It's a glorious time to love movies. TVs have gotten bigger, thousands of great films have hit DVD, and online rental services like Netflix have given viewers unprecedented access to classics that the local video store often doesn't bother stocking. But something funny happens when a film gains classic status: It becomes hard to criticize it without seeming sacrilegious. Still, sometimes a little sacrilege can be healthy. Below, The A.V. Club's film writers give you permission to hate the following movies—then explain why their fellow film writers might be wrong.
NATHAN RABIN
Star Wars (1977)
Reputation: Even before it evolved into a secular religion for nerds, Star Wars was revered as a swashbuckling space epic that brilliantly united the cliffhanging heroics of old-time serials with revolutionary special effects, just as director George Lucas, teaming with Steven Spielberg, would later do with the Indiana Jones movies.
Why it's okay to hate it: You know what else the Indiana Jones movies had? Clever dialogue and snappy pacing, two elements Star Wars sorely lacks. Remove Harrison Ford's swaggering charisma from Star Wars, and what's left? The Phantom fucking Menace. And has there ever a soggier slice of white bread than Mark Hamill? The prequels didn't violate the timeless genius of Star Wars; their awkward dialogue and stiff performances simply carried on the wooden tradition of Lucas' 1977 original.
Dissent from Tasha: Flawed as it is, and overhyped as it's become, Star Wars still manages to establish a big, sloppy, fascinating universe, populate it with quirky, memorable characters, and still tell a complete and reasonably tight stand-alone story. None of the subsequent entries have lived up to that standard.
Network (1976)
Reputation: Network is widely considered a savage, visionary satire that uncannily predicts the sordid state of television's future and the rise of reality programming.
Why it's okay to hate it: Network is too choked with bitterness to be funny, and Paddy Chayefsky's revered dialogue sounds so mannered that the characters might as well be speaking in iambic pentameter. Furthermore, Chayefsky repeatedly violates the dictum "show, don't tell." He doles out his heavy-handed messages in shrill monologues. And does predicting that network television and its audience will grow increasingly degraded and desperate qualify as Nostradamus-like prescience, or mere common sense?
Dissent from Keith: Network is still better than all the cutting satires before it that suggested television might not just be dumb, but also dangerous. Wait? There weren't any? Hmmm…
SCOTT TOBIAS
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Reputation: Working at the height of his creative powers, Stanley Kubrick converted Anthony Burgess' novel into one of the most provocative films ever made, reframing the public debate over social aversion therapy and the cost of free will.
Why it's okay to hate it: In arguing against government-sanctioned dehumanization, Kubrick stacks the deck mercilessly by making Alex (Malcolm McDowell), the leader of a roving gang of thugs, far more likeable than the repulsive victims he terrorizes. Kubrick's control over his effects has never been more evident, but here it backfires, revealing him to be a cruel, manipulative puppeteer who engineers an argument by sucking the humanity out of his movie. His decision to cut the 21st chapter of Burgess' novel, in which Alex comes of age and matures on his own, resulted in a much darker ending, but one that opposes Burgess' faith that Alex will overcome the mistakes of his youth. As Burgess himself wrote of the film: "A vindication of free will had become an exaltation of the urge to sin."
Dissent from Tasha: Clockwork Orange is staggeringly effective at portraying violence without glorifying it, and virtually every shot is striking and memorable. And how could anyone watch the rape scene and call Alex "likeable"?
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Reputation: The ascendancy of this austere adaptation of Stephen King's novella from box-office disappointment to one of the top two or three films according to users at the Internet Movie Database may be the greatest example of a film finding life after death.
Why it's okay to hate it: Forget about one of the best two or three movies ever made: This film isn't even one of the top three King adaptations: It falls a few stops short of the high standard set by Carrie, The Shining, and The Dead Zone. King's story about troubled men finding friendship and, well, redemption behind bars comes off as a dignified throwback to classic Hollywood, but its bland austerity often turns the drama to stone. In the hands of director Frank Darabont, the brutality of prison life looks faintly like nostalgia.
Dissent from Noel: Better than almost any other prison movie, Shawshank gets the way jail-time is an allegory for all our lifetimes, as we learn to cope with what we've got to do to get by, while occasionally pining for escape. That was all there in King's masterfully plotted novella—nostalgia included—and preserved by Darabont with such care that the movie practically breathes on its own.
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