- The thing that really impressed me most about him, wasn't a review but merely that he managed to take a side on the Dawkins+Hitchens vs Pope debate that wasn't atheist or christian, but correct. That is an impressive ability and I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen what he had seen beforehand
Sounds like the middle ground fallacy to me.
Oh no it wasn't at all. Basically it was back when Dawkins and Hitchens were trying to get the Pope arrested in the international courts for a crime against humanity by abetting paedophiles.
First he pointed out that in his interviews Dawkins was only ever talking about the Pope not being able to be arrested because he was the head of a religious organisation when that was never true, the issue was that the Pope is the head of his own country. Then he pointed out that abetting peadophiles is an absolutely horrific crime, it's not a war crime or a crime against humanity, it's just an actual crime and so by charging the Pope with it they're only hindering efforts to bring him to justice by accusing him of a crime he factually didn't commit. He then showed an interview where Dawkins was challenged on this and replied "I made the interview on the condition I wouldn't be asked about technicalities of the case" technicality of the case here being, "what are you charging this guy with".
And then he showed an interview with Hitchens where it was clear Hitchens was aware of the legal aspects of the case but kept saying untrue statements (like it being about the Pope being the head of a religious order) and so on anyway.
So he argued that Dawkins and Hitchens are both brilliantly intelligent people and they both know that they are charging the Pope for a crime he didn't commit and even if he did commit it, the law and rhetoric they were using against him didn't apply in his position as head of state. So they must have been doing it for the anti-pope publicity.
And then he rounded it up by pointing out the Pope is guilty of a terrible crime and needs to be charged with the crime he did commit in a court that has the power to convict him and all this had just been obscuring the issue.
Now I could never have taken the Popes side on this issue but I'd completely been tricked into forgetting the legal definition. Even paedophilia is just a crime, not a crime against humanity, even mass murder isn't, never mind just abetting it. Before his point I hadn't realised it at all and when he showed the interviews Dawkins (who he admittedly doesn't like, whilst he's a fan of Hitchens) was doing the most politiciany double bluff answers ever. When pressed on "but this isn't a crime against humanity?" he replied "how can you say that aiding and covering up the abuse of children isn't inhuman!"
I think most people would have been either attempted to say "The Pope is the head of the church, this stuff isn't true" or the atheists would say "Whoo go Dawkins", but for (I think) an atheist to say. These people aren't actually trying to do what they say they're doing, but the Pope is still wrong, takes a lot of detachment
I'm assuming by "paedophilia" you mean "paedophiliac sexual offenses".
I see what you mean. It does indeed get annoying when people let their emotions control them, rather than the other way around.
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Honest
I've found this guy quite hard to review. Some things are easy to get down. He's not the super-analytical plot-hole spotting superhuman people make him out to be. He's done that sort of review, but he does plenty of others two. His reviews of things like Deathly Hallows 2 is completely lacking that despite it being very relevant. Equally he doesn't talk about the inconsistency of How To Train Your Dragon and his Rango review completely lacks that analysis. He openly states that he just let most of the Heavy Rain plot holes slide, even some quite serious ones, and the few he mentions he actually lessens in value of it. He lets Scott Pilgrim slide as it is and so on...
But he is special and there's something very worth listening to there. Is he more analytic than most even if he doesn't always take it to extremes? Not particularly he analyses (for the normal 1 pt reviews) less than say Movie Bob or The Nostalgia Chick, even Yahtzee has the same sort of level of analysis.
I think what he is is more genuine, at least in his short reviews. It doesn't feel like he's trying to entertain, or instruct, he hasn't strung everything up into some huge industry spanning overarching theme like Zero Punctuation does. He has an opinion of a film and he conveys it. Sometimes it's one thing that stands out and makes him like a movie (Rango) some times there were a whole multitude of things. It feels like he doesn't script it, and if he does script he's not scripting to please us, just to say what he wants to say.
The thing that really impressed me most about him, wasn't a review but merely that he managed to take a side on the Dawkins+Hitchens vs Pope debate that wasn't atheist or christian, but correct. That is an impressive ability and I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen what he had seen beforehand
Visually it can be lacking, but that's a problem with a lot of current movie reviews and he can repeat a point several times and um and ah a bit but if you want to hear what a genuine intelligent person really thinks of a film he's really worth listening to.