Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

Oh man, I don't know which one comes out worse in this one ...

Without a doubt, the words of a lunatic.

Only a mentally deranged person would use the phrase “quotidian sads” pic.twitter.com/YoUYq6yxjY

— John Magary (@JohnMagary) January 27, 2023

A.O. Scott signs off as NYT film critic:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/17/movies/film-critic-ao-scott.html

Hmm I see..

AO Scott on leaving his post at NYT as film critic pic.twitter.com/u8kk6ZZKL5

— @gdess (@GDess) March 17, 2023

Rereading passages of The Press Gang and realizing that Cheshire and White, in particular, were probably my biggest formative-years guiding lights, alongside Rosenbaum

I had to look up Cheshire, don't know him at all. (Also googled "film critic named White"--duh.) Cheshire's Wikipedia entry says GF II was on his 2012 S&S ballot. Condolences.

Both his and (especially) White’s S&S lists are almost reactionarily conservative, compared to their critical stances in the 90s, but at least Close-Up is on Cheshire’s list too

Tarantino:

Today, I don't know anyone. Is it my fault? Theirs? What remains are website names: CinemaBlend, Deadline. I am told: “There are still good critics.” And I always answer: who? I say this without sarcasm. I'm told, "Manohla Dargis [of the New York Times], she's excellent." But when I ask what are the three movies she loved and the three she hated in the last few years, no one can answer me. Because they don't care! OK, if The New York Times is at my disposal then I’ll open it, read it, but that's it. I used to know a critics style of writing, their tastes, intimately! The sad reality is that today, the voice of Manohla Dargis – and it's nothing against her – doesn't matter enough for me to read her opinion on “Notes on a Scandal” or the fourth Transformers.

I get his point, in that no single critic now has the cultural presence and reputation as someone like Pauline Kael or Roger Ebert did at one time. And part of this probably has to do with the rise of aggregation platforms like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic and the diminishing valuation of criticism and arts journalism generally. But also? There are absolutely critics whose tastes I know through Film Twitter and Letterboxd and Blank Check, and I'd guess that QT just isn't tapped into those kinds of spaces.

I've wondered whether I should pack it in and move my pots and pans to Letterboxd just for exposure.

Would follow, obv

Tarantino’s point is very good.

Looked into ordering a copy of The Press Gang (above), but--surprise--not cheap.

Needless to say--and cognizant of my own laziness on the matter--Tarantino and I are in sync there.

Tarantino is intentionally not remembering Arm0nd

Maybe he's a fan of early Armond but not the current version? I don't know. (And I should exempt David Edelstein myself, who seems to have disappeared since his Last Tango remark.)

Pretty sure Tarantino's hated Arm0nd since Pulp Fiction: https://letterboxd.com/notarmondwhite/film/pulp-fiction/1/

Didn't know there was a history there--did he review Reservoir Dogs?

Tarantino can't name David Ehrlich, Bilge Ebiri, Michael Koresky, Glenn Kenny, or Amy Nicholson?

I could add five or six more names. It's not hard if you keep up. If I watch a film, I look up what these people wrote about it.

M'DA has a pretty sharply defined personal taste and style

M'ike Dangelo?

Richard Brody is a critic with distinctive taste who's working at a legacy publication ... though only his capsule reviews ever appear in print. My sense of his obsessions comes mostly from reading his reviews on the New Yorker's website.

I've never read White before, having only heard bad things about him, but that review of Pulp Fiction is OTM.

In the late '90s I read Rafferty, Sragow, and Rosenbaum a lot.

weirdly arm0nd considered once upon a time in hollywood to be tarantino's best iirc

probably for all the wrong reasons

clemenza otm

"When Brad Pitt strips off his shirt as if it were just another piece of nylon, he isn't just Cliff Booth -- he's the American Star In Excelsis, a rebuke to a liberal/woke vision of uninhibited masculinity."

Tarantino can't name David Ehrlich, Bilge Ebiri, Michael Koresky, Glenn Kenny, or Amy Nicholson?

Bonus typo to drive home the point

Wouldn’t it be amazing if other countries had film critics

Another good point

I assume you are referring to Canada, nicht wahr?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if other countries had film critics

― Ward Fowler,

but they do have socialism

A related convo two years ago on the New Yorker magazine thread

It's kind of interesting, there are all sorts of well-known and respected young-ish (let's say, liberally, under 50) music writers, but to my knowledge no equivalent for film writing. For some reason I thought Manohla Dargis was young, but she's almost 60 (same as Lane). AO Scott is in his mid-50s. Brody, fwiw, is 72.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, January 4, 2021 11:08 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Get @filmcrithulk the New Yorker gig

― is right unfortunately (silby), Monday, January 4, 2021 11:29 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I love Brody. He’s a reasonably good guide for me, tho has a higher tolerance for twee aesthetics than I do

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Monday, January 4, 2021 11:39 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Same. Our sensibilities align even when we disagree.

― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 4, 2021 11:47 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

A few youngish film writers working for top publications:

K. Austin Collins (Rolling Stone), Richard Lawson (Vanity Fair), Alissa Wilkinson (Vox), Angelica Jade Bastién (Vulture), Alison Willmore (BuzzFeed), Justin Chang (L.A. Times)

― jaymc, Monday, January 4, 2021 11:48 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also, Hunter Harris isn't a film critic, but she's a film writer with 100K Twitter followers and a Substack.

― jaymc, Monday, January 4, 2021 11:50 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

david sims at the atlantic

― na (NA), Monday, January 4, 2021 12:11 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think a lot of this just comes down to knowing where to look. Siskel & Ebert isn't on TV anymore, but film discourse still thrives in lots of places.

I kind of like to read something a day or two after I’ve seen something but I don’t feel compelled to read all the opinions and see what the consensus is. Even if I like and respect the critics mentioned whose names I do recognize, I don’t feel any real need to see how they weigh in. Not saying other people shouldn’t. Or am I?

I know you are but what am I?

Heh

Not to turn this into the Letterboxd thread, but it's nice to log something there and then immediately see what other people think -- including the critics I follow. Sometimes it's just a tossed-off reaction, but sometimes they link to reviews. David Ehrlich, for instances, always posts the first couple of grafs of his IndieWire review, with a link to read the rest of it.

Brody with back-to-back blockbusters:

The point is that Barbie is the *best* movie to cross the billion-dollar line.

— Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow) August 13, 2023

Quick word, on Alfred Hitchcock's birthday: Marnie > Vertigo, because they're nearly the same—a woman's desperate and deceptive self-transformation, male predation, mental illness—but in Marnie, the woman is the center of attention and source and energy; who's got the vertigo?...

— Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow) August 13, 2023

Didn't Taxi Driver make a billion dollars?

For the firearm industry

Wikipedia says 28.3 mil, making it the 17th highest grossing film in the US that year.

Bunker 15’s founder, Daniel Harlow, says, “Wow, you are really reaching there,” and disagrees with the suggestion that his company buys reviews to skew Rotten Tomatoes: “We have thousands of writers in our distribution list. A small handful have set up a specific system where filmmakers can sponsor or pay to have them review a film.”

Naturally, studios have learned to exploit this dynamic. Publicist No. 1 recalls working on a 2022 title that premiered to acclaim at a festival a few months before its release: “I wanted to screen it more widely, but the movie had a 100 and the studio didn’t want to damage that because they wanted to use the ‘100 percent’ graphic in their marketing. I said, ‘Why don’t we get a couple more reviews?,’ and they were like, ‘We just want the 100.’ ” The film won an Oscar.

Have to assume this title was Women Talking

Beautiful. And I thought critics didn't matter anymore

TIL that Godfrey Cheshire, among the film critics I trust, is also a member of the LGBTQ+ family. Just announced his marriage to his husband on Facebook yesterday.

A nice surprise. I thought this series was about to stall out not even halfway through:

We're delighted to finally answer the question we're asked most often: scroll below to discover the five titles that will complete the Decadent Editions! pic.twitter.com/bAXDY5EILa

— Fireflies Press (@firefliespress) November 22, 2023

This is a really good piece imo, and its author was getting swarmed on earlier this week: https://www.vulture.com/article/renaissance-a-film-by-beyonce-review.html

With “Formation” from 2016’s Lemonade, Beyoncé alchemized the aesthetics of Black radicalism. In the video, she is splayed out on a cop car in New Orleans that descends into murky waters. In her Super Bowl performance from that year, she and her dancers were decked in an all-black ensemble with raised fists meant to evoke the style of the Black Panthers without the group’s moral clarity and political conviction. When Beyoncé uses their aesthetic along with the words of Malcolm X, it behooves audiences and critics alike to hold her to a greater standard. Her apoliticism should not slide by. It should be noted that Renaissance is playing in Israel, which has led to “Break My Soul” becoming an anthem of sorts for Israelis waving their flag in screenings. Beyoncé has yet to make a statement about Palestine. But this silence is itself a statement. Perhaps she isn’t apolitical so much as an emblem of Black capitalism and wealth that seeks to maintain its stature. Renaissance: A Film demonstrates that Black joy isn’t inherently radical. In fact, without a sense of materiality, Black joy becomes directionless and easy to co-opt by the varied forces of power that are fueled by anti-Blackness. Beyoncé is an icon who has carefully maintained a sense of accessibility to anyone, anywhere, for any reason. Black musical traditions may have the potential for radicalism, but Beyoncé’s neutrality demonstrates they aren’t inherently that way. More than anything, Renaissance is a testament that Beyoncé is a brand that stands for absolutely nothing beyond its own greatness.

AGreed.

Yeah, AJB is definitely among the most interesting critics working today.