Do movie critics matter anymore? Do you read movie critics? The topic has been on my mind as I've been going through some film criticism books I own. Though I lightly touch upon the state of film criticism in my individual reviews, often by quoting reviews from other critics and reacting to them, I wanted to explore this issue with a bit more detail.
I started paying serious attention to critics from as early as 10 years old up until around 30. Growing up in Chicago, we of course had Siskel & Ebert. While everyone else in the country thought of them as national figures, they were just a couple of hometown guys to me. I could - and did - go and pick up a Chicago Sun-Times (Ebert) or Chicago Tribune (Siskel) newspaper and read their reviews before their show would air on TV. There is also a weekly alternative paper called the Chicago Reader that I used to pick up occasionally during my teen years and into college. At that time Jonathan Rosenbaum was the head critic at the paper. These were the critics that shaped my early movie going experiences and the critics whose opinions I am most familiar with. I understand to some the east coast critics over at the New York Times (Vincent Canby and later Janet Maslin) or Pauline Kael - writing for New Yorker magazine - maybe had a bit more prestige but I was a Chicago guy and was going to stick with my critics. Plus, in those days a New York Times was more expensive than a Sun-Times or Tribune. I was already in college and was only paying 35 cents for a Sun-Times and 50 cents for a Tribune. Which I actually considered expensive at the time! And the Reader, well, that was free!
That all changed however by the time I reached 30. By that time Gene Siskel had died in 1999. Rosenbaum retired in 2008 from the
Reader. Michael Wilmington - another critic I deeply respected - was replaced at the
Tribune in 2007, after replacing Siskel as the paper's head critic in 1993 (Dave Kehr was Siskel's immediate replacement in 1986, while Siskel's new byline was "movie columnist"). And in 2013, three days before my 30th birthday, Roger Ebert died. As I wrote in a tribute
article published by the
Milwaukee Shepherd Express, with the death of Ebert, so too was the death of film criticism. I gradually stopped reading movie critics altogether and primarily focused on my own writing instead.
I don't mean to project my feelings onto others but I share these stories because I feel my relationship with movie critics mirrors the experience of others. When I wrote film criticism died with Roger Ebert it wasn't because Ebert was necessarily the greatest movie critic ever - my opinions started to differ from his in later years - but it had to do with trust. Readers had come to know Ebert, who started as the Sun-Times critic in 1967, and gained national prominence in the 1980s with the various review programs he did with Gene Siskel. Once Ebert was gone, who was left that had built that kind of relationship with an audience?
People in the newspaper industry, and some critics themselves, try to say the internet is what has tarnished the profession of movie critics. Because any John or Jane Doe movie fan can write a review on a website or blog, the "informed" opinion of a professional movie critic is no longer valued. This kind of groupthink isn't the real explanation in my opinion. It lets the true perpetrators off the hook - the media and critics themselves. In their assessment of the situation they take the Curly Howard - of the Three Stooges - defense. They were all merely a victim of circumstance. The internet was to blame. It's a scapegoat defense that firstly takes "executive" (bottom-line) decision-making off the hook, as well as sweeping under the rug the timid writing style and opinions of the critics' themselves. Examining the situation from this perspective may give us a greater insight into the public's perception of film and the people who write about them.
For the purposes of this article lets agree that the high point of film criticism was in the 1970s and 1980s when Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel, Pauline Kael, and Andrew Sarris were all alive and writing about movies. These critics, and many others - Molly Haskell, John Simon and Stanley Kauffmann included - all took cinema as a serious art form. Their writings were as much a defense of movies as an art form as anything else. Whether you agreed with their opinions or not they spent a lot of time watching movies and writing about them because they thought it was important. It was a significant contributor to why PBS (local affiliate WTTW in Chicago) even wanted to create a program with two critics discussing movies. The culture at-large had an appetite for serious conversations about the movies. What has followed exponentially in the last 10 years or so, has been a major decline in movie criticism - and critical thinking skills in general - largely due to political and social pressure. Because of social media - which is neither really "social" nor "media" - an alarming number of people engage in self censorship. In the world of film criticism this has lead to groupthink and the fear of being perceived as on the "wrong" side of an issue. Editors don't want to hire writers who may rock the boat and sincerely challenge popular opinions in a non dogmatic or contrarian way. The editors want to avoid angry letters or attacks on social media, which could potentially lead to a drop in advertising dollars.
The movies have unfortunately been weaponized since the Covid-19 pandemic and the #MeToo movement. There has always been an unfortunate dance between art and politics resulting in government bans on films and filmmakers, but in the U.S. the heightened influence of political activists has seemed to have a real stranglehold on the culture and public discourse. It influences the hiring decisions by editors. What makes someone qualified to write about movies? One criteria should be a vast knowledge of film history but this isn't always the case. Sometimes your local newspaper critic is someone that can simply string along a nice sentence or two. Writing skills trump film knowledge. To be fair, this is not exactly a new concept. Here is something Rosenbaum wrote in his book Placing Movies when discussing his initial hiring at the Chicago Reader, "my knowledge of film actually played some role in my being hired. Strange as it seems, this has rarely functioned as a criterion for the hiring of movie reviewers on American or British papers and nonspecialized magazines". Pauline Kael was let go at the magazine McCall after the publication received hate mail due to all the negative reviews Kael wrote of beloved films - "The Sounds of Music" (1962), "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) and "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) among them.
When editors don't take film knowledge into consideration of their hiring decisions but instead consider "activist approved" writers, it can lead to safe, bland, uninformed but politically correct individuals who are yes, sometimes skilled writers. For me this feels like the greatest criteria I see in today's critics. They are are very sensitive to the current political environment and that informs their opinion. Don't you, as a reader, ever find it odd how all of these professional mainstream critics not only come to the same conclusions about movies but they all share the same politics? Who is challenging the medium? Who is advocating for great cinema? Who is trying to educate the public on what great cinema can be? Who is willing to go against the grain and call out mediocrity even if a movie's political messaging reflects their own belief?
The film industry as a whole appears to pander to political correctness. Studios are reluctant to purchase the rights to films directed by Roman Polanski and Woody Allen for example. Not because of the quality of their work but because of a potential backlash for giving their work space. Read this
article from Reuters where one of Polanski's producers discusses the difficulty in getting distribution in a few countries, America among them. You see both filmmakers were targets of the #MeToo movement. Polanski directed a film called "J'Accuse" (2019), for which he won the Cesar Award for best director. That film has
never been distributed in the United States! Because of someone's politics they may say, good, who cares! Polanski is a bad person. But what about the rest of us? What about those of us that simply want to appreciate the art? And where are the critics? Where is the outcry for this particular form of censorship? A major filmmaker has released a movie and the people living in the United States of America are not capable of seeing the film. Mainstream movie critics don't even bother to review Woody Allen's movies when they are given theatrical releases. The last time critics Richard Roeper, at the
Sun-Times or Michael Phillips at the
Tribune reviewed a Woody Allen movie was 2017's "Wonder Wheel". This is despite since that time Allen has released " A Rainy Day in New York" (2019),
"Rifkin's Festival" (2022) and "Chance de Coup" (2024). And when critics do review Allen's films, they minimize the work. That's almost worse than ignoring the films. When reviewing "Rifkin's Festival" for the Roger Ebert website, critic Glenn Kenny began his review stating, "When I got the email asking me to review this movie, a song started going through my head, and that song was Pet Shop Boys' "What Have I Done To Deserve This"?" the critic goes on to write "I don't want to make too big a deal of this here - or belabor the obvious, for that matter - but to deal with a Woody Allen picture these days is a nettlesome task." Another critic, Elizabeth Weitzman, writing for the website
The Wrap, starts her review of "Rifkin's Festival" with the following - "Seeing a Woody Allen movie in 2022 is, it seems fair to say, a curious experience." Finally, critic Peter Sobczynski ends his review of "A Rainy Day in New York" asserting the film "feels like something that belongs in a museum, preferably in storage."
All of these critics want to make it abundantly clear to the readers, they are on the public's side. But what they are also doing is leaving the impression this filmmaker and his films aren't relevant anymore. It isn't even worth talking about. Are the critics being fair? Do they really not like Woody Allen and his films? Maybe but I've gotten to a point in life that I can no longer assume the sincerity of any public figures' actions. Every decision seems to be a calculated move meant to not upset the masses, whether it is a politician or a critic. The potential backlash for our words and actions outweighs our own honesty and public discourse. And I can't really blame anyone. Who wants to die on a hill defending Woody Allen or Roman Polanski? Or speaking out against cancel culture? We are all just people trying to get by and must make compromises. So while the critics won't actively call for the "cancellation" of Woody Allen because as critics they value art, what they will do instead is ignore or minimize the work in order to match a particular portion of the public's feelings. Woody Allen aside however, what does this say about critics? We go back to that concept of trust.
What do these attitudes tell us about film criticism? Can you see how social and political pressures restrict and restrain voices? Lets assume each of the critics I quoted were sincere and they each simply don't like Woody Allen, regardless of the social climate. That doesn't let them off the hook either and creates an entire new problem. Bias. This leads to even larger questions such as which voices are considered societally acceptable and why are they acceptable? Editors must be keeping this in mind when hiring. What kind of voices are being left out and why? I asked before, don't you find it odd how modern critics all share the same opinion and politics? Don't you think maybe that was done by design? What is inherent within the profession of film criticism, that a majority of voices must share left-wing sympathies? Yes, broadly speaking, artists have been associated with the left, but what does it say when even the taste makers align with the left? How does that shape the culture? How and when is their a distinction between professional objectivity and personal sympathy? It has been said all news is inherently bias. George Orwell is famously quoted as saying, "all art is propaganda" but there is a second part that is generally left out, "but not all propaganda is art". It is important to keep all of this in mind.
Critics are only people and they have a bias.
We can even grant them, it is not all part of a nefarious plot, but we must be
willing to consider how do these biases affect the public discourse. If we are
to value the word of a critic, shouldn't we trust that they are being objective
and evaluating art based on merit? We must make concessions that there will
always be a level of bias in criticism, but my concern is that it overshadows
merit. This is not anything new unfortunately. Some critics, to their credit,
admit it, sort of. Critics John Simon and Dave Kehr for example have done so. Kehr was a former critic at the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Reader. In his book When Movies Mattered he confesses "My fascination with the old way of
doing things may well have blinded me to new developments." Kehr then
cites his lack of appreciation for the work of filmmakers such as Woody Allen,
Bob Fosse, Hal Ashby and Michael Mann as examples. He continued to write,
"I preferred filmmakers who built on the past, who seemed dedicated not to
trampling on the classical model but trying to reconfigure it." The sad
part is, he is acknowledging this many, many years after the fact. Where was
this self-reflection when he was writing in the moment? That's what I am
advocating for. Self-awareness. Know your biases. Admit them. Relate them to
the audience. The fear of doing this, I suppose, is it opens you up to attacks
that will challenge your authority but trust me, there are readers that can
pinpoint this bias, and that can be a turnoff and push readers away from
critics.
Lets take the highly respected film critic Pauline Kael as another example. There are too many instances where her bias shows, as she tries to position herself as an authority but perhaps the greatest examples of where this bias is crystal clear is when she reviews anything Clint Eastwood was in. Lets look at her opening remarks for her review of one of the Dirty Harry movies, "Magnum Force" (1973), she begins "Clint Eastwood isn't offensive; he isn't an actor, so one could hardly call him a bad actor. He'd have to do something before we could consider him bad at it." Does that read like a critic that is going to give the movie and Eastwood a fair chance? Kael immediately sets up the tension, I don't like Clint Eastwood and I am going to rip him apart. You continue, reading, for a couple of reasons. One, you share her thoughts on Eastwood and feel vindicated or two, you find it amusing and want to see how far she will go. What you aren't doing is reading for an objective evaluation.
This matters because imagine how different film culture could be? Imagine how different the way audiences talk about movies could have changed. How expectations could have changed. Certain critics carry a lot of weight and are respected by their colleagues and that trickles down to the public. Because they take these names serious, we are supposed to too. You may not instantly see the influence but it is there just beneath the surface.
Some readers may have their defense mechanism kick in and retort that I am not being fair. Excellent film criticism is being written in such publications as Sight and Sound magazine or Film Comment. I am so happy you brought this up. While I admit the criticism in these kinds of publications may be better than what is in your local paper, but I must ask how many John and Jane Doe's do you think are reading these publications? Further more, I don't find these writers to be any more willing to fight back against the politicization of today's cinema. What they do is discuss great cinema from the past, which unquestionably has its value. But the actual writing in these publications I equate with scientific peer reviews. The writing can be so highfalutin and dry that readers may not finish the articles. They will be turned off by the prose and academic style. This can also result in a lack of interest from readers and contribute to a culture I get the sense no longer has a deep appreciation for film. There are no great mainstream defenders out there helping to shape and mold the way we talk about movies and how to view it as an art form.
For my part I have always tried to walk a delicate balance between serious film criticism while trying to appeal to the average reader. I can throw out terms like mise-en-scene and auteur theory but I always want to insert it in a more casual way. There is just enough for the cinephile to understand that I appreciate cinema and take it seriously - which is also reflected in what I choose to review - but my ultimate purpose is to invite John and Jane Doe into the discussion to create even more cinephiles and try to change the public's perception on movies and how to engage with them. Though I suppose by not writing in a more scholarly fashion it may give the impression I am not a serious intellectual student of cinema. I'm not going to go out of my way to prove my formal film history education.
It leads to some serious questions though. What makes good film criticism and a good critic? And, if my observation is correct, that criticism has declined, what contributed to it? Lets start with, what makes a good criticism. I have kind of already touched on this but lets be more direct in terms. Film criticism should
not be surface level. Don't give a plot summary with some vague comments thrown in a long the way, (i.e. the movie has good cinematography. The acting is good). Film criticism, at its best, can provide a rich understanding of how to interpret a film through discussion of themes, direct our eyes to how a filmmaker is visually telling a story, how a film fits into a director's body of work, and how the film connects with the current political and social environment. In short it should help the viewer learn how to watch a movie. Did you ever wonder why critics and the public's taste often differs? It's because critics, when they are good, are "reading" a movie differently. They should be taking a sharper look at the skills of the filmmaker and the visual storytelling. The public, by contrast, may only be reacting to the surface level and allowing their emotions to primarily enforce their opinion. That's why some people can't really discuss or write about movies. What happens when you ask a friend what a movie was about? In my experiences the person will not just give me a plot summary but will try to describe every action that took place in the movie. And when you ask for their thoughts on a movie, it usually doesn't go beyond, "I liked it", "It was funny", "It was scary"...etc. Whereas the good critic can guide your eyes. If the cinematography was "good", what was "good" about it? How was lighting used? Try and catch yourself in the moment and recall, how did you feel when watching a particular scene? Then think, what in that scene may have caused you to feel a certain way. When you can answer that, you'll have a better understanding of what a director does and what visual storytelling is. A good critic can bring this to your attention.
I
mentioned earlier there are no great mainstream defenders of great art. Why is
that true though? What changed in the culture? Putting aside political
influence, though it is significant factor, a major contributor was the medium
of television. While I wrote the culture had an appetite for serious film
discussion, television, as we know it, is not really a medium that lends itself
to serious discussion whether it is about film or politics. Some may say
individuals like Dick Cavett, Johnny Carson, or even Larry King were great
conversationalists, but there is always a need to be entertaining and that can
drive the focus away from the serious to the fluff. I won't say Siskel &
Ebert ruined film criticism with their programs, as some critics like Rosenbaum
and Armond White have previously stated, but the show did undoubtedly change
the public perception of what critics are and if they weren't listening
carefully, changed how we talk about movies. When people think back to Siskel
and Ebert it is the arguments I bet that comes into most people's mind. In
other words, the entertainment aspect of the show and not any serious
discussion the two may have had. That's not Siskel and Ebert's fault. That's
the medium's fault. An intelligent, deeply analytical movie review program
could be potentially boring for some viewers and most likely not get high
ratings. But who would host it and which channel would air it? PBS, in theory
would be a good home, but they aren't exempt from the pressures of television
and chasing ratings. While I respect Siskel and Ebert lets not pretend their
shows weren't aware of the demands for ratings. Yes, they discussed art house
and foreign films but those reviews were never given as much air time as a
review of a Steven Spielberg movie. For example, if Spielberg and Hungarian
filmmaker Istvan Szabo both had a new movies released in the same week, they
would both be reviewed on the show but Spielberg's film would be the lead off
review even if the Szabo film may have been better or lent itself to a greater
discussion. Siskel and Ebert knew what buttered their bread and they made more
time for the Hollywood blockbusters than the foreign films. Again, that's not
really a slight against them so much as it it on the nature of television and
ratings.
With the success of Siskel & Ebert, all of a sudden the medium gave birth to a new profession - television movie critic. In 1982, the two Chicago critics went national, leaving behind their PBS program Sneak Previews for a new program called At the Movies. PBS however didn't cancel Sneak Previews with the departure of Siskel and Ebert. The programed continued until 1996 with the initial new co-hosts of Jeffrey Lyons and Neal Gabler. Starting in 1985, Michael Medved replaced Gabler, joining Lyons. Also happening in 1982, Leonard Maltin joined the television program Entertainment Tonight. Maltin was given less time than Siskel and Ebert to review a movie. How detailed and analytic can you be in this format? But this is what left an impression on audiences as to what a movie critic is. They give you a summary and an ultimate verdict on whether or not they liked a movie. Outside of his work on Entertainment Tonight, Maltin was known for his annual movie guide books, which offered capsule sized reviews. Again, nothing deeply analytical.
My problem with television movie critics - and critics in general - is they are the taste makers and wield a lot of power by setting the tone for public discourse and our expectations of cinema. You can provide a counterargument to me that the public doesn't want deep analytical reviews, but my response would be, and how do you know? Has it been offered to them in a mainstream format? Who exactly offered it to the public? It may be true today there is no current appetite for it but aren't you ignoring and forgiving the influence of television executives? If Rosenbaum was correct and newspaper editors aren't hiring critics based on film knowledge, do you honestly think it would be a criteria for a TV host? In that kind of position you'd need attractive people who are photogenic and have a real screen presence. An awareness of the work of Ingmar Bergman would come in third or fourth. Siskel and Ebert didn't dumb down the culture, we need to blame the television executives.
Eventually the movie review program went away with the cancellation of shows such as ABC's syndicated program, "At the Movies", which was hosted by Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips and New York Times critic A.O. Scott and Lyons and Bailes Reel Talk with critics Jeffrey Lyons and Alison Bailes. Both of which were cancelled in 2009. Prior to that there was the show Hot Ticket hosted by Leonard Maltin and Todd Newton in its first season and later Joyce Kulhawik for its final two seasons, ending in 2004. Ebert himself tried to revitalized the format, producing a show called Ebert Presents: At the Movies back in 2011. Having unfortunately lost the ability to speak, Ebert would select Christy Lemire and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky - whom I used to always speak to when he worked at a video store in Chicago called Odd Obsession - to co-host. The program would take Ebert back to where it all started, WTTW but it would be cancelled after its first season due to funding issues.
But the format presented in those shows and their influence didn't really go away. It found a home on YouTube where people believe all a movie critic does is talk about movies. Some of these people have gained quite a following like reviewers Jeremy Jahns and Chris Stuckmann, who have more than two million followers apiece as they create videos providing surface level plot summaries, throwing in occasional side comments along the way of what they like and don't like about a movie. It reinforces the idea what most people came away with from watching movie review programs was the cross-talk and disagreements between the critics. Most of these television critics - Leonard Maltin, Jeffrey Lyons, Michael Medved, Rex Reed...etc never went for deep insightful analysis on their shows. The simple act of merely talking about a movie was something anyone could duplicate and YouTube provided an outlet for this. As I watched a few videos from Jahns and Stuckmann, I never heard either mention themes running through a film. I never heard remarks on the visual storytelling. Rarely an insight on editing, cinematography, lighting or nuances in acting performances. Never contextualizes how a movie reflects modern day society or how a particular film fits into a filmmaker's cannon of work. This is what provides the opening for the established critics to say, you see, this is why everybody can't be a critic. They don't have the formal background and understanding of film theory. While those kind of observations seem to be supported based on the videos of these two reviewers, we also have to take a step back and reframe the question. Yes, Jahns and Stuckmann aren't professionals doing the heavy work that true film criticism should entail but why are their videos getting hundreds of thousands of views? We can make snide comments like, well, its because the public doesn't know any better, or could it be because the public relates to them? Their popularity is a reaction to the hollow, academic sounding criticism that exist. Are Jahns and Stuckmann the antidote? Two guys that talk about movies the way other regular people talk about them.
If we accept that premise, it doesn't validate Jahns and Stuckmann oddly enough, it validates my observation. No one has given the public true criticism in a easily digestible manner, demonstrating what criticism can be and how it can guide and deepen your movie going experience. And so the public searching for movie critic voices accepts these two because what else is being fed to them?
I can't scower the internet for every movie blog reviewer or acquaint myself with every movie podcast out there. In fairness, there may be very good criticism out there going under the radar. There may be very serious minded individuals out there expressing my same concerns. If they are out there and happen to come across this, feel free to contact me. But voices with these concerns would have to come from outside the establishment, at least that's my suspicion. An editor isn't going to give a movie critic space to trash an entire industry and comment on the restrictions working for an institution. News reporters and anchors have often talked about how stories have been suppressed by management. Remember the
allegations Ed Schultz made about MSNBC and how he was told not to cover the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016? Phil Donahue also
accused MSNBC of suppressing his voice because of his anti-war views during the lead up to the Iraq War. It lead to him being fired from the network. I also know from my own personal experiences working for publications there are unspoken rules you must follow. Editors just won't let you publish whatever you want. They have people they have to answer to as well.
There are however movie critics that position themselves as individual voices swimming in an ocean of mediocrity. Voices willing to expose the hypocrisy of the system and / or other critics. One critic that has garnered such a reputation as a contrarian authority; demanding high artistic standards; often labeling himself a "pedigree" critic, is Armond White at the National Review. White is not the answer, unless the question is, who is the Rush Limbaugh of film criticism? While it he may seem at first glance to be proving a threatening critique against the establishment, it very quickly becomes clear what his true intentions are. He cheapens film criticism in ways that are equally bad as the bland, safe voices. He does this by using the art of film criticism as a springboard into right-wing politics. I don't object to him being right-wing. I object to his superficiality. For a guy that wants to paint himself as some kind of original, outside-the-box thinker, he sure repeats a lot of conservative talking points that I could hear any number of people espouse on Fox News. In a review meant to celebrate the 50th anniversary of "Jaws" (1975), White somehow managed to sneak this line in when describing Richard Dreyfuss's character, (he) "represents the old Kennedy-liberal ideal: a wealthy, Ivy League humanist who cares for safety of the masses, the prototype now ruined by Obama's disdain and biased, oligarchic academies." Or how about this "gem" that begins his "Emilia Perez" (2024) review, "The funeral procession that climaxes Emilia Perez is the damnedest, craziest thing since Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic minions draped kente cloth stoles over their shoulders and kneeled to canonize George Floyd at the Capitol." I have my doubts he could get away with these comments at the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, or the New York Times. But he can at the right-wing National Review but even there he isn't the magazine's official movie critic. Kyle Smith was before going over to the Wall Street Journal.
It is a sorry state of affairs. Film criticism is not taken serious at mainstream publications. In fact, some newspapers don't even have dedicated movie critics. At the Chicago Sun-Times for example they don't even run movie reviews anymore since Richard Roeper left the paper earlier this year. Can you believe it? The "home" of Roger Ebert no longer has a movie critic. Other papers, like those owned by Gannett Co., simply syndicate a critic's work to its various papers. That takes away a hometown voice. And this is nothing to say regarding the space of the entertainment section. Many papers like the Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press, and USA Today may only publish reviews for the big blockbuster opening that week. They don't have space for art house films and international works. And when you have a national outlet like Gannett, they may not know which art-house movies are opening in select cities So, all they can do is run with the big movies.
I've painted a pretty grim picture of the state of film criticism. And it is a grim picture. Still, I'll leave you with some hope. There are voices I pay attention to. Keep in mind no one is perfect but critics I find interesting are Stephanie Zacharek at Time, Manohla Dargis at the New York Times, and Elizabeth Weitzman over at the websites The Wrap and Time Out. And though I may have seemed critical of critics like Kael and Rosenbaum here, when you look at the totality of their work, they have made meaningful contributions to the cultural discourse. Heck, you can even learn something from me after all these years.
