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The twitter responses were pretty much all just as stupid as D'Angelo's tweet.

To be honest I missed it at first but once he said look at the subtitles it was really easy to figure out. I kinda get him. Made it more fun actually to figure it out myself.

It does, but on the other hand, it would have taken him 4 tweets less to just answer the title of the movie.

He answered the title of the movie in his first tweeted response

I don't get why everyone's making a big deal out of this, honestly. I get the enjoyment out of letting others figure out what the film is, especially as he said, the subtitles include all the information needed. I don't see why he's being judged so much for it. Yeah he didn't answer straight away, so what?

Fun fact: when viewing those screen caps on mobile, the name of the film is obscured by Twitter stuff, so I think this gained traction because to many people reading it looked like he DIDN’T say the name

EDIT: For those not on mobile:

dda1996a wrote: Tue Jul 09, 2019 7:43 am I don't get why everyone's making a big deal out of this, honestly. I get the enjoyment out of letting others figure out what the film is, especially as he said, the subtitles include all the information needed. I don't see why he's being judged so much for it. Yeah he didn't answer straight away, so what?

Because instead of answering a perfectly polite question (unusually polite for Twitter, in fact) with the actual answer, he decided to play the condescending Comic Book Guy card and then doubled down on it ("it's really not that hard"). You can pull off something like this if you do it playfully, but he was just plain rude - and quite needlessly so. ("What do you mean you don't immediately know? Well, watch it again and work it out for yourself; I'm not going to help someone who's so obviously an idiot.")

And the problem here, as many have pointed out, is that this behaviour absolutely epitomises a certain kind of lofty film snobbery that drives normal people up the wall. And D'Angelo, to put it mildly, has previous form.

I don't think it's at all astonishing that people might not recognise The Marriage of Maria Braun or even be familiar with the title. I'd hazard a guess that this applies to the overwhelming majority of the English-speaking world. Yes, it was once quite big in art-film circles (forty years ago), it had a decent rep life and a comparatively small number of people have more recently discovered it on DVD and Blu-ray - but I guarantee that if you were to walk down the street right now and ask twenty people to even place the title, you'd get a 5% response at best unless you're very selective about where you go.

domino harvey wrote:Fun fact: when viewing those screen caps on mobile, the name of the film is obscured by Twitter stuff, so I think this gained traction because to many people reading it looked like he DIDN’T say the name.

That's indeed my case, hence my remark.

MichaelB wrote: Tue Jul 09, 2019 8:05 amI don't think it's at all astonishing that people might not recognise The Marriage of Maria Braun or even be familiar with the title. I'd hazard a guess that this applies to the overwhelming majority of the English-speaking world. Yes, it was once quite big in art-film circles (forty years ago), it had a decent rep life and a comparatively small number of people have more recently discovered it on DVD and Blu-ray - but I guarantee that if you were to walk down the street right now and ask twenty people to even place the title, you'd get a 5% response at best unless you're very selective about where you go.

I suppose that Criterion releasing the BRD Trilogy this month on Blu-ray might have suggested it would be in the consciousness of those following a film critic on Twitter more than usual, but perhaps not.

That reminds me that last month I inadvisedly told a couple of co-workers that I might be going to see Werner Herzog do a talk in Sheffield and was faced with blank looks. The situation only became worse when I inarticulately tried to explain who Werner Herzog was and now am just seen as the weirdo who likes strange films where people drag boats over mountains.

But it was Werner Herzog for goodness sake! Imagine if I had tried to explain Fassbinder's unique qualities!

I'm known amongst my friends and colleagues as the guy who probably is making these directors' names up on the fly, since there's no way Apichatpong Weerasethakul is legit.
Imagine when I told them my H1 2019 catchup was composed of the latest movies by Serguei Lonitza, Pawel Pawlikowski, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Lee Chang-dong and Kirill Serebrennikov (no joke, these really were the top movies I missed in theaters and absolutely wanted to catch back on video).
But they're vastly used to my arthouse-y and back-catalogue tastes and I have found ways to make them way less weird in my explanations.

Thanks to being married to an out and proud cultural philistine and having two teenage kids who have zero interest in the New German Cinema (to the point of being utterly unaware of such a thing ever existing), I have a very good sense of what I can get away with saying and what I can't (at least without avoiding ridicule).

And one advantage of being an eastern European specialist is that in the vast majority of circles (even film-buff ones) I can't assume that people will be familiar with what I'm talking about. In fact, I'm about to record a commentary for an Anglo-Czech film for Indicator, and I'm acutely aware that I cannot sensibly assume any upfront knowledge of Czech cinema or culture, so I'm working out how to pitch it without needlessly spoonfeeding that small minority of listeners who'll have at least some basic knowledge.

I don't want to defend him too much, because I've seen him be an Asshole more than a few times. But if you're following a film critic, watch a clip he uploaded, where he even comments later that it is Fassbinder, and all you need to do is watch it again doesn't seem like too much to ask. I even posted in that thread thinking because he spoke of Alexanderplatz a day before that this might be it, only for him to comment I should probably look over it again didn't get me angry (I've seen only Lola from Fassbinder so far). I thought he was rather decent here.

Anyway, Michael, I think it depends really on what information. Even if it's something well known to Czech cinema lovers, I'd say if it's worthentioning anyway, then do it. I don't mind hearing a small tidbit of info in a sea of new information. And it's always on the quality of the speaker as well. I've listened to Tony Rayns speak on HHH more than once and I could listen to Rayns endlessly, even when I am familiar with most of the info.

After the fiasco spreading across Film Twitter, D'Angelo has set his Twitter account private.

I would give this about a 51/100 on the fiasco scale

MichaelB wrote: Tue Jul 09, 2019 8:05 amBecause instead of answering a perfectly polite question (unusually polite for Twitter, in fact) with the actual answer, he decided to play the condescending Comic Book Guy card and then doubled down on it ("it's really not that hard"). You can pull off something like this if you do it playfully, but he was just plain rude - and quite needlessly so. ("What do you mean you don't immediately know? Well, watch it again and work it out for yourself; I'm not going to help someone who's so obviously an idiot.")

And the problem here, as many have pointed out, is that this behaviour absolutely epitomises a certain kind of lofty film snobbery that drives normal people up the wall. And D'Angelo, to put it mildly, has previous form.

I don't think it's at all astonishing that people might not recognise The Marriage of Maria Braun or even be familiar with the title. I'd hazard a guess that this applies to the overwhelming majority of the English-speaking world. Yes, it was once quite big in art-film circles (forty years ago), it had a decent rep life and a comparatively small number of people have more recently discovered it on DVD and Blu-ray - but I guarantee that if you were to walk down the street right now and ask twenty people to even place the title, you'd get a 5% response at best unless you're very selective about where you go.

Now that D'Angelo has unlocked his account, I see that I owe him an apology - he DID in fact directly name the film in his original reply, something that's rather buried in the screencap version (although you can just about make it out under the icons at the bottom). Which I have to concede does change things a fair bit.

If he did identify the film -- why was he attacked in the first place? Strange.

Yes, that's why this whole exchange was so weird, and why I actually share D'Angelo's bafflement that it escalated to such an extent. I've seen a lot of obnoxious behaviour from cinephiles along precisely the lines that he was accused of, but in the light of the fact that he did unambiguously answer the question first time round his subsequent tetchiness makes much more sense!

Although it was probably a tactical error to hide his comments, as it meant that all we had to go on was the screengrab - and while the evidence that he did name the film is present there too, it's not obvious at a casual glance, and I'm far from the only one who missed it.

MichaelB wrote: Tue Jul 09, 2019 8:05 am

dda1996a wrote: Tue Jul 09, 2019 7:43 am I don't get why everyone's making a big deal out of this, honestly. I get the enjoyment out of letting others figure out what the film is, especially as he said, the subtitles include all the information needed. I don't see why he's being judged so much for it. Yeah he didn't answer straight away, so what?

Because instead of answering a perfectly polite question (unusually polite for Twitter, in fact) with the actual answer, he decided to play the condescending Comic Book Guy card and then doubled down on it ("it's really not that hard"). You can pull off something like this if you do it playfully, but he was just plain rude - and quite needlessly so. ("What do you mean you don't immediately know? Well, watch it again and work it out for yourself; I'm not going to help someone who's so obviously an idiot.")

And the problem here, as many have pointed out, is that this behaviour absolutely epitomises a certain kind of lofty film snobbery that drives normal people up the wall. And D'Angelo, to put it mildly, has previous form.

I don't think it's at all astonishing that people might not recognise The Marriage of Maria Braun or even be familiar with the title. I'd hazard a guess that this applies to the overwhelming majority of the English-speaking world. Yes, it was once quite big in art-film circles (forty years ago), it had a decent rep life and a comparatively small number of people have more recently discovered it on DVD and Blu-ray - but I guarantee that if you were to walk down the street right now and ask twenty people to even place the title, you'd get a 5% response at best unless you're very selective about where you go.

And yet I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve received responses of disdain or incomprehension for not having seen Top Gun or Game of Thrones, or not being aware of some ‘90s pop-cultural reference. “Normies” can be just as guilty of snobbery if not more so, in my experience.

Oh it can be even worse : I stopped watching GoT after its 4th season because I read the books already so got bored by the TV show, especially since it was arriving in storylines the books already got me bored with.
"What, you haven't seen the latest seasons ? What, you actually stopped because you... didn't like it ?"
Well yeah, it happens.

I quit after The Red Wedding and seeing everyone complain about the last two seasons made me a bit happy inside that I quit early

Has it stopped being relevant or fun to criticize Mike since half-2019?

Also wondering why only relatively "controversial" critics get their own thread here... There are no praise threads for critics everyone likes? Almost seems like those don't exist.

Anyway, before anyone wonders, yes, I did make an account only to comment on this thread about Mikey D, but not because I wanted to say something of myself but rather as a reaction to what I read here. Nice to see people don't feel pressured to not admit they like Mike (at least to some extent).

I learned a bunch in the past two or so hours reading through the comments (will not say I carefully read every single one and clicked every single link). It has been plenty informative.

Just to make sure me & whoever reads this is on the same wavelength, I will explain how I got into movies, movie criticism and specifically D'Angelo:

The end of 2019 was near and I felt... Pretty bad, mostly about myself - just turned 19, still in highschool (I live in Holland and highschool can last past your 18th birthday depending on your level of education. I had to redo a year, because I was too fucking lazy. Still am). This is not going to be some sort of self-pitying vent but it was the fact that I felt shit about myself that subsequently got me into movies - I conected so deeply with a film I rewatched on my own one night that I was thrown into a red-faced mess, wanting to get into movies hoping to find other films that made me feel something. I discovered Letterboxd and retroactively marked all films I had seen at some point in my life as watched, attaching a rating to them (I decided to rewatch any I felt unsure rating. Haven't really followed through with that, because I'm just not eager to revisit Robots or Arlington Road). I came to a number of about 350 or so movies, and then spent the majority of 2020 watching more (I ended up with something over 400 films logged). Somewhere in between I came across Mike D'Angelo, of course, because he is one of the few critics who operates frequently on Letterboxd. I kind of... Fell in love with him quickly. It's probably just the comparative quality/earnestness of his reviews and blurbs on the site with anything else, that made me latch onto him, so it could be argued it's rather a flaw of Letterboxd than a merit of Mike.

Actually, to more accurately pinpoint the moment I started to like him, was his self-pronounced Philistine review of Hard To Be A God which I kind of hated (don't ask me why someone who's been into movies for a couple of months decides to watch 3-hour arthouse epics - my feeling for arthouse wasn't really developed (or at least not bloomed), only having seen a few films i.e. Godard's Breathless and Tarkovsky's Solaris and Stalker, the last two of which I loved the former and didn't much enjoy the latter (how refreshing it was for me to retroactively find out that Mike thought more or less the same thing! For reasons still sort of unknown to me)). His review of Hard Out Here For A God, as he dubbed it, read so unabashed, up to a point where I could barely stand any argument of, no, the film is actually good. As I watched more and more films and read more and more of his reviews, and sometimes others' as well, he became sort of my filmic Spirit Animal. It wasn't long until I started to search out films based on what he loved, films he gave 4.5 stars or higher, as well, which led to me watching films like Irma Vep, and the first Spider-man which I had never given the light of day. Whenever I seemed to agree with him on a film (and that was often!) my "bond" with his written material grew, which of course directly correlates with my imagination of him as a person. I am now a $1-Patreon subscriber and I often (cringe-inducingly) read his review work for films I have not seen. Anyway, this all led to a more recent realization...

I have been using Mike as a sort of cinematic roadmap. A few things I now understand about him (and I guess about film critics in the grand scheme of things):

- Each of them has their own voice, stemming from their own opinion, their own frequencies on which they work on when viewing a film - some frequencies are finetuned to catch things related to editing, others are receptive to the empathy generated on-screen. I guess Mike's are mainly intellectual, as in he reacts more severely to directly "clever" or "original" filmmaking - he has said before he doesn't find it necessary for films to evoke any sort of emotional reaction in order to be great (to him, anyway).
- Each of them has their own (pet) peeves, or personal objections. One of Mike's for example are bad things happening to characters without precedent - he doesn't like it when films just want his pity. Some critics might not really have these.
These points lead to people having their own particular "tastes": why Mike's taste was so accessible to me, I think, is because after reading some of his work it becomes possible to tell what he'd think of a certain film without knowing his opinion. He comes with his own ideas, his own preferences, and I don't think he ever really has a double standard in any of these, making it so easy to understand him as a person beyond being a movie critic. You can almost hear him sit next to you while watching a movie, youknowhatI'msayin'?

But the major thing I realized about all this is: I don't have a taste. I don't really have a voice, or pet peeves. I still have to develop those, and I hope I can do so by watching more and more movies. But because of my lack of a taste of my own, I more easily latched onto someone else's (particularly strong) taste that I (I guess superficially) agree with. I don't have the same understanding of filmmaking as Mike, so I just use his instead of my own. I don't have the same interesting things to say, so I use him to reflect "my" opinion in.

It's not that I never disagree with his views. And reading this thread has been slightly revelatory to me as well, finally opening myself up to a counter-voice, which I didn't really do much before.

It's also not the case that this is somehow his fault. I don't know if there really is anyone to "fault", here. I've always been gullible all my life. It's only recently that I started to fundamentally disagree with my dad about things (and films). I've always been somewhat subjective to another authority, because I submitted I was "lesser" than them.

Occasionally, though, my personal "taste" does seem to shine through if my feelings for a film are particularly strong, so much so that I manage to deafen myself for whatever criticisms Mike has, or even in spite of them. I just hope I can rely on this "taste" of my own completely someday, never again writing reviews that have been slightly coloured by what Mike wrote.

I seen just shy over 800 films, now. There is so much to see out there. I've seen barely a glimpse. So chances are it will happen someday. But for now I'll still be defending Mike in this here thread. Not that he needs that; he can fend off criticism pretty well by himself. It's not that he lacks self-awareness completely. But some of the criticism I read in this thread seems outright unfair, and most of the links leading to reviews deemed insufferable I found more than tolerable and even interesting to read.

But to make this comment at least a little constructive, I wanna go back to the second message in this thread (I'll just skip past the first which calls a random user "Mike D'Angelo"; I don't have the context to comment anything on that nor have I the energy to argue about Mike's */100 rating system; It's been clear for me for a long time that some people seem to develop their own systematic ratings, and even a few in this very thread talk about their own. I guess for some people that just works; I could also be making fun of people for not rating at all to counteract the dismissal of how people personalize their movie ranking, but I don't, because I understand not rating anything is what works for them), which links Mike's 12 Angry Men piece. I had never read it in full before, but I find it very coherent and convincing. Someone replied to that message with (I will just be quoting them because actually replying to the message is probably futile after all this time):

D'Angelo seems to leave a whole lot out of his argument to serve the purposes of the article. One quick example: He cites the idea that perhaps the old man made up having seen the murder to feel important. In the film, that speculation came on the heels of a lengthy discussion of why it's physically impossible for him to have seen the murder in the first place. That was never the crux of the argument.

This is "one quick example", but I'd love to read more of these. This one though, I don't think makes much sense.
In the scene, it has been determined by way of speculation (it doesn't matter that it was a lengthy discussion, everything about this old man was speculated) that it was physically impossible for him to have seen the murder. Alright. This is the conclusion the Men make. Now to substantiate this conclusion, there has to be a motive for the old man to lie that he did see the murder. Nobody lies for no reason at all. You wouldn't tell your friend there was milk in the fridge when there in fact isn't unless you want to pull a prankof some sorts. So why would the old man lie in court, of all places? The only plausible motive is indeed that he lied "to feel important". This is part of the conclusion, it is has to be speculated on as well. You can't conclude "he lied" and leave it at that; the reason why he lied is equally as relevant. Also, the old man never said he saw the murder, he just saw the kid flee the crime scene, which is a small oversight on the commenter's part.
Mike doesn't just cite this "idea", he quotes it as one of the things that has to be completely true in order for the possibility that the kid is not guilty to exist.

Here’s what has to be true in order for The Kid to be innocent of the murder: (...)
- The elderly man down the hall, as suggested by Juror No. 9 (Joseph Sweeney), didn’t actually see The Kid, but claimed he had, or perhaps convinced himself he had, out of a desire to feel important. (...)

I don't see Mike leaving anything out pertaining to this point; he doesn't say that this bullet point is false, he only says it has to be true. Mike's point is that it is questionably plausible that this man had a desire to feel important, casting at least some doubt on whether it really is that true. But let's suppose it is true: the rest of the bullet points he mentions in the article makes his case clear enough, especially when considering them all together. I really don't think Mike "leaves out" things on purpose here at all.

I never thought 12 Angry Men was a masterpiece or a favourite of mine when I saw it some 5 or so years ago; just a very, very well-oiled drama, so me agreeing with Mike there (and everything else I said in this message) makes me partial to him.

Anyway, to conclude: I'm sure you guys are all a lot smarter than me and have seen a lot more films. I'm also sure that most of you guys' opinions of Mike are more justified than mine whether they are negative or positive. And I'd love to talk about Mike here, and get myself more exposure to other voices. Not sure if the discussion will become active again but at least I put this out there.