12 Common Movie Criticisms That Make No Sense

11. "It's Style Over Substance"

The phrase "style over substance" may sound swish, but it's so often used in place of actual, considered criticism when somebody simply doesn't like a movie that just so happens to be pretty.

The easy rebuke is that style can itself be substance, and even if a filmmaker opts to tell a simple story, the way that it's told can be extraordinarily complex - and yes, substantial - on a technical level.

As much as humans respond to words, pictures are indeed worth a thousand of them, and so to downplay the visceral effect pure aesthetics can have on moviegoers is just straight-up ignorant.

That's not to completely deny that some films are nothing more than shallow exercises in gloss, but many films rubbished as style over substance - such as Drive and Sin City - effectively make their style a "character" in its own right.