Divisive films

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   I've long been interested in how critics often have such wildly divergent estimations of worth in film, music, and other arts.  Of course subjectivity is  a factor in a critique, but one can try to balance that with objective evaluations (I'd be mote comfortable doing that with film than with music generally as I formally studied film).  That said, we all have our biases and particular points of reference.  What often bothers me is when reviewers (especially professional critics) put forth their subjective opinions as objective fact, when they seem to tell you how you should feel about something instead of making it explicitly clear that this is how they feel, when they come across as arrogant, and it often bugs me when reviewers state that something makes no sense/ it cannot be understood (perhaps their lack of cognitive ability, knowledge and reference points is the problem, not the films, of course some films are very deliberately made to be ambiguous).

I don't mind differences of opinion, I like to read different perspectives, and I would hardly expect everyone to share the same tastes, but some reviewers seem to act as if all who do not feel the same way that the reviewer does is wrong, and exhibit very black-and-white thinking.

I was looking into divisive films, and came across the following list on Gizmodo from late 2017.  It's only looking at modern films and uses Metacritic as its base. https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2017/11/exclusive-the-most-critically-divisive-films-according-to-data/

Here is the list in image form:

Note: Oldboy refers to the 2013 Spike Lee remake and not the original Park Chan-wook Korean film from 2003.  I loved the original, and would expect that reviewers were more divided on the remake because some were comparing it to the original, and others had not seen it.  Some reviewers thought the remake superior (I never bothered with the remake beyond the first ten minutes).

I'm not sure how good their approach was as, say Melancholia, which is listed at number one and is based on 40 reviews, has 31 positive reviews, 7 mixed and two negative ones, which doesn't seem to make it that divisive to me.  Rex Reed gave it a zero, which seems overly harsh to me.  I enjoyed the film very much.  It fared worse with user score.  It's Tomatometer score at Rotten Tomatoes is 70 percent fresh and audience score is 67 percent.

Here is the first paragraph of Rex Reed's review of it https://observer.com/2011/11/eat-your-heart-out-harold-camping-the-trite-apocalypse-porn-of-von-trier-is-anything-but-a-revelation/ :

 Rex Reed wrote:

The loopy indulgences of deluded Danish nut Lars von Trier, who recently declared himself a bona fide Nazi in publicity-grabbing world headlines, are no longer called films, they’re considered provocations—shunned by discerning audiences worldwide and embraced by only a small gaggle of clucking, pretentious critics and film festival filmgoers. Melancholia is his latest pile of undiluted drivel, nauseatingly filmed by a wonky hand-held camera and featuring a crazy, mismatched ensemble headed by Kirsten Dunst, who won an acting award in Cannes last year for looking totally catatonic.

So he not only insults the film and the filmmaker, but also those who enjoyed it.  von Trier's Nazi comments at a Cannes conference, though I think clearly made tongue-in-cheek were in very poor taste, and it got him banned from Cannes, well, he is a bit strange and I love some of his films and others do seem to be intended to provoke/ shock, rather like his provocative comments, which he later apologised for. From his speech in 2011:

"I really wanted to be a Jew, and then I found out that I was really a Nazi, because, you know, my family was German, which also gave me some pleasure. What can I say? I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely. But I can see him sitting in his bunker in the end. He's not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him, and I sympathize with him a little bit. But come on, I'm not for the Second World War, and I'm not against Jews, no, not even Susanne Bier. I am of course very much for Jews. No, not too much, because Israel is a pain in the ass. But still, how can I get out of this sentence? (Las von Trier, Cannes Film Festival, 2011).  He went on to say that Melancholia "may be crap ... there's quite a big possibility that it might not be worth seeing and mused that his next film with Dunst and Gainsbourg would be a long porn film.

But I digress... From that list, I really enjoyed Under the Skin, Melancholia, Hateful 8, Kill Bill Vol. 1 (liked the second chapter more still, but I think of it as one film), Howl's Moving Castle, Sin City, Big Fish and others.  Under the Skin (2014), which I know can be divisive (seem various people call ot boring, senseless crap), in particular is one of my favourite films of this decade.  That said, it has  very good metacritic score and rotten tomatoes score and the majority of reviews are positive (Positive are 34 compared to three negative reviews)

From Rex Reed at Observer again https://observer.com/2014/04/scarlett-johansson-is-a-sexy-alien-stalker-in-under-the-skin/:

 Rex Reed wrote:

... The point, if there is one, is that when a sexy lady alien tries to have real sex on the planet Earth, it’s not what it’s cracked up to be. She really wants to be human, but she can’t even swallow a piece of chocolate cake without gagging. When she tries to go all the way, oh baby. E.T. phone home! You see, they forgot to give her a vagina. Believe it or not, this is not a comedy (although you didn’t hear it from me)....

Maybe I should have just made this a Rex Reed hate thread (one of the most famous movie critics, one of the most renowned according to Observer).  Hey, I can appreciate different perspectives, but he's snarky/ condescending.  He was cruel about Kurosawa, and this is what he said about the Korean Oldboy film.

 Rex Reed wrote:

What else can you expect from a nation weaned on kimchi, a mixture of raw garlic and cabbage buried underground until it rots, dug up from the grave and then served in earthenware pots sold at the Seoul airport as souvenirs?"
  And he complains about von Trier's Nazi comments?  Oh, and I love kimchi.

What are your thoughts on any films here, and or what are some films you like that have seemed particularly divisive to you?

One I might mention is Zardoz, although that seems to be considered a bad movie by most.  I partially do as well, but I also love it and find the ending genuinely powerful and moving.  That film had a tremendous effect on me (probably not for the better).  At Metacritic, it has two positive critic reviews, two negative ones, and five that are mixed.  At Rottentomatoes, it generally falls slightly on the rotten side at 48 percent, but it does have a fairly even mix of positive and negative reviews, and mix of reviews that are both positive and negative.  Clearly divisive...

From Jonathon Rosenbaum (A critic whose reviews I tend to enjoy):

"Probably John Boorman's most underrated film-an impossibly ambitious and pretentious but also highly inventive, provocative, and visually striking SF adventure...."

And from William Thomas at Empire magazine (never liked that publication, find Sight & Sound so much better):

"You have to hand it to John Boorman. When he's brilliant, he's brilliant (Point Blank, Deliverance) but when he's terrible, he's really terrible...."