Back in September, we dragged film criticism kicking and screaming into the future with Artificial Intelligence Reviewer, the world’s first AI movie critic. We discovered our critic while interacting with the AI at the Talk To Transformer website. The powerful AI at the heart of that site described “Artificial Intelligence Reviewer,” a film critic for the 21st Century: “It’s the robot you can pay $15 for to watch your movie while you finish making your dinner at home,” the AI explained.
Film Threat readers enjoyed AI Reviewer’s slightly unhinged criticism. But we wanted more. Much more.
Using a machine learning technique called “fine-tuning,” we retrained AI Reviewer with a MASSIVE dataset of movie criticism. Over the last few months, we fed our hungry bot 480,000 reviews from Rotten Tomatoes, giving AI Reviewer a whole new vocabulary for critiquing movies.
We immediately tested our supercharged AI on a review of Star Wars. In a few seconds, AI Reviewer had generated a few zinging take-downs like this:
“The film’s heart is in the right place, but its arteries are seriously clogged up with syrupy clichés.”
But then, AI Reviewer followed up with gushing reviews of Star Wars, like this:
“A big, bright, adrenaline-fueled summer entertainment that offers a lot of action and excitement, but never wastes a minute of our time.”
We kept hitting “run,” over and over again, until we were buried under hundreds of contradictory computer generated reviews of Star Wars. AI Reviewer never gets tired. Never stops reviewing.
AI Reviewer Versus Film Threat Readers
Film Threat has decided to keep this powerful movie reviewing bot under lock and key, protecting the world from its infinite ability to write movie criticism. A film critic supervillain could use this dangerous tool to flood the internet with millions of pages with computer generated movie reviews! However, we will still bring out AI Reviewer for special occasions. Today, as a special treat for our favorite Film Threat readers, asked Artificial Intelligence Reviewer to critique Film Threat readers’ favorite movies of 2019.
This was an amazing list of movies that ranged from super-budget Netflix films to indie features that most lists overlook.
We took many different approaches to generating movie reviews with our super-powered AI. By feeding our bot light descriptions like “The historical drama A Portrait of a Lady on Fire”or “Pain & Glory, a movie by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar,” we could generate unlimited movie reviews focused on a single film.
The italicized movie reviews that follow below are unedited text generated by Film Threat’s AI movie critic. After reading hundreds of computer generated reviews, we quickly realized that Film Threat readers will always win. Artificial Intelligence reviewer is no match for the best film community in the world!
READY OR NOT
Film writer Neal Damiano added this movie to our list. Bobby Kenneth LePire wrote the Film Threat review of Ready or Not.
Artificial Intelligence Reviewer fixated on the dark concept at the heart of the movie:
“The dark comedy Ready or Not is about as funny as a dead mouse. It’s too dark to be a comedy, too dark to be a thriller, and too dark to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of alcohol abuse. Ready or Not proves the genre has a lot of tricks up its sleeve. This is a rare film that will make you laugh out loud. It’s also a film that will make you feel uncomfortable in your seat.”
PAIN AND GLORY
Lorry Kikta added this movie to our year-end list. Hannah B. wrote the Film Threat review of Pain and Glory.
AI Reviewer got a little confused by this genre-bending work:
“Pain & Glory, a movie by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar that is filled with beautiful moments and some of the most intense, beautiful scenes I’ve seen in a long time. The last act is nearly non-stop action and big explosions. It’s epic, awesome, and bloody awesome. Feels like a cross between the Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded and Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom.”
THE FACELESS MAN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id-ED2bJYVw
Film Threat’s own Bobby Kenneth LePire added this movie, writing: “The Ozploitation title is unlike anything else I have ever seen.” Bobby also wrote the Film Threat review of The Faceless Man.
Our AI film critic had lots to say about this movie, but somehow, didn’t have anything to say about this film. At the same time!
“Is it a good movie? Not really. It’s a very good one. The Faceless Man, an Ozploitation movie, a thriller, a cop story, a murder mystery, a prison break, a romance, a character study, a family drama, a suspenseful mystery, a melodrama, a character study, a melodrama, a thriller. A wacky, wannabe-fish-out-of-water comedy, and no matter how many times you’ve seen this movie, you’re likely to come away from it with questions.”
