If you haven't heard, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times have eliminated their film critic positions, which unfortunately means that Michael Phillips and Richard Roeper are out of work. More ominously, this means that the film world has lost two more high profile platforms for film criticism with long histories. Film fans might recall that the Tribune and the Sun Times were the employers of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, the frequently feuding hosts of the long-running movie review show, "At the Movies." There have also been a string of buyouts and reassignments at other outlets, and Richard Brody's defense of the "traditional review" in The New Yorker.
However, this says less about the health of film criticism than it does about the health of the media ecosystem. There's been a lot of change very quickly, and it's no surprise that the culture and media critics are feeling some of the brunt. There has been a lot of discussion about the death of the movie critic specifically since at least 2009, when Gerald Peary's documentary about film criticism, "For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism" was released. And while the old guard of the print medium have quietly retired or moved on to other venues, film criticism has not gone away. There are plenty of Youtube critics hacking away at the algorithm, and plenty of podcast critics juggling twenty other roles along with being reviewers. It's common knowledge that most culture reviewers can't just be reviewers anymore if they want to make a living, but also entertainment reporters, interviewers, reactors, presenters, lecturers, discussion leaders, and social media personalities.
When I started this blog, a very long time ago, I won't deny I had aspirations of someday landing a review column at one of the major newspapers, but it wasn't a dream of mine for very long. The only critic I read regularly back then was Roger Ebert, and I read his reviews and columns and Q&As online. These days I read a few more critics, but I listen to more of them on podcasts. I know it's ironic, because I write reviews for this blog regularly, but I don't really expect anyone else to read them. Maybe that's why I don't view the traditional print movie critic as a real job in and of itself anymore. I mean, even back in the 90s, I knew Siskel and Ebert because they had a television show. I knew Leonard Maltin because he had his movie guides. I certainly appreciate the art of film review writing - I even took a course in it once - but reviews often aren't as fun for me to read as other kinds of film writing - film histories, academic film analysis, and profiles of filmmakers. The reviewers I enjoy most are often also educators, academics, and historians.
But lest you think that I don't consider the critics important, consider this. Over Labor Day weekend this year, I stumbled into a Reddit group for Academy Awards enthusiasts that were tracking all the reactions to movies that were premiering at the Venice and Telluride film festivals. Not only were they compiling social media reactions and review scores, but I noticed that some were even posting movies' Letterboxd "rating curves" - that little bar chart that measures the frequency of star ratings given to a movie. A few of the titles had clearly been review-bombed in advance. I don't know why I found this display of rampant nerdery so touching, but here was a group of people paying very close attention to what individual movie critics were saying, even if it was in the context of trying to get a leg up on awards season prognostications.
I think it served as a good reminder that movie critics are still our tastemakers in the film world. No matter how the studios might try to replace them with influencers, or how every blockbuster-dominated summer seems to bring out the doomsayers proclaiming that nobody listens to critics anymore, soon enough it's Oscar time again, and every studio is hoping for good reviews from David Ehrich and Peter Debruge to help launch their fall prestige pictures. No amount of AI generated malarky is going to create the kind of buzz "Hamnet" and "No Other Choice" got from the critics after their premieres, instantly making them frontrunners in the 2026 awards race.
And you'll still find certain movie enthusiasts who want to wait until the reviews come out to decide whether to see a movie - even if they never read any of them.
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