[0xcde4c3db]

I usually go for a metric along the lines of Chesterton's Fence: do the negative critiques seem like they're dismissing the film out-of-hand, or do they seem to show an understanding what it was going for and still think it failed to do it well? Roger Ebert was usually pretty good about this, which gives his truly scathing reviews that much more bite [1].

[1]: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/battlefield-earth-2000

my favorite bit: "The director, Roger Christian, has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why."

[bmelton]

I generally feel the same, but was woefully misled by a detailed, thorough, but overall negative review of "Spring[1]", which I found to be a delightful genre-bending tale that really surprised me.

I'm not suggesting it was the best movie of the year, by any stretch, but where the reviewer kept insisting that the alleged plot holes were completely unexplainable, I found that perhaps she just didn't "Get It", because not only were the holes absent from my viewing, but where she found holes, I found explanations that actually made sense (y'know, within the context of a film anyway).

[1] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3395184/