12 Critical Responses To 2017 Films That Make No Sense

The Film:

Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow and frequent collaborating screenwriter Mark Boal tackle the horrifying true story of the Algiers Motel incident during the 1967 Detroit riots.

The Response:

The film didn't do well at the box office, but was praised by critics and by audiences to a slightly lesser extent.

Why They Got It Wrong:

Great performances, a strong recreation of the time period and a terrifying recreation of the Motel incident aside, this is too emotionless and superficial to be the great film it could easily have been.

Detroit is like reading a Wikipedia article about an event. It tells you what happened, but it doesn't go into why it happened or the human side of the story. It's just a flat, mechanical summary of events.

Meanwhile, Bigelow and Boal are up to their old tricks - filming in a generic documentary style and failing to include actual emotion respectively. Maybe they're the new Tim Burton and Johnny Depp; a pair of frequent collaborators that need to stop doing movies.

The questions about why white people are making a film about black history are just the icing on the cake here. This has already received some backlash and it's easy to see why. It's certainly not a terrible film, but it definitely doesn't need any Oscar nominations.