There should be distinctions made between film criticism and film reviews--not because there can't be insightful criticism in a film review, but because a reader needs to appreciate the job the writer was hired for: Is this a piece where I can expect explorations of a film's function, regardless of whether it's "good" or "bad," or is this, before anything else, a consumer guide with a ranking? The vast majority of misnomered online film "criticism" is aimed primarily to guide the movie consumer toward worthwhile products, and this necessarily entails clearcut ratings and an unambiguous endorsement or rejection of the film by the reviewer. I have a big problem with rankings, because they always privilege writers' biases--or, at the very least, force writers to apply criteria and methods that lead to a simplistic thumb-up or -down--whether those biases are based on the ignorance of alternative viewpoints or simply a self-aggrandizing attempt to canonize what they happen to enjoy in any film. Built into rankings is the assumption that one formal quality or type of film is "better" than others. Given that movie reviews have this primary mission of qualifying--given that it is intensely limiting because of this--then it absolutely does behoove us to find writers from a myriad of backgrounds. Reviewers are representing themselves more than the films they review.tenia wrote: ↑Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:33 pmIn any case though, this is just a case of "Who needs film critics" (as the Guardian writes it). In France, it's almost a running joke as old as cinema itself. It turns out it mostly just is some kind of cognitive biases' personification : when people like or dislike movies, they prefer to be said they're the norm, not the outliers. Who's better for movies than film critics, just like you'd go to a doctor if you think you're ill or how you'd trust an airplane pilot to fly a plane ?
I like Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's reviews, for example, because they occasionally explore his own expectations almost in spite of the letter grade he obligatorily attaches by the end. Most film reviews don't bother with this kind of nuance, and I say this, again, not without sympathy for those writers; they have restrictions on word count, tone, mode, and ambiguity imposed by editors--that's the gig. But given this, we can't expect film reviews to be anything much more than a stand taken, which by my lights, is the shallowest approach to cinema. And certainly not one that can contain an expansive view, except by way of including caveats like, "This is too violent for children," or, "This is a long overdue subject, even if the film is not good." Worthwhile critics need to go against their own grain, alternately assert and doubt.
I realize the dictionary definition of "criticism" includes evaluation, but I take the more academic approach toward the term, which necessarily entails analysis that is embarked upon in the spirit of discovery, with the intent of deepening our understanding of cinema beyond just a one-movie case history--and however complex or tidy, not merely compiled evidence toward a work's value intuited in the immediate aftermath of a viewing. Most reviews, I would argue, don't even go as far as to compile evidence! Instead, they replace evidence with mystifications and vague feelings that, again, delineate the reviewer's personality more than the film's value. You read Anthony Lane for his bons mots--his extremely limited breadth of tone--more than his judgment, and I think Lane is better than most! He has more wit, energy, and personality when he is mocking a film than when he extols one, which is not uncommon. Movie reviews accommodate the well-crafted putdown more than rich analysis. "Hot takes" are often ridiculed on this forum, but I would argue that 99% of film reviews are precisely that: excluding judgment imposed in the midst of a new release's attraction of readers' eyes, carving out a personal aesthetic sense that can be applied identically with every release, exploiting the attention drawn by a new release in order to inscribe deeper one's own brand of discernment.