the worth of a movie
Last night Shobhit had his Project Management class, during which I watched and then reviewed a movie on Netflix called Worth, which I quite liked. It was very similar in tone to the 2015 movie Spotlight, basically a legal procedural, only this time about the September 11 Compensation Fund. Honestly, I only gave it any real thought after the hosts of The Big Picture podcast (or maybe it was The Watch, but I think it was The Big Picture) kind of sang its praises. They kind of lamented how little attention it's been getting, and I basically feel the same way now. That movie really deserves attention, but it's easy to be of two minds about its availability streaming on Netflix: It's great that it's so accessible on the most-subscribed streaming service out there; it's also unfortunate that it's one of countless titles on the streamer that now seems to value volume over quantity. Netflix has so much stuff, and releases so many new titles so consistently, it's hard to imagine a movie with that somber a subject matter really cutting through the noise.
I also think it rather deserves better than the 66 rating it has on MetaCritic.com. On the upside, at least a couple of review sources that I tend to like the most (The New York Times, Vanity Fair) quite liked the movie. I have to admit I have evolved over time into a bit of an over-reliance on movie review aggregator sites, first on Rotten Tomatoes and then, when I realized how flawed their ratings system was 45 out of 50 critics could agree on the movie being "pretty good" rather than excellent and it would still get a 90% rating), I moved onto MetaCritic, which assigns a 1-100 value to each review and then averages them. Of course, the inherent flaw in that model is the wild objectivity of what number value a given review should get. I suppose it could be easier to trust if each reviewer came up with a number themselves, but a lot of reviewers understandably avoid numerical ratings systems altogether, because they still ignore nuance.
I've heard a fair amount in podcasts as of late about the problematic nature of these websites, and how they contribute to the number of film critics being rendered irrelevant. They consistently recommend avoiding aggregator sites, and simply finding the few critics you like and who seem to have similar tastes to yours, and read their content directly and near-exclusively. This is all well and good, in an ideal world. I just can't help myself, because I love numbers and statistics almost as much as I love movies and writing about them. If it's any consolation, I do regularly look over the list of review excerpts on MetaCritic.com, and often click through to read one or two, sometimes three, full reviews. I don't always only look at the MetaScore.
Besides, with very few exceptions, if the MetaScore is exceptionally high (above 80), I can reliably expect to really like the movie; if it's exceptionally low (below 40), I can expect it to be garbage. That middle range is a lot trickier, and that's where Worth falls, which was why movie commentators I like, speaking about it directly on one of my favorite podcasts, finally convinced me to watch it. I'm really glad they did.
Beyond watching and reviewing that movie last night, there's no much else to report. The fourth episode of the corny but fun Hulu show Only Murders In the Building was released yesterday, so Shobhit and I did watch that later in the evening, shortly after Ivan left for work. That show has an astonishing roster of really famous people on it, not just stars Steve Martin and Martin Short and Selena Gomez, but Amy Ryan (who, incidentally, was also in Worth), Sting, and even Tina Fey in this week's episode. I'm beginning to wonder what other surprise superstars will appear as the show goes on.
I just had a pleasant lunch out on the patio with Tracy. It's a lovely sunny day, and I even commented on how I'll miss sitting out there once the weather turns cold again. She said she likes the view even when it's cold, and of course I do too—in fact I'm usually all about the fall weather. The difference this year is, I've only been back to the office since the end of June, which cuts the usual amount of opportunity to eat lunches out there throughout the spring and summer. That on top of the fact that I had literally zero opportunity all of last year's spring and summer, I'm just appreciating it a lot more than usual this year.
That, in spite of how very, very little rain we've had in Seattle this year. Apparently our record stretch of days without measurable rain was 55 days in 2017, and in early August we were just days shy of breaking that record—but then one or two days we did get a bit of rain. I swear it's been about another month since we've seen any real rain, though. I actually kind of hope we get a lot of it this fall, but who knows? In the meantime, now that we're finally (hopefully) beyond this year's ridiculous heat waves, I'll just appreciate the pleasant, late-summer weather while we have it.
[posted 12:44 pm]