel=BeforeTheMultiplex

It's very easy to cherry pick decades of reviews for bad ones. They were right far more often than not.

cjsdowg posted...

Here is their Die Hard Review.

And I can't help put to think that Ebert did not know much about police.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gnauAwWk5c&ab_channel=BeforeTheMultiplex

I'll agree that Dwayne T. Robinson is the worst character in the movie. The novel has a payoff for including such an obnoxious character. The movie really doesn't.

That being said, I doubt that Ebert was enjoying himself until Robinson stupidly assumed that "Roy" was a bartender or else one of the terrorists. Likewise for the Nakatomi Plaza not turning into the Towering Inferno after the first explosion. They even have a verbal exchange addressing that in the movie.

Ebert sometimes liked films that were violent, such as Dawn of the Dead or Pulp Fiction, but he disliked films which glamorized violence. He was confronted with a near-perfect film where a man with a gun shoots a bunch of bad guys and is justified for doing so. If he went out there and admitted that the film was well-directed, well-acted, well-paced, and well-written, but that he disapproved of its depictions of heroic violence, he would have looked like a complete nanny.

So he had to find some excuse to make one of the best action movies of all time -- for my money, THE BEST -- seem like just another dumb action flick.

radical_rhino posted...

No wonder they gave critics a bad name for decades.

wat

Most people fucking loathed movie critics for being pretentious snobs, and Siskel and Ebert were the poster boys.

I watched it mainly for clips of movies that I wanted to see.

FortuneCookie posted...

*watches the video on YouTube*
Ebert: "This is the one where they finally got it right. I liked it better than the other two."
Siskel: "...than the original Home Alone???"

lol. Siskel has this look on his face like he's just a heard a murder confession; like half of him is in disbelief of what he's hearing and half of him is wondering if he's going to be silenced as a witness.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/f/ff1c8731.jpg

lol we use a different frame of his reaction to that as a custom emoji in my movie server

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/b8966388.png

anyway OP as everyone else said, siskel and ebert made critics popular. also if you are watching or reading film criticism thinking everyone should agree with you, well... you're gonna have a bad time.

Jonathan Rosenbaum is my favorite critic, he looks like the my mom.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/5ffdc3c2.jpg

fun fact: i ran into jro in the bathroom after a screening of kate plays christine at the melbourne film festival.

J-Ro lmao I forgot I used to call him that. Perfect. Love that old curmudgeon.

They usually knew what they were talking about and backed it up.

They arent like say, Nostalgia Critic, who flat out lies and makes dumb skits just for views.

yusiko posted...

They hated slasher movies even when they were good
With the exception of halloween but they trashed so many slashers which are bona-fide classics now
And despite claiming they hated it because they were sexist they still chose to only release the address of Mrs Voorhees actress and told their fans to send her hate mail

I have to laugh at their "review" of Silent Night, Deadly Night. Siskel says very little about the movie and spends his time naming and shaming everybody involved in making the movie.

Sorry about the crap audio. And its a youtube link, but the video address keeps giving me a censor bypass warning.
https://tinyurl.com/3asuc7et

Which one kept saying everything STINKS .

Zithers posted...

lol we use a different frame of his reaction to that as a custom emoji in my movie server

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/b8966388.png

lol. That's great.

cjsdowg posted...

Which one kept saying everything STINKS .

Here's three...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a2759053.jpg

Pick one. lol ;p

I'm fine with critics who I may disagree with. As long as they give their reasons.