Spoilers Ahoy!

I like to read film reviews after I’ve seen the film.

The moment I get home, I zip off to the computer and start reading movie reviews – first stop, the IMDB, then onto James Berardinelli’s Reelviews, Roger Ebert and maybe the Salon. Then I’ll wade through RottenTomatoes and Metacritic and finally be satisfied.

I think the reason is, I almost always want to talk about the movie afterwards, and rarely get a chance to do so. I love to talk about the clever bits, and the bits that fell flat, and particularly, no matter how good the movie was, have they could have done it better.

And that’s what Film Forensics is about. How they could have done it better.

By any rational measure, I’m not qualified to make these judgements. I’ve written and directed and acted in some amateur short films, but I’d be quite content if I never made the big time. I’m comfortable being an amateur. My own films aren’t particularly good. Comments of “What the hell would he know?” are perfectly justified.

But, dammit, it’s fun. Who has watched “The Phantom Menace” without wishing that they’d removed Jar Jar Binks? Or watched an utterly predictable, tedious romantic comedy and squirmed at the Hollywood ending, imagining a Tyrannosaurus Rex coming in and chomping on everyone concerned? OK, maybe that’s just me. But in a really mediocre film, you can get a lot of fun out of reimagining it. Change the genre. Change the genders. We don’t have the worries of the film’s producers. We don’t have to make the film appeal to everybody, and in doing so, make it appeal to nobody. We have the luxury of seeing the finished product before suggesting our changes. And that’s OK. We’re the audience, and we’re going to be entertained. Whether they like it or not.