After "At the Movies"

This Sunday evening at 6:30PM, I will sit and scowl at my television set, thinking nasty thoughts at Buena Vista for canceling "At the Movies," which was better known in the 80s and 90s as "Siskel & Ebert," the syndicated movie review program that was largely responsible for turning me into the movie geek that I am today. The last episode aired this past weekend, with the back half devoted to the show's history, including clips of the various reviewers who had a seat in the balcony over the years, and even a final playthrough of the old theme song.

A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, who valiantly tried to reverse the deterioration of the program this past year, expressed gratitude and optimism during their exit. In the final segment of the show, they took a few minutes to discuss the state of film criticism. I was very glad that Scott addressed and refuted the complaints about the new breed of Internet-based critics, who some have blamed for the recent downturn in the fortunes of traditional print and television critics. As Scott and Phillips said their too-soon goodbyes, one question lingered in my head, and not the one that I expected.

"At the Movies" no longer fits so well into the media landscape, and can no longer attract the viewership it once enjoyed or command the attention and clout it once had. It has been a very, very long time since I've seen a movie ad with the once common "Two thumbs up!" designation. I'm still trying to work out *why.* The most obvious reason is the loss of the original reviewers who were once synonymous with the show, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. And yet, I think that this is only part of the reason. The entire format of "At the Movies" feels out of date, and I think the show would have seen inevitable declines even with Ebert still at the helm.

One point that that stuck with me was when Scott brought up that "At the Movies" had been initially derided by certain members of the film criticism community for being reductive with its "thumbs" system. I never found the show reductive at all, even after I started reading print critics regularly, but I often wished the discussions weren't so brief. Of course there's nothing wrong with brief. Roger Ebert's online reviews tend to be roughly 650 words apiece. David Denby requires less than half of that to pronounce judgement on a film in the "New Yorker." It doesn't take much to get an opinion across when you know what you're doing.

But the arguments and the interplay between the critics is something that I think needs more space. And when the discussions gets bigger, and you want to talk about audience reactions or comment on cultural context or simply address other arguments, a six-minute segment just isn't going to cut it. To talk about multiple issues surrounding this summer's "Inception," Phillips and Scott devoted two "web exclusive" segments to the movie, in addition to their standard review, and it still felt like they were only scraping the surface of something much bigger. Something that doesn't fit into the confines of a twenty-minute syndicated TV show.

Some of the most memorable bits of film criticism I've seen in recent memory have been the extended conversations that critics get to do in year-end commentaries. David Denby and A.O. Scott spent an amazing twenty-six minutes dissecting 2009 Oscar nominees on "Charlie Rose," which very well may have landed Scott the "At the Movies" gig. And then there was this year's series of "Movie Club" columns over at Slate, which was essentially an extended E-mail chain discussion between five different movie critics, including Roger Ebert, Stephanie Zacharek, and Dana Stevens, that ran for eighteen parts and covered an array of disparate topics.

Among the semi-professional and non-professional online critics, there's an even greater lack of formality and structure. Film criticism in this realm often feels like one massive, interconnected conversation. Internet reviewers will often get into feuds with each other, trading barbs and missives in spats which will play out over days or weeks or even longer. Podcasters and vloggers can go for hours on a single film, blurring the lines between simple film reviews and in-depth commentary. If you really want to hear critics get into a heated debate about "Inception," try Slashfilm's recent podcast (#109) devoted to the film, guest starring the always infuriating Armond White.

"At the Movies" can't compete with the Internet's proliferation of discussion in its current form. Once in a while, when Roger Ebert was still in the balcony, he'd devote specials to particular topics, and there were always the "Best of" and "Worst of" lists at the end of the year, and the Oscar specials where he'd put on a tux. Only once did I ever see an entire episode devoted to a single movie - Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" back in 1999. Ebert convened a round table of fellow critics and served as moderator for the group to discuss the picture, an experiment I wish we could have seen repeated. The later incarnation of the show with Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz briefly incorporated a panel of other critics, but it was so constrained by the format's limitations it didn't last more than a few episodes.

But there's no reason why "At the Movies" should compete with the Internet, as it was still perfectly good at doing what it's always done: to review current films, and point audience members toward the smaller titles that they might otherwise miss. I think there's still a place for it in the changing media landscape, which is why I feel it was canceled before its time. There is no single source, or even handful of sources that can replace "At the Movies" or improve on its format. Internet, podcasts, webcasts, and the multiplicity of blogs are good for going in-depth or more metatextual and comparative evaluation, which is the direction I think film criticism is going in, but when it comes to a good, simple, compact summary of what general audiences should know about these films, there's nothing that can compete with the duo in the balcony.

So in closing, I want to say my thank yous to Siskel, Ebert, Roeper, Phillips, Scott, and even the Bens for keeping "At the Movies" on the air for so long. Moviegoing isn't going to be the same without it.