I have been a subscriber to EW for years now. The magazine is good, sometimes very good, but as far as critics go, Lisa Schwarzbaum has proven the folksaying that "Opinions are like A**holes, everyone has one". Her recent article on Oceans 12 is no exception to this since it seems she has something against a great cast, excellent director and witty dialog, maybe she should think about a career change. Lisa, can you say, "Pull around to the second window"?

Welcome to the site Ohgots. I personally had no knowledge of the critic that you speak of, Schwarzbaum. But browsing around Metacritic, and looking at the user reviews it appears that many dislike her merely because she didn't like "The Passion of the Christ" and therefore scored her based solely on that movie. I read her review of Ocean's Twelve, and didn't find anything too mean in it. There are plenty other mediocre reviews for this movie and picking her out of the group seems unfair. The question you may want to ask is why the critics don't like it. I personally haven't seen it yet but plan to in the near future and I am curious if you have because I think that it came out today. The thing that you must remember about critics is that they base their scores on if they enjoyed the movie or not. What one person likes other will not and vise-versa. It isn't a bad idea to read the reviews before deciding what movie to watch, but you cannot believe the reviewers whole-heartedly.

Welcome to the site.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: St. Mike,

I like Owen much better than Lisa...Lisa's reviews can get to the point where you don't even know if she is talking about movies. Owen seems much more open-minded.

As far as Passion of the Christ, I think EW made a mistake by having only Jewish reviewers review the film, they were just inviting criticism upon themselves. I was no huge fan of the film, but it would have been nice to get a Christian persepctive on what is very much a Christian movie.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ohgots:
I have been a subscriber to EW for years now. The magazine is good, sometimes very good, but as far as critics go, Lisa Schwarzbaum has proven the folksaying that "Opinions are like A**holes, everyone has one". Her recent article on Oceans 12 is no exception to this since it seems she has something against a great cast, excellent director and witty dialog, maybe she should think about a career change. Lisa, can you say, "Pull around to the second window"?

[I too am a long time subscriber to EW, and I rarely ever take their ratings seriously. Though the magazine is entertaining and informative (at times), when it comes to movies always look at the score they give movies. Rarely do they have the courage to give any film less than a B-; the individual critics are far more interesting, some good, some terrible. But, the magazine staff as a whole doesn't have the courage to call a real sorry movie for what it is. It makes me wonder if they are trying not to upset the "powers that be" rather than being courageous, observant critics who have as their goal the actual critiquing of a movie! They are like that high school teacher that wants everyone to pass whether they can read or not. In their meetings, when they come across a poor piece of work, I think they must say, "It's lousy, but let's not hurt their self esteem; let's give them a B- and maybe next time they will do better!]

im surprised she penned a positive review for 300. Guy movies tend to get panned by her. the blood diamond was good!