I love movies and even occasionally try to write a review (though I’ve been a bit lazy lately so I should get back to it).
I have a home theater which allows me a pretty nice experience at home (when my family allows it) to watch movies. I collect movies I like a whole lot because I like to watch them again.
I’m an “immersive” viewer. I define an “immersive” viewer as one who gets pulled into the movie/story fairly deeply and forgets about the environment around them. This kind of viewer really focuses on the story and does enjoy and better technical environment and viewing environment but can be very forgiving if the movie/story is engaging.
With all that, I have been seeing, hearing, and reading reviews lately that are getting hard to put in an appropriate place with regards to a trust or reliability point of view.
Specifically, the reviews will often lock on about one thing that upset the reviewer and not really discuss anything else. The reviews will also over use superlatives which don’t really give much descriptive value to the story line. I’ve even read one that was complaining about the actual theater which would be useful if it was one of my available theaters but the reviewer doesn’t even live in the same state.
That’s not to say that I haven’t heard a few reviews that haven’t had a few great bits of information and data. I enjoy reviews that give details about the story/movie along with their opinions on how those details worked (acting quality, scenery, picture quality, special effects, action scene quality, …). Two that have stood our for me lately have multiple people giving reviews that can debate the quality with each other and that works well. The two reviews are podcasts called Slate’s Spoiler Specials and Totally Rad Show (which is a very different and much less serious show that covers movies, gaming, comics, and other stuff).