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Admittedly I don't follow them particularly closely because I think they are irrelevant, but it seems more and more we're seeing that critic ratings and audience ratings differ wildly particularly for films that don't follow the traditional movie flow.

If anything, I use them as a kind of reverse windsock - if the critics hate it, then I'll probably enjoy it. I've rarely been wrong.

So what do other people think of them? Do they still serve a function with social media and interaction audience reviews?

Could not agree more - like any art form films are highly subjective and critics rarely if ever have any training or qualification.

For me they are less than worthless - for others they may have value.

It depends, I guess.

Simply being called or employed as a Critic doesn’t mean your opinions are worth a damn.

I’ve read reviews where it’s clear it was a Hate Watch, where rather than actually watching the film, they were focussed on finding things not to like. And as I’ve commented elsewhere, there’s been times I’ve read a critique, and genuinely wondered if we watched the same movie.


Other times? Genuinely insightful thoughts are offered up, and if you’re really lucky, you may end up expanding your own knowledge.

And this is why I've always liked Kermode and Mayo. I do not always agree with them and their witty banter may be tiring, but they don't simply tell you what to like or not. A good critic doesn't tell you what to think, they teach you how to think and what to be observant of.

Sadly professional criticism is an open field where anyone with a soap box can tell their opinion without teaching you anything. I was watching a video by a music critic who was explaining why Bloc Party was soooooooo different from all the other "landfill indie" of the 2000s, and I came away with the opinion they had disappeared up their own backsides.

Don't be immediately dismissive of critics. Instead you should critique them as you would any other form of advice. And I certainly wouldn't trust the edge-lord smaller critics who automatically take the opposite position from bigger critics. Their agenda driven biases simply cannot be trusted.

“Picture this scene. A critic arrives at the gates of heaven. 'And what did you do?' asks Saint Peter. 'Well', says the dead soul. 'I criticised things'. 'I beg your pardon?' 'You know, other people wrote things, performed things, painted things and I said stuff like, "thin and unconvincing", "turgid and uninspired", "competent and serviceable,"...you know'.”
― Stephen Fry

There is a place for actual criticism, which is a form of analysis. The problem is that modern critics are generally less knowledgeable than their predecessors, so their analysis is very shallow.

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were interesting to watch because the breadth of their knowledge was vast and deep. They were also unquestionably independent in their thought, taking different approaches. I generally agreed with Ebert, but Siskel kept him honest. I think Siskel's untimely death damaged Ebert's analysis.

There's also circumstantial evidence that critics are mostly being paid for good reviews. This is part of the overall corruption of journalism, which is in most cases simply rewriting news releases. There has always been a bunch of this, but its worse than ever. There have been multiple examples of scandals that would have been a firing offense - not just for the reporter but the entire editorial staff - that got at best a shrug. My father is a retired copy-editor who regards modern 'print' journalism as a bad joke. One of his colleagues who retired at the same time penned a vicious retirement letter noting that the current crop of reporters should never have been given diplomas and he's too old to turn his shop into a remedial learning facility. This from a major metro daily.

The advent of the internet has given everyone a soapbox, so on the plus side, there is likely to be a reviewer that suits you. In that case, however, one has to be sure that you are getting actual criticism vs mindless affirmation.

On the flipside the internet also gave birth to the negative critic. Who is paid (by clicks, views and attention) to be hyper abusive/insulting/negative about whatever it is that they are reviewing.

Just as you can show that many professionals are paid to give positive reviews directly or indirectly (you give too many negative ones and suddenly you don't get your press-access/advanced copies/early info etc...); the extreme opposite is also true - the payoff just comes from a different source. Indeed you could argue that Google metrics and search criteria and "the algorithm" are actually heavily weighted toward encouraging hyper negative opinion works.

 Overread wrote:
On the flipside the internet also gave birth to the negative critic. Who is paid (by clicks, views and attention) to be hyper abusive/insulting/negative about whatever it is that they are reviewing.

Just as you can show that many professionals are paid to give positive reviews directly or indirectly (you give too many negative ones and suddenly you don't get your press-access/advanced copies/early info etc...); the extreme opposite is also true - the payoff just comes from a different source. Indeed you could argue that Google metrics and search criteria and "the algorithm" are actually heavily weighted toward encouraging hyper negative opinion works.

Manipulated search results can be biased in both ways - boosting one, suppressing the other. It's part of the overall degradation of information quality.

I think there are good reviewers out there, and if you can find someone who matches your taste, it's great. One of the promises of the information age that is still valid is that gatekeepers have less power than before. Time was you were limited to the local print market, or at best syndicated columnists. Now criticism has been democratized.

The downside is that democracy has always been the least stable system, generally a transition to mob rule. (I speak of actual democracy, not representative government, which has many variations of form.)

This is why we have clickbait, outrages of the day, etc. Movies no longer exist, they either must be supported to the death or boycotted into oblivion. The notion of just ignoring something that doesn't interest you is no longer considered a viable option.

This idea that everything about movies is subjective is, using technical jargon, horse apples: bad/good sound design, bad/good sound editing, bad editing, bad/good acting, bad/good cinematography, etc.

Much of what you get out of criticism depends on what you are expecting out of critics and who you are watching/reading. A bad critic will just tell you if you should like a film or not, which is something they can't really predict. A good critic looks at the different elements of a films construction as well as possibly how it fits into the overall oeuvre of the creator(s) as well as film in general. If you're working a historical research they come in handy, as well.

If it is a movie I know I am going to see I'll skip discussion of it until I have seen it. If it is something I am on the fence on I will check in with a few trusted sources to see what is being said. If I have no interest it doesn't really matter, though I have a few people I might watch that I may see what they said for entertainment.

So I guess if you're using them to determine whether or not you will like a movie they are worthless. If you use criticism for other purposes then they can be useful. You also should find critics you like, which isn't the same as critics who agree with you.

Mindlessly accepting criticism is pointless. There's no way I'd miss a movie or TV show because it had bad reviews if it otherwise appealed to me. I might skip it at the cinema and catch it on home release if it was getting panned, but I wouldn't skip it altogether.

However, if you can find a critic whose tastes align with your own, it can be a useful tool. For instance, Mark Kermode and I seem to overlap reasonably well. There's areas where I know we don't, but his opinion can be a useful barometer for managing my expectations.

However, whoever writes for the Guardian these days seems to write from a preset set of expectations and will almost always reliably trash anything that may be seen as even vaguely "mass market" and will dribble over anything even slightly indy, to the point where a 1* from the Guardian is practically an endorsement for me.

I am very skeptical of critics. The afformentioned pay-for-good -reviews is the primary reason. Secondly is that politics has leached it's way into the very soul of media, and this includes critics.

I remember how badly certain critics wanted Joker to fail. Over the course of two weeks they flip flopped from calling it a Right Wing dog whistle, White Supremacists, Incel, racist, pro vigilante, pro rape, etc.

This also happened with The Sound of Freedom, which while not great was decent.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I am very skeptical of critics. The afformentioned pay-for-good -reviews is the primary reason. Secondly is that politics has leached it's way into the very soul of media, and this includes critics.

I remember how badly certain critics wanted Joker to fail. Over the course of two weeks they flip flopped from calling it a Right Wing dog whistle, White Supremacists, Incel, racist, pro vigilante, pro rape, etc.

This also happened with The Sound of Freedom, which while not great was decent.

I did not think the Joker was terriably a great movie, but I remember the "incel propaganda" stuff and coming out of the theatre thinking "what the hell where these guys thinking? this film is insanely LEFT WING in it's politics.

BrianDavion wrote:
I did not think the Joker was terriably a great movie, but I remember the "incel propaganda" stuff and coming out of the theatre thinking "what the hell where these guys thinking? this film is insanely LEFT WING in it's politics.

I'm old enough to remember when "300" was supposed to be battlespace preparation for a war with Iran.

Silly me, I thought it was about ancient Greeks and mythology and stuff.

I think for me? You need to look at their overall body of work.

I’ve seen critically acclaimed films which have been utter drivel. And I’ve seen maligned films which I absolutely adored.

And as a fan of Punk and Heavy Metal, I’m no stranger to a genre being maligned for no other reason than a critic apparently isn’t supposed to enjoy that genre.

This is why I always enjoyed Johnathon Ross’ stint on Film. He’d almost give two reviews. One for general public, one for fans of the genre.

For instance, Splatter Horror isn’t going to appeal to everyone. Nor is it trying to be. So an interview being sniffy just because it’s Splatter Horror serves little purpose. But, if it then weighs in on its merits within its own genre? That review is now worth considering.

I’m one to try to find something enjoyable or novel in every movie I watch. Whilst I don’t always succeed, because some films are just Bloody Awful, I find it a far more enjoyable approach than nit picking flaws. Indeed, watching a a film I know isn’t terribly good and picking the peanuts out it’s turd is kind of a hobby of mine - one a friend and I might be turning into a podcast/youtube show.


And so any review which solely focuses on the negative isn’t one I’m going to take seriously or place any weight upon. Because there’s a difference between you not liking a film, and a film being bad.

There is also the inverse, when critics rave about how good a movie is, and it falls flat. Crocodile Dundee in LA springs to mind (shudders).

A while back I watched a guy's YouTube video where he separated opinion from fact, and used Ghostbusters 2016 as his first episode, on why it was objectively bad. Like it's 90 minute run time cost more to make than any of the 3-hour long LotR movies, the Hobbit trilogy, or any Star Wars. That 90% of the film was Ad-lib and put together in post production. That stills of the CGI monsters mixed with stills of the 2001 Scooby Doo monsters don't look any different in quality. It was objectively LESS diverse than the original, and had more racist undertones.

 cuda1179 wrote:
There is also the inverse, when critics rave about how good a movie is, and it falls flat. Crocodile Dundee in LA springs to mind (shudders).

A while back I watched a guy's YouTube video where he separated opinion from fact, and used Ghostbusters 2016 as his first episode, on why it was objectively bad. Like it's 90 minute run time cost more to make than any of the 3-hour long LotR movies, the Hobbit trilogy, or any Star Wars. That 90% of the film was Ad-lib and put together in post production. That stills of the CGI monsters mixed with stills of the 2001 Scooby Doo monsters don't look any different in quality. It was objectively LESS diverse than the original, and had more racist undertones.

In the current age, it's almost like reviewers are selected for pliability, not actual knowledge of the subject matter.

I know there's this current push for women in film, and that's fine, but it ignores how women have always been huge in films. Mary Pickford was setting salary records before women could vote. Bette Davis helped break up the studio system. Elizabeth Taylor was the first actor - male or female - to earn $1 million for a single film.

What if I told you that there is a film that was written by women, has an all-female cast and deals with the kind of work-life balance issues specific to women? It's called "The Women," and came out in 1939.

Whenever I see a critic talk about "groundbreaking" this or that, I'm pretty sure that whatever is "the first ever!" was achieved decades before the person was born. Why pay money for that level of ignorance? The old critics knew all of this. The new ones are selected for pliability rather than knowledge.

The other problem is that it cheats actual pioneers out of their accomplishments. I can't get behind that.

The only critics I trust are Jeremy Jahns and Angry Joe.

I watch Jeremy Jahns, but I consider him more of a reviewer than a critic. It might sound like splitting hairs, but it makes a difference.

Many of his videos are framed in terms of what he liked, how he felt. A critic will often go more into detail on the technical aspects and story structure, where a film fits in its genre. Jahns is great for a good first impression, but he’s deliberately breezy. As a result, I tend not to get as clear a picture from his review on whether or not I will enjoy a movie as I would from a more rounded critic.

They can still be useful, especially if you want a deeper dive into the depths of cinema history and movie making (although you need real critics for this like Barry Norman or Mark Kermode)

if you just want to know if you'll have fun at the cinema your best off trying to find a critic or reviewer (i'd agree these are slightly different beasts) who has similar tastes and going with that

but part of the problem is there are so many reviewers these day and loads of them are only interested in talking things up (either because they're paid, or because if they are negative their publication won't get access to the next release), or really shouting them down for clickbait dollars on youtube etc

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Whenever I see a critic talk about "groundbreaking" this or that, I'm pretty sure that whatever is "the first ever!" was achieved decades before the person was born. Why pay money for that level of ignorance? The old critics knew all of this. The new ones are selected for pliability rather than knowledge.

The other problem is that it cheats actual pioneers out of their accomplishments. I can't get behind that.

Hear hear. "Black Panther was the first black movie superhero!" springs to mind.
Um, Blade came out in the 90s IIRC. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone told me Blade wasn't even the first.
And the same claim for female action/scifi heroes gets thrown around tiresomely regularly. Guys, gals. Alien ffs... Saying stuff like that only proves to me how ignorant a given person is, and that I should just ignore their opinion on the subject.

I always ignore anything critics say on any art form.. I'm quite capable of making up my own mind. Mostly though I do find what critics have said is the opposite of what I think. It's all very subjective as well as I'm just cantankerous and tend to go my own way.

Even back in the day of Ebert & Roebart, I felt that film critics tended to hold all movies up to a high standard of epic classics like Ben Hur, Gone with the Wind, etc. and they didn't consider the type of movie they were watching. For instance, critics trashed the original Pacific Rim.. I went in, low expectations of watching giant robots fighting monsters. I got out of the summer heat, I was entertained. Good for me! Can I watch Pacific Rim once a year and get more out of it? Nope. Does it contain a serious look at the human condition? Nah. Did it do it's job? Hell yes!
But critics insist on splitting hairs and comparing a movie to everything out there and don't consider if a movie ENTERTAINS. This is why "Manos the Hands of Fate" is considered a totally crappy movie- it's slow, confusing, and badly edited. Plan nine from outer space? Shlocky, yes, but it entertains. If critics insisted on rating movies, they should have different scales. IE: Forrest Gump gets 10/10 for heartfelt story, 3/10 for Action, 4/10 for Comedy, etc..
I also feel critcs sometimes aren't doing their jobs. I read an EW review of original "Black Panther" and it was nothing but praise for the fact the movie was mostly ethnic actors. Not a word of the basic plot, and maybe like one mention that it was a superhero movie. Instead, it was more like "OMG, Chadwick Boseman! And Micheal B Jordan! And Angela Basset should get an award!" Unhelpful, and basically just gushing.
I do enjoy the various channels of film critiques, like "Cinema Sins" and the like particularly because they add to the entertainment value in inserting witty quips- but this may be because I always loved MST3k and the riffing off of terrible movies.
So- no, I don't think the traditional snooty film critic has a place in today's world- peeps like me will find a youtube channel that they like and watch that. More than anything else, though- I trust my friends' opinions on movies. One knew I liked Full Moon movies, and recommended the Phantasm series- and I liked it.

Bran Dawri wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Whenever I see a critic talk about "groundbreaking" this or that, I'm pretty sure that whatever is "the first ever!" was achieved decades before the person was born. Why pay money for that level of ignorance? The old critics knew all of this. The new ones are selected for pliability rather than knowledge.

The other problem is that it cheats actual pioneers out of their accomplishments. I can't get behind that.

Hear hear. "Black Panther was the first black movie superhero!" springs to mind.
Um, Blade came out in the 90s IIRC. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone told me Blade wasn't even the first.
And the same claim for female action/scifi heroes gets thrown around tiresomely regularly. Guys, gals. Alien ffs... Saying stuff like that only proves to me how ignorant a given person is, and that I should just ignore their opinion on the subject.

That's a weird example, however. Most general audiences (and some comic book guys) wouldn't point at Blade as a 'superhero movie.' They had no idea it was anything other than part of the general vampire slayer trend.
It wasn't marketed as superheroes (because, being the 90s, most superhero movies had sucked) and early internet being what it was, there wasn't a lot of voices to 'um, actually..' at the general public.

I can enjoy listening to/reading critics that can actually discuss the technical aspects (good/bad/otherwise) of a film.
Because that stuff is interesting in its own rite.

But those who're just trying to convince me I should/shouldn't enjoy something?
Pfft. No.
I'm quite capable of determining for myself what will interest or entertain me. I've got a pretty good track record.

The whole "they said it was the first black superhero movie" was more internet bs than reality. The internet loves making up simple arguments then refuting them. It was the first big budget AAA black superhero film. Blade was a mid budget film with mid expectations. Being a surprise hit doesn't change that or that sequels were also not big budget films. And as Voss said, most didn't even know Blade was based on a comic.

If you don’t count Blade as a superhero movie, there were still Meteor Man, Steel and Blank Man. But the difference between those and Black Panther was all about scale and mainstream appeal. “Mid” pretty much describes all the superhero movies of the 90’s, excepting the X-Men.

There's also Spawn as well, if I remember correctly.

 Grimskul wrote:
There's also Spawn as well, if I remember correctly.

Oh yeah. I forgot all about that movie.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
But the difference between those and Black Panther was all about scale and mainstream appeal. “Mid” pretty much describes all the superhero movies of the 90’s, excepting the X-Men.

Which is how you morph "first major budget black superhero film" into "they said Black Panther was the first black superhero but they are wrong because [obvious and known films]"

Also Black Panther had black writers, directors etc.

Getting back to the main topic? I feel we should also separate out “Reaction” YouTubers and the like from people who review or critique movies.

You know, the ones who seem more intent on getting their personality or brand across than offering any particular insight. Like AVGN, but mistaking his swearing for the commentary he also provides.

Those tend to offer little of any value.

What I prefer is stuff like “if you enjoyed X, you may enjoy this”. Not “this is like X, but X exists so just watch X”. Though sometimes that is a perfectly valid criticism


Example? The Conjuring and Insidious series. Now I enjoy those myself, but it is quite easy to forget which film belongs in which universe. We also saw a surge of copycat efforts, which lack whatever dubious charms Conjuring and Insidious offer, so you might as well just watch those instead.