September Shorts: Crawl vs Downton Abbey

Movie criticism, huh?

I gave myself a wry smile when I saw this recently. Crawl is a fine film; a solid survival actioner and proud upstanding member of the 99-Minute Movie Club (more about this mysterious organisation in the coming days.) I'll make no claims that it's perfect, but it is claustrophobic, tense, and frightening - a fabulous way to kill an hour and a half. I loved it.

So why the yawning gap between their take and mine? Downton Abbey - the receiver of a four star review in the same paper on the same day - is apparently twice as good as Crawl. That's how star systems work, right?

Most movie reviews don't tell you how good movies are. Even ones like this are a delicate negotiation that have to pay sufficient homage to...

(i) current concensus (aim: have broadly the same opinion as others)
(ii) fashion (aim: look current, cool, part of the right gang)
(iii) intelligence (aim: appear clever)

...before:

(iv) enjoyment.

Perhaps the feral gator that is Rotten Tomatoes is eating newspaper film-criticism... or perhaps newspaper film criticism is eating itself.