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IMDb can be an excellent source of information, and they screen the additions pretty well. But since the only thing that can't be verified is if someone saw the movie before they vote or comment on it, I always take those &ratings& and &comments& with a lot of skepticism. I always suspect that ratings and comments are skewed by people who were directly involved in making the movie.
Me: Somewhat cynical, but generally nice guy. Major movie goer. We have a regular movie-going group (our neighbors and us). Prefer seeing movies in a theater. Travel a lot and have been lucky to experience seeing movies in many different cities in the U.S. and Canada.
Widely varying tastes. I like a lot of movies people hate and hate some movies many people love. It's all personal taste. Nobody can convince anybody to have the same reaction to a movie that they had. (That's what made Siskel & Ebert so much fun to watch). If you liked it, you liked it, if you didn't, you didn't. But I think you should actually SEE it before you speak or write about its merits. I believe people should see the movies they want to see, and that they will like the ones they like and not the ones they don't, and that no one can tell you or convince you to feel the same way about a movie that they felt about it, good or bad.
Some favorites include:
Unfaithful, The Deep End, Norma Rae, E.T., What's Love Got To Do With It, The Fugitive, Body Heat, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, The Pianist, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
(many many more, including the classics)
I usually prefer movies about people and real-life situations over computer-generated fantasies (though now and then I love stuff like Lord of the Rings and The Dark Knight.)
Reviews
Surviving Suburbia (2009)
TERRIBLE - I can't wait to forget about it
I watch a lot of television, but haven't seen a good family comedy in years. I like Cynthia Stevenson, so I was hopeful. When I saw my newspaper describe this show as a "hopelessly generic family sitcom", I admit I had to watch because I was thinking it can't be THAT bad. After all, ABC had positioned it right after "Dancing with the Stars". They must have seen something really good in it. Sad to say, my newspaper was right. No, it wasn't right. It's not a generic sitcom. It's a TERRIBLE sitcom, with lots of generic characters -- the annoying neighbor (Jere Burns - I think he's supposed to be a doctor!), the fat female neighbor (wasn't she the actress who played the ton-of-a-bitch boss in the movie "Wanted?), and the precocious and mostly obnoxious children.
Why anybody ever thought Bob Saget could head up a new comedy is beyond me. I know he was a hit on "Full House", but that was an awfully long time ago (emphasis on "awful"). The Olsen twins were still babies then! Did he bankroll this new show? He's just not a good actor.
I was among the unfortunate few who went to see "The Drowsy Chaperone" on Broadway, only to discover that the Tony nominated actor who had been playing the lead when I bought the tickets had left the show, and Bob Saget had taken over the part! He was just about as uninteresting in that show as he is in this new sitcom. (It probably was largely due to him that "The Drowsy Chaperone" closed a couple months after he joined the cast.)
ABC is out of their collective mind if they're thinking the audiences will continue to watch this show. I like old-fashioned sitcoms. Ah, remember "Roseanne" and "Home Improvement". Those were the good old ABC days. This "Surviving Suburbia" is just a bad sitcom. Its chances of surviving are slim. Its chances of being as memorable as those other hit ABC shows is zero. I can't wait to forget about it.