Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

did u not like it? i'm interested in seeing it

See it. I'm a dissenting minority of one.

Vulture seems to waft back and forth with their paywall / article limit, but private browsing is all it takes to get around it.

Hey thanks--works!

Kenneth Turan stepping down as LA Times film critic after 30 yrs

no films to critique

it's hard out here for a critic

James Cameron won.

Not sure if this was posted elsewhere but Film Comment being mothballed after next issue.


https://www.filmlinc.org/daily/covid-19-update-from-film-at-lincoln-center/

Last issue: First Cow

I actually came on here to see if Peter Bradshaw was any good (there's a discounted collection on the book-clearance site I buy from)--the very first post tells me no.

I've been listening to the Unspooled podcast, and it's odd, I really enjoy it and their perspectives but I don't trust *either* of them. Not their opinions, not their tastes, not much of anything. But I do like their general positivity and respect for one another even when they clearly disagree, and perhaps because of that I've learned a few things and learned to reassess a few things despite how often my own preferences and opinions diverge.

very first post otm

I like Peter Bradshaw. I would take his reviews over most other newspaper critics. He often likes what I would like, and the other way round, and that is enough for me.

Has David Edelstein left New York? I was hoping to find a Mank review from him, but he hasn't reviewed anything since September (many reviews since by other writiers). His Wikipedia page doesn't mention him leaving.

(Writiers are like writers, but much more refined.)

This is a useful site that I periodically think has gone down because I can't remember how to locate it:

https://www.mistdriven.com/

The "Critics' Top Ten" section has an index of year-end lists from a whole bunch of critics: Sarris, Hoberman, Rosenbaum, Amy Taubin, even Godard (and Armond White!). Godard's seventh favourite film of 1964 was Love with a Proper Stranger; Hoberman's fifth favourite for 1986 (I still remember this) was Game 6 of the World Series.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/race/critics-choice-association-expels-jeffrey-wells-following-posts-about-atlanta-shootings-exclusive

“Trust” as in “trust to always be a total asshole,” that is.

Sorry wrong thread. For all Arm0nd’s outrages, he is still at the end of the day a critic.

good riddance

This 2004 interview with Owen Gleiberman, freshly reposted to rockcritics.com, is a great read: https://rockcritics.com/2021/03/29/from-the-archives-interview-with-owen-gleiberman-2004/

Wells attributed those views to unnamed "friendos" with whom he says he conversed.

grounds for expulsion on its own imo

Danny Slaski

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWxrHz-JORE

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."