Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

I HEARTILY recommend the movie "Il Mio Viaggio en Italia" directed by Scorcese. It is not of the "consumer guide" school of criticism, but rather "such and such makes me feel magical, and I want you to feel this way too". Magic!

Ebert's tastes:
* Usually thinks favorably of documentaries. He named Hoop Dreams the best film of the 90s, and he called Gates of Heaven (a *wonderful* doc about a pet cemetery) one of his all-time favorite movies.
* Usually overlooks flaws in favor of experimentation. He was very impressed with Natural Born Killers because of the risks it took, and didn't penalize it for being, uhm, self-indulgent.
* Likes sexy movies. The guy WROTE Beyond the Valley of the Dolls fer cryin' out loud.
* Doesn't buy into hype. He (or his paper) pays for all his own expenses at press junkets, instead of enjoying their freebies, I heard. Sometimes I think he actually penalizes hype. For example, he liked Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels but didn't like Snatch (which I thought was nearly as good).
* Usually likes philosophical movies.
* Likes Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell, and Angelina Jolie. This explains the positive reviews for Tomb Raider, Original Sin, Riding in Cars with Boys, Scream 2, etc.
* Reviews films within their genre. If I'm not mistaken, he caught a lot of flak for recommending some Benji movie and giving a thumbs-down to Full Metal Jacket the same week. I think his stance was that Benji, as a kids' movie, was good. Full Metal Jacket, being uneven and unsatisfying, was a Vietnam movie that didn't deliver.

The movie reviewers for the Onion's AV Club are usually pretty tough customers, so when they strongly recommend something, I usually take note.

Also recommended: Vern. See for yourself.

Removing the self-indulgence from "NBK" would remove 70% of the satire.

this is what s. zacharek said abt attack of the clones. it is just one of MANY reasons why she is grebt

and yes lucid and clear is redundant.

I agree completely. Well, make that 75%. The film *had* to be completely unrestrained. That said, watching Oliver Stone masturbate is not agreeable to everyone. Some care, some don't.

I do think that in general most film reviewers are cockfarmers. They seem to fall into two camps - either they are Empire-style chasers of whatever's popular, or else they are up their own arses pretentious film afficionados.

I don't think I've ever read a written movie review except to glance across it when browsing a (usually outdated) newspaper.

It wouldn't matter anyway because I like (almost) everything I see (I don't watch suspense movies, so I don't get a chance to not like them).

I do like analyses of movies though, no matter how the author has read the movie. Analyses rock!

I think I will go to bed now though. Thanks for reminding me of the ungodly o'clock that it is.

This guy consistenly blows me away with very short capsule reviews. And since there is a very high chance I fucked that link up here it is again: http://leonardo.spidernet.net/Artus/2386/

sound pretty good to me;

anyway, that critic can't talk: she has actual commercials splattered ludicrously through her text.

the best British newspaper film writer is Romney in the IoS, I think...

...but only because David Thomson now has an American passport.

David Thomson is the king of kings but he does suffer a bit from Meltzer's disease - ie modern cinema is rub. Bradshaw continues the great Guardian tradition of utterly shite film critics (Malcolm, Richard Williams etc.) Does Nigel Andrews still write for the FT? He wrote a fantastic slag job of 'Phantom Menace' (which I know = shooting fish in a barrel, but in this case his criticisms were utterly OTM and made w/ gd humour).

Antonia Quirke in the IOS is prob. the worst 'serious' newspaper critic that I know abt.

The shark fin canapes were nice afterwards and she had a nice pink top on.

Yeah, because that's her doing, not Salon's.

Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times is pretty solid, and deserves respect for having raised James Cameron's ire for panning Titanic when it first came out. Also, Paul Tatara used to do a good job reviewing movies for cnn.com, but it appears that he's not writing for them anymore.

Not really: he is always praising new films. His sense of the moral is one thing that sets him apart from many; so, as my editor once said re. Fast-Talking Dames, is his ability with ambivalence.

>>> Bradshaw continues the great Guardian tradition of utterly shite film critics (Malcolm, Richard Williams etc.)

I don't think I see what's so awful about Bradshaw. Certainly Malcolm became a slug, but I don't think Williams awful either.

>>> Antonia Quirke in the IOS is prob. the worst 'serious' newspaper critic that I know abt.

She's still in the IoS?? I thought she'd moved on. I heard her on Stuart Maconie's R2 show (!!), where she was irritating re. S&S Top Movies etc. Is she meant to be foxy? (I am going by comments above.)

Actually, AQ's worst flaw surely = too much casual swearing in print. Unforgivable.

Surprisingly, among the NYT crew, I've really been digging A.O. Scott's writing lately. I wish he'd write about music in the same earnest, bookish way. Seriously! He's great. Elvis hasn't been doing much for me these days. End of year best-of lists comparison!

A.O. Scott

1. Talk to Her
2. The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat)
3. Adaptation
4. Far From Heaven
5. The Pianist
6. Spirited Away
7. Storytelling
8. Gangs of New York
9. Lovely and Amazing
10. Punch Drunk Love

Elvis Mitchell

1. Bloody Sunday
2. Catch Me If You Can
3. Morvern Callar
4. Paid in Full
5. Personal Velocity
6. Spirited Away
7. Talk to Her
8. 24 Hour Party People
9. What Time is it There?
10. Y Tu Mama Mambien

I haven't read him in a while. But I was always of the opinion that he was a good writer and a terrible critic -- very impetuous and hotheaded, and his theories on race were either honest and incisive or paranoid and overreaching, depending on how willing I was to go along with him. The other regular New York Press film critic, Matt Zoller Seitz, is often very good (haven't read him in a while either -- I've kinda given up on the Press because the conservatism over there is getting really out of control).

For comedic value, I like these guys. Ever wonder what the 'moral rating' of the film you were watching was?

The others are far, far too pretentious... (I'm looking at you Michael Atkinson of the Village Voice, IM LOOKING AT YOU)

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.

Since the thread was bumped, I’ll use this as an opportunity to look for recommendations: who are your favorite critics interested in and writing about experimental film? I really liked a lot of Artforum’s film criticism in the 2000s because, while their film focus was experimental film, they didn’t distance experimental film from art film and usually tried to contextualize experimental film in an art film context. The criticism was essentially the film equivalent of The Wire. I still like the writing in Artforum but the writing has returned, especially for film, to its academic roots. I really miss the connections to popular filmmaking.

Not a film critic, but I think Greil Marcus has been more or less saying the same thing about Beyoncé for a while. From a column last June: "Remember all that nonsense about Beyoncé as 'Sasha Fierce' and hoisting up behind her onstage as if you could reduce philosophy to branding and lived history to an ad?"

I don't trust Marcus, though; he has a tendency to be very prescriptive about Black artists' politics, whether overt or just as he perceives them. He famously went after Anita Baker in a very ugly manner in the 80s, and before that wrote a pretty uncouth review of Bob Marley's Exodus, which, to be fair, he apologized for on his Substack this week:

Now, I have to say that reading this is somewhat embarrassing, as re-reading so many old record reviews, mine and others', can be embarrassing. It's that the form itself is boring. Even if what's being said is somehow invigoratingly right, or rightly dissenting, it can die in its box. Obviously, I didn't know that "One Love" would go on to become a sort of anthem, or to stand in for everything the group ever did—but I should have caught on to that ambition in the song, what today we would call its attempt at self-branding, and then gone on to try to explore what was cheap and pandering in the song, in its embracing music even more than its I'll-tell-you-what-you-want-to-hear words. But I do have to mention that the review brought forth a phone call from Nik Cohn, the first music writer I admired unreservedly, who taught me so much, the only time we ever talked, with he telling me how uncomfortable the piece made him, with a white American writer telling a black Jamaican musician what to say and how. He didn't condemn me. He just wanted to say, think before you do that again.

But, you know, as they say in journalism, three is a trend. And his being right about Beyoncé ("Beyoncé is a brand that stands for absolutely nothing beyond its own greatness" has been true all the way back to Destiny's Child) is more coincidence than anything else.

Made the mistake of reading tweets reacting to the AJB Renaissance review. Stan culture is the worst. Someone posted a screenshot of their request for Rotten Tomatoes to take down the review, good Lord.

What really boils my blood is when stans complain that a review isn't valid because the critic is bringing their personal opinion into it. Like ... yes???

The individuality buck stops there, evidently

Oh Paul pic.twitter.com/iBlRvd2Qsc

— Conor (@sadfilmcritic) January 18, 2024

I need a proofreader here; he needs a proofreader there.

pic.twitter.com/lkLKuhKbRs

— Cinema Scope (@CinemaScopeMag) January 24, 2024

As Peter Labuza pointed out on Twitter, there are now exactly zero North American magazines devoted to film as an art

(I suppose one could count Film Quarterly yet, but still)

(Ope, Cineaste is still around too)

I had two pieces in there early on. They seemed to become all about festivals and films no one had yet seen at some point, and I lost interest in them and they lost interest in me at exactly the same moment.

That’s unfortunate. In general the EIC seems a little insufferable but he did create a magazine as good as if. Or better than Film Comment imo