The State of the Movie Critic, 2025

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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The Posts I Almost Wrote Today, 2023

My limits as a blogger are never as apparent as when I try to write a post and fail.  Here are three recent attempts at blog posts where I sort through the detritus and see what went wrong.

Regulating Youtube - This is the most ambitious thing I've attempted in a while, trying to lay out the basics of how broadcast television content regulation differs from current attempts to regulate internet content, and how Youtube has essentially become the new dominant form of mainstream media.  I'd seen a couple of Youtubers I follow put out videos about the new content restrictions they were expecting to be implemented soon, and worrying over how that might affect their monetization.  There were also several recent reports from various tech watchdogs that were pointing out how much time children were spending watching Youtube and Tiktok compared to linear television.  On average, kids with access to Youtube are spending about an hour a day on the site.

I wrote about a thousand words before coming to the conclusion that this topic was way too broad.  I was trying to stuff too many things into a single post - my changing viewing habits, my kids' viewing habits, the history of television regulation, the history of internet regulation, and the history of Youtube - Elsagate, monetization, recent policy changes, etc.  The big point is that even though Youtube is so much more complicated to filter than traditional linear television, it's facing the same demands from viewers and advertisers that all major forms of media have faced over the years, and so it's inevitably moving toward tighter restrictions on its content.  Because it can't possibly vet all the uploaded videos individually, it depends on far less reliable AI and community self-policing, resulting in a lot of headaches for content creators. A figure drawing channel I follow had to rework and reupload several older videos, because they featured completely non-sexualised nudes.      

Film Critics - We lost Roger Ebert ten years ago this month, and the landscape for film critics has changed drastically in the interim.  Many entertainment websites and publications are gone, or are in the hands of people who do not value strong critical voices.  Many venerable critics have retired or have become freelancers. However, critics are as important as ever to the media discourse.  Critics are vital for championing smaller films like "Aftersun" that would have otherwise gotten lost in the crowd.  Critics have lost major platforms, but they're making inroads on social media, through podcasts, videos, substacks, newsletters, and other places on the internet.  Film Twitter would definitely be missed if the Elon Musk venture ends up going down in flames.

However, I really don't feel like I've got enough perspective on this topic.  Frankly, I don't keep up with the critical community as much as I keep up with a couple of adjacent film journalists these days.  I don't regularly read film reviews much anymore, preferring podcasts and videos because they allow for longer discussions.  I am absolutely part of the problem - and I'm still writing and blogging movie reviews!  So every time that I try to write about film critics, I end up self-interrogating myself out of it.  The anniversary of Ebert's passing was enough for me to make another attempt, but it went nowhere.  I'll just point out that RogerEbert.com is alive and well, and you can find the reviews of Christy Lemire and Matt Zoller Seitz and other talented critics there.

Blogging Into the Void - Finally, I've been considering various ways to address an existential question about this blog.  Why am I still writing this when it's clear that nobody is reading it, my writing isn't getting any better, and I'm doomed to mediocrity and irrelevance?  Well, because I enjoy writing this blog as a hobby, my ambitions have always been limited, and I do have an audience - me.  I go back and read the older entries on the blog all the time.  And I've been doing this long enough now that I've got a pretty good chronicle of my experience with media progressing through the last twelve-odd years.  Just browsing through the 2013 entries, I can see when "House of Cards" premiered and kicked off the streaming wars, that "Doctor Who" was in the Matt Smith era, Blockbuster was on its way out, and Spill.com had just closed up shop.  And of course there was "Frozen." 

Stephen King, when asked why he wrote horror, responded with a question - "Why do you assume I have a choice?"  Why am I still writing this blog?  Because I still want to.

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The Podcast Inundation

I usually write a post about the film and TV related podcasts I've been listening to every year around this time, but the current situation being what it is, I thought the topic required some more meta commentary.

Everybody is podcasting.  In the age of COVID-19, one of the few categories of media that has been largely unaffected has been the humble podcast.  And now everybody in the entertainment industry has one.  Beloved cinematographer Roger Deakins started his in May.  Former "Community" castmates Joel McHale and Ken Jeong started "The Darkest Timeline" podcast in late March, and have been wrangling an increasingly star-studded guest list.  Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani created a six-episode series, mostly talking about movies.  There are new podcasts about "The Wire" and "The Sopranos," with various talent from those shows involved.  Also, I am dying to get my hands on the new Audible adaptation of "The Sandman" starring James McAvoy, which I hope will help tide me over until that Netflix show gets rolling.  

The trouble is - and this may well be the most extreme of all first world problems - I have drastically reduced time to listen to podcasts right now.  Having shifted to working from home, I no longer have a commute.  Frequently facing gaps in childcare, I'm often working while parenting, which means headphones and earbuds are out of the question.  I could listen to podcasts while out of the house running errands, or those rare instances when I get to exercise by myself, but that only adds up to a fraction of the time I used to have available.  For me, quarantine has meant a drastic reduction in privacy and time I get to spend alone.  When I do have time to myself, I default to watching a show or movie out of habit.  A week's worth of pre-COVID podcasts took me about two months to get through while sheltering in place.  

And when I went back to my RSS and Podbean  feeds for my next batch of shows, I was hit by the flood.  So many podcasters who were previously juggling multiple projects suddenly had way more time to devote to their podcasts, and podcast they did.  I'd expected a few gaps here and there for various shows, but this wasn't the case at all.  I mostly listen to film related podcasts that cover a mix of old and new releases.  With theatrical releases paused, most of them transitioned right over to VOD releases or decided to discuss old favorites instead.  Is "Tenet" delayed again?  Well, let's do a Christopher Nolan retrospective and talk about his Batman trilogy and the tenth anniversary of "Inception."  The Double Toasted guys are reviewing stuff from the so-bad-its-good pile, while the Slashfilmcast seems to have embraced the chance to watch random older films like the Japanese foodie classic "Tampopo."

I wound up with over eighty hours of podcasts, even after significantly pruning down the offerings.  In some cases this wasn't difficult - a few of the shows I follow did change their formats to cover topics I wasn't interested in.  In most other cases, however, I had more trouble.  What's more, I wanted to hear about how people were coping with the lockdowns and how they were reacting to the Black Lives Matter protests.  There have been movies and television shows being released regularly during the past few months, not to mention the launches of multiple new streaming services including HBO Now, Peacock, and Quibi (RIP).  I wanted to hear all of those discussions.  And I realized that I missed being plugged into the entertainment world, and the little piece of normalcy that listening to podcasts afforded me.    

So, over the last week or so I've adjusted my routine.  I've cut down on videos and spend more of my evenings listening to podcasts while doing chores.  Sometimes I only get in twenty minutes or so, but I find the podcasts much better for my mental health than obsessing over news broadcasts.  Still, I was relieved to learn that "Unspooled," one of the classic film podcasts I've been doggedly trying to keep up with, wrapped up recently and won't be adding more episodes to the considerable backlog I have to work through.  And I've been secretly happy every time that I note that some of the more sporadically updated shows I follow have taken another week or two off.    

I'm still way behind, but little by little I'm catching up.  Hopefully by the time the pandemic is over, I'll have at least that tiny part of my life straightened out. 

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Updating the Tomatometer

I stumbled across this statistic today, from a recent study from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, looking at the demographics of film critics and the impact that this has on the film industry: for every film critic who is female and a racial minority in the Rotten Tomatoes critical pool, there are 17.7 white male critics. The minority female critics wrote just 4% of the reviews on 300 films released in 2017, while white male critics wrote 65%. And this is a problem because our inherent biases related to race and gender tend to affect how we view media, and movies about women of color tend to get more negative reception from white male critics, and more positive reception from female minority critics. So, if you want to improve the prospects of minority women in Hollywood, you've got to boost minority women in the critical community too.

So, you may have noticed that I'm an Asian-American woman who blogs about film for my own amusement, and have devoted posts in the past to Hollywood's representation issues. Is it strange that I didn't notice the lack of diversity among movie critics was a problem until now? Paging through the two reports, I think they do a good job of pointing out issues with how Rotten Tomatoes operates, but I'm not so sure that they say as much about the actual state of film criticism. For one thing, Rotten Tomatoes traditionally only aggregated the opinions of critics who write their reviews for certain publications. The critical community is bigger than that, including bloggers, vloggers, and other social media figures, who tend to be younger and more diverse. These critics can be more influential than the traditional ones, since there are plenty of moviegoers who won't read a written movie review, but might watch a streaming video of one. Youtubers like Chris Stuckmann reach more young moviegoers than your average newspaper critic these days.

Taking this into account, are minority and female critics still underrepresented to such an overwhelming degree? I honestly have no idea, because I don't know who else is out there that I'm not aware of. In other words, I don't know what I don't know. I also have some considerable self-selection biases here, because I don't engage with the critical community nearly as much as I used to. When I do, however, I'm more likely to be reading something written by a freelancer contributing to a variety of different online publications than a big name like Peter Travers or A.O. Scott. I know that I've never had much trouble finding the critical voices from my own demographic. Shoutout here to Angie Han, Jen Yamato, and Inkoo Kang. On the other hand, not everyone goes looking for the critics that are more reflective of their views, the way I do. And I know I'm not exposed to black and Latino voices in the critical community as much as I should be. Like so many others, I'm guilty of not paying enough attention.

I do use the Tomatometer occasionally, when I'm trying to gage whether certain films are worth my time, and I'm all for making sure that it reflects a more diverse array of opinions. So I'm very happy that Rotten Tomatoes recently announced - in direct response to the Annenberg reports - that they were going to expand their criteria for critics in order to help diversification efforts. Now new media, like podcasts and video reviews, will be considered when determining the eligibility of critics. This means independent online critics like Korey Coleman and Martin Thomas of Double Toasted are finally on the Tomatometer. The site is also setting up a grant program to help get critics from underrepresented groups access film festivals, an important source of early buzz for smaller films.

Diversification is in Rotten Tomatoes' best interests too, remember. They only stay relevant as long as their users think they're accurately reflecting the critical consensus. As underrepresented and minority talent has made some impressive gains in visibility in Hollywood this year, it's only right that the most high profile platform of the critical community should follow suit. There's still a lot of room for improvement here, and this is a good reminder to stay mindful of the unconscious biases we're all subject to.


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What's Film Twitter?

Readers of the blog know that I quit Twitter a while back, after using my account to do little more than post updates for this blog. I never got the hang of using it to have real conversations with other people, though I found it a good way to keep up with various film critics and filmmakers. That was five years ago, which is practically ancient times the way the internet works. I think I may want to give Twitter another try sometime soon.

Over the past few years I've been hearing repeated references to "Film Twitter," which refers to the community of film critics, film academics, and various cinephiles who are active on Twitter. It's a big, shapeless, moveable feast of film discussion that you need to keep up with if you want to stay current on what's going on in film circles. This includes the discussion of films, film news, interviews, reviews, opinion and reaction pieces, and good, old fashioned gossip. I, not having time to read all the tweets generated by the handful of film critics I used to follow, let alone the dozens and dozens of film professionals that make up Film Twitter, have no hope of actually participating in any of these conversations. Still, it looks like it would be awfully fun to follow along.

Film Twitter is only one of many different Twitter communities. There's Politics Twitter, Music Twitter, Sports Twitter, and of course the endless amusement of Fast Food Twitter. When I hear mention of Film Twitter, it's usually through one of the participants, referencing prior or ongoing conversations. The concept of Film Twitter has been around since at least 2015, and has been steadily becoming more and more visible. First reactions to films are often gauged from tweets after early screenings, and major film festivals like Cannes are often accompanied by a flurry of increased activity. Last year there was a push to amplify more female voices. Some have tried to prognosticate box office returns and award season favorites based on Film Twitter trends - which are usually doomed to failure, of course, because the critics almost never reflect popular sentiment. Hype, however, can sometimes be generated or amplified there.

Lately I've started hearing Film Twitter referred to by some as a sort of monolithic entity, usually by those who are critical of the participants. There's a certain breed of film enthusiast who just loves writing off the perceived critical establishment as a bunch of pretentious phonies. Film Twitter provides a handy aggregate, so now it's regularly being accused of all sorts of things, like being smug, or being mean, or overreacting. This says more about the bellyachers than it does about the Film Twitter community, but I think it's also a sign of how Film Twitter is quietly growing in influence. For certain online critics, participation almost feels obligatory. And that's slightly worrisome, especially if you don't think that 140 character tweets are really the best format to be conveying nuanced opinions about cinema with.

Film Twitter remains fairly removed from the mainstream and has a certain degree of exclusivity because the major discussions often require that you have access to media at the time that it's released, or even earlier in the case of films playing the festival circuit or making the rounds via screeners. Right now, this definitely isn't the case for me and won't be for the foreseeable future. I watch nearly everything after it hits the second window viewing options - namely VOD and home media. By that point, everyone's moved on to other topics. I've gotten very used to catching up on film discussions months after they've happened, usually through articles and podcasts.

But even though I'm not a part of Film Twitter, I'm very, very comforted to know that it exists. After seeing so many of the old film discussion message boards on various sites shut down in recent years, and failing to find any good replacements, I'm happy to know that there is a forum for nerdy, critical film discussion out there on the internet. Nobody is going to shut down Twitter in a hurry. And that the film nerds are out there, somewhere, just waiting to geek out over the latest marvel blockbuster or Hirokazu Koreeda joint with.
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Podcasts Ahoy! 2017 Edition

I continue to listen to many, many podcasts related to media.  There are lots of recommendations to cover this year, as some familiar old voices are back in the podcasting arena, along with plenty of newbies.  The landscape has been changing quickly, with Kickstarter and Patreon campaigns becoming the norm, and paywalls beginning their inevitable encroachment.  And, alas, too many of these shows are fleeting.  However, I've found that the podcasters never seem to be able to stay away from the microphone too long, and tend to migrate to new berths in the podcasting world eventually.  

Happy listening!   

TV Avalanche - Television critic Alan Sepinwall has returned to podcasting at last, along with his new Uproxx affiliated co-host Brian Grubb.  Since "Firewall and Iceberg" went off the air (internet?), I have sorely missed having a good television-centric podcast in my life.  "TV Avalanche" more or less keeps the same rapid-fire review format as the previous show, but so far there are more laughs and fewer sports metaphors this time around.  The show only started up in January, but it's already found its groove.  

Toon Goons - A trio of twenty-something friends casually review and discuss all things animation related, with heavy emphasis on Cartoon Network shows and anime favorites.  Episodes center around one show or movie, but also make time for news and show recaps.  This is a perfect snapshot of where I was in fandom (and otakudom) in my early twenties, so I find this podcast tremendously nostalgic and fun.  Sadly, after 100 episodes, the show is on semi-hiatus while the hosts are looking to restructure the format.  However, there's lots to explore in their episode archives.

A Storm of Spoilers - This is technically a "Game of Thrones" podcast geared toward book-readers who want a show that caters to their experience of watching the show.  However, with such a long break between seasons, the show has become more of a general  media podcast during their off-season.  And it's become an excellent place to listen to spoilery discussions of many current television shows and movies.  One of the hosts is Joanna Robinson, who appears later on this list, and on so many other podcasts these days that I've lost track.  Co-hosts Dave Gonzales, and Neil Miller are from the Film School Rejects crew.  The show also spun off an "American Gods" recap podcast.      

Medium Jump - If I had a most promising newbie award, it would go to this show, where a trio of movie fans approach their discussions of movies by comparing the finished product to the original source material or earlier scripts.  Depending on the film of the day, the quality of the episodes varies.  The best installments tend to be the ones where they dissect what went wrong with a film, like the infamous "Passengers."  Others are total geek-out love fests, like the one for the Wachowskis' "Speed Racer."  My biggest reservation with the show is that it leans very genre-heavy and is very fanboy-oriented.  

I Was There Too - Interviews actors and crew who were involved with your favorite media in smaller roles.  For instance, a recent episode was all about Dileep Rao, who had bit parts in "Avatar" and "Inception."  Another interviewed one of the cameramen who worked on the infamous "Star Wars Christmas Special."  The quality of the show varies greatly depending on who is being interviewed, but the show is much more accessible than similar retrospective podcasts because it's focused on more well-known media.  Be forewarned, that most of the past episodes are behind a paywall.  

Gen Pop - /Film's Dave Chen and Joanna Robinson tackle whatever is going on in the wider culture in the past week, from movies and films to other podcasts, like "This American Life" spinoff "S-Town."  They invite a guest each week related to whatever topic they're covering, mostly other critics and writers.  I first ran across Chen and Robinson on the /Filmcast, and they also host numerous TV podcasts together, including ones for "Game of Thrones," "Westworld," and "Better Call Saul."  "Gen Pop," alas, only lasted 24 episodes due to funding and other problems, but it's still worth checking out the episodes.

And honorable mentions go to "We Hate Movies" (especially the animation specials), "Decoding Westworld," "Pop Culture Happy Hour," "The Business," and "Denzel Washington Is The Greatest Actor Of All Time Period" (because I really need to watch more Denzel Washington before attempting to talk about this one).

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Attack of the Rotten Tomatoes

This has been a fairly disappointing summer movie season if you're a fan of big franchises and expensive tentpoles.  There have been some notable busts at the box office over the past few months, including "Transformers: The Last Knight," and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales," and would-be franchise starters "King Arthur," "Baywatch," and "The Mummy."  Even the hits are mostly coming in below expectations, like "Despicable Me 3," "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," and "Cars 3."  Thanks to overseas audiences, most of these titles will make plenty of money, but there's an overall sense that the audience is losing interest with most of the big summer movies.

And who have the studios been blaming for this?  Rotten Tomatoes.  And by Rotten Tomatoes, they mean the critics who write bad reviews of these films.  There's been a much closer correlation between the Rotten Tomatoes aggregation scores for big tentpole films and how they've performed at the box office this year.  Specifically, if the Tomatometer is especially rotten, it takes a bite out of the bottom line.  Somehow, after years of terrible summer movies becoming blockbusters and earning oodles of money, the audiences have started paying attention to the critical notices, or at least the appearance of a general consensus.  That consensus is illusory, of course, as I've discussed on this blog before.  However, it's an illusion that has turned out to have some teeth.

Personally, my first instinct is to write this latest trend off as a coincidence or a fluke.  After so many years where the Tomatometer didn't make a lick of difference to box office results, it stands to reason there should be at least one year where they just happen to correlate more than usual.  I'd really love to believe that bad movies are finally getting their just desserts and will stop being rewarded, forcing the industry to make some changes, but I've grown cynical with age and experience.  I know the marketing and the release dates and so many other things have a bigger effect.  The recent gossip about Johnny Depp's finances probably had a bigger impact on the latest "Pirates" than a dozen bad reviews.

Then again, it's possible that the bad reviews are having more of an effect because the actions of the movie business have pushed audiences to become more receptive to them.  A good chunk of the bombs this year were from franchises that had arguably overstayed their welcome.  The most recent prior installments of "Transformers," and "Pirates" made lots of money, but nobody much liked them, and there wasn't much buzz for the new installments to begin with.  If audiences are already skeptical about a franchise, the bad or even middling reviews seem to hit harder.  Viewers that might be forgiving enough to see a third installment will run out of patience for a fifth one.  And keep in mind that good reviews remain powerless to affect much - before Labor Day, anyway.  

Theatrical exhibition is already suffering as attendance has been stagnant and the studios are contemplating other distribution options.  SVOD has reared its head again, though the likelihood of its implementation is far from clear.  A problem with pushing for more event movies is, of course, that the trip to the theater only becomes worth it if a movie is really an event.  And it's hard to sell the fifth or sixth installment of an aging franchise or the umpteenth reboot of an overly familiar story as an event.  Only one movie really seemed to be on everyone's must-watch list this summer, and it was "Wonder Woman," thanks to being the first major female-led superhero film in a decade.  And it was well-reviewed to boot.  

Rotten Tomatoes is the new scapegoat, however, which has both upsides and downsides.  The industry is paying attention to reviews, which is good.  However, some are calling for an end to critics' screenings and more embargoes to limit the perceived damage, which is bad.  I expect significant curtailing of high-numbered sequels in the future, which is good.  However, reboots and spinoffs will inevitably take their place, which is not so good.  As I type this, that "Bumblebee" spinoff is still being readied for next summer.

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Podcast Recommendations 2016

Here are a couple more podcast recommendations I didn't want to put off for too long, as some of these have turned out to be distressingly finite. Television is terribly underrepresented here, as I'm still searching for a replacement for "Firewall & Iceberg" with no success, though I take comfort in reading Alan Sepinwall's recaps regularly. The picks this time include two review podcasts, a retrospective show, and some "Game of Thrones." Enjoy

The Next Picture Show Podcast - I completely missed the Dissolve website's podcast, which I kept putting off until the site was gone and it was too late. Fortunately, several of the site's critics, Keith Phipps, Tasha Robinson, Scott Tobias and Genevieve Koski, launched a new podcast, The Next Picture Show, as a way too keep in touch with a joint project. It's technically a spinoff of the long-running Filmspotting podcast, and uses some similar bits of their format. Next Picture Show, however, has installments that use a two-part structure, pairing a new release with a related classic film. So far, pairings have included discussing "Spotlight" with "All the President's Men," "10 Cloverfield Lane" with "Assault on Precinct 13," and the old "Ghostbusters" with the new "Ghostbusters." The discussions have been great, but the podcast is still going through some growing pains with an irregular schedule and some technical issues. I'm absolutely rooting for its success.

Junkfood Cinema - I really missed C. Robert Cargill after he left Spill.com to go and become a big shot novelist and Hollywood screenwriter. However, he and fellow Spill alumnus Brian Salisbury have since teamed up for the Junkfood Cinema podcast, a tribute to their favorite older genre movies, stars, and filmmakers. On each episode, they just talk about movies, sometimes related to a particular theme, like "Die Hard" knockoffs, or mostly just for their own sake. It's a complete fanboy love fest, intended to bring more attention to older films that have fallen into obscurity. The hosts are very easy to listen to, and I've picked up some good recommendations from them, especially as I've been digging into '80s cinema this year. Junkfood Cinema is hosted by the Filmschoolrejects website.

The Double Toasted Movie Review Extravaganza - While we're on the subject of Spill.com, I want to send some more love to Korey Coleman and Martin Thomas, more Spill refugees who started the Double Toasted website and have been continuing their podcasting in a similar format to what they did on the old site, except without the pseudonyms and cartoon avatars. Yes, now you can watch Korey and friends rant against bad movies in real time and real life. The Movie Review Extravaganza is the site's weekly movie review show, often presented in multiple parts over several days. Several new voices have joined the cast of characters, including a second reviewer named Korey for the movie reviews. One change that I really appreciate is that reviews for individual films are excerpted from the main show, and posted separately a few days later, for the listener's convenience.

Cast of Kings - Finally, this is awfully niche, but I've now been listening to the "Game of Thrones" podcast "Cast of Kings" for four seasons, and it's about time they got a shout-out here. /Film's David Chen and Vanity Fair's Johanna Robinson host an aftershow podcast, discussing each episode the day after it premieres on HBO. Johanna has read the books and Dave hasn't, so we get perspectives from both types of fan. There are a lot of these podcasts out there, but I like "Cast of Kings" for the hosts' rapport, the way they handle talking about fan speculation, marketing, and controversies, and that nobody is scared about voicing unpopular opinions. And with a fanbase as rabid as the one around "Game of Thrones," that's no small accomplishment. I'm hoping that when the podcast inevitably ends in 2018, the hosts will move on to more podcasts in the same vein.

Also, I want to give a quick plug to the /Fimcast podcast, which I previously wrote about in 2011. It has drastically improved since Jeff Cannata became the third host back in 2014. It was perfectly fine before, but Cannata's personality just adds so much that I honestly can't picture the show without him on it anymore.
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How to Prejudge a Film

The Angry Video Game Nerd (James Rolfe) over at Cinemassacre recently released a video, passionately explaining his reasoning for not watching or reviewing the new "Ghostbusters" reboot.  On the one hand, this strikes me as pretty foolhardy - what if the movie turns out to be good?  On the other hand, I admire him for recognizing his biases.  We all have them, after all, and they do play a big part in our reactions to any film.  Whether Rolfe's particular biases reflect a troubling element of fan culture or other, more problematic issues, is something I  leave for other commentators to pick apart.  And plenty of them have.  My problem with Rolfe's stance has to do with his role as a critic.

First, let's talk about the act of prejudging films.  Pretty much everyone does this without a thought, and it's expected to some extent.  We don't expect the teenage male audience to flock to rom-coms, and we don't expect the over-60 set to have much interest in superhero flicks.  I happily ignore the vast majority of modern comedies, particularly those starring Adam Sandler and Kevin James.  I also accept the consequences of this: I can't speak to the quality of the films I haven't seen and thus have limited grounds to criticize Sandler's artistic bona fides more broadly.  I can say he makes comedies I don't tend to like, but I can't bash "The Ridiculous Six," because I haven't seen it and know very little about its particulars.  I've essentially excluded myself from any critical conversation related to the film.

And I'm okay with this.  I consider myself a pop culture and media blogger, and a critic to some extent, but not the kind of critic who writes up formal reviews on every new release and has a comprehensive knowledge of every piece of the current film landscape.  I don't have the resources for that, and frankly, it's not my job.   I have a huge amount of respect for the critics who do subject themselves to every single mainstream film, but I've found that I can write my little analysis pieces and totally avoid the conversation about the CGI "Alvin & the Chipmunks" films or the Andrew Garfield "Spider-man" films or any other features that I decide aren't worth my time.  I don't need to have an opinion on them, so my prejudging them doesn't matter one way or another.  I spend one post at the beginning of each year whining about My Least Anticipated Films that I'm never going to see, to get it all out of my system and have a little fun.  However, I also play fair and ignore them for the rest of the year.

The problem with James Rolfe's approach is that he clearly wants to stay part of this particular cultural moment.  Instead of a review of the new movie, he's delivered a "non-review," a position statement accompanied by a slew of speculation about all the ways the film seems to be going wrong.  In other circumstances this wouldn't be a problem, but in this particular case, it reflects really badly on him.  The move looks more attention-seeking than anything else and his "non-review" clearly signals that he has already taken a position on the reboot that I'm not sure he's informed enough to take.  Rolfe is supposed to be a professional critic, even though his usual subject matter is video games.  If he's going to be part of the continuing conversation about the new "Ghostbusters" - and it's already a doozy - we expect him to be informed.  Not watching the movie means that he's obligated to recuse himself from the impending debate and passing judgment on its merits.

I sympathize with Rolfe.  I really do.  I had a very similar reaction when "Avatar" was reaching peak hype levels, and decided that I was tired of all the fuss and was going to put my foot down.  And it wasn't enough that I didn't want to see the movie, but I felt that I needed to take a firm position publicly, and very seriously make my case for not seeing the movie.  Of course, I made this stand on a movie BBS forum that I frequented with other movie nerds, where I was rightly called out for just being dramatic.  And, of course, I did end up seeing "Avatar" shortly afterwards on a date.  And I was glad, because I really enjoyed talking about the film and its impact, even though I thought "Avatar" was pretty meh.

I'm not saying that James Rolfe should see the new "Ghostbusters" movie.  I'm saying that once he made this decision to not see it, he really should have just kept it to himself and stayed out of the fight.  And frankly, that goes for everyone else too.

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The Dissolve Fades Out

This has become an entirely too common occurrence.  The Dissolve, a film website devoted to in-depth reviews and discussion of film, has folded after a brief two years of existence.  It was home to critics Tasha Robinson, Scott Tobias, Matt Singer, Genevieve Koski, Nathan Rabin, and Noel Murray - most of them alumni of the A.V. Club.  The A.V. Club was never the same without them.  I frequented the site only occasionally, but it was impressive how quickly the Dissolve made a name for itself and became the home of major voices in the critical community.  And how quickly it attracted a community of eager film fans.

 

The basic economics of running this kind of site are daunting, and this is a stark reminder that no matter how strong the writing or how good a site's reputation, it doesn't matter unless the content attracts the necessary amount of traffic and advertisers.  I've seen so many media sites and blogs close shop over the years.  Some, like Cinematical and Spill, were acquired by bigger companies who couldn't figure out how to turn the profit they wanted from them.  Some that stayed in private hands, fell apart after they owners simply couldn't afford the operational costs anymore.  Talented critics migrate from one site to the next, some never recovering from a particularly bad termination.  I'm not worried about anyone over at the Dissolve, but it does make me nervous about other film sites I follow, and the precarious state of film journalism, criticism, and commentary in general.  

 

It seems like we can't go a month without some major upheaval in the community.  The old guard that had its stronghold in print is inexorably being dismantled, column by column, review by review.  Cost-cutting lead to rounds of firings over the past few years, and it often feels like everyone who hasn't retired or been squeezed out is teetering on the brink.  Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide ceased publication in 2015 after a 45-year run.  Meanwhile, the new, online-based critical community is still wildly unstable, and steady gigs are a rarity.  I'm not convinced that we're looking at the death of meaningful film criticism, as some have claimed, but we're definitely in the middle of a major transitional period, and it's been a very bumpy one.  It's still very uncertain what the landscape will look like for professional film writers in the future - or if it will be tenable as a profession at all.  Certainly no one will be quick to launch a possible replacement.

 

This also underlines for me how difficult it is to find online film communities and platforms that will support good discussions about film.  Theoretically, in the big, wide, open internet, there should be plenty of places where these communities should exist.  And yet, finding spaces that attract film fans with a decent baseline of maturity, where there are the necessary moderation tools in place, and that encourages lively discussion, seems to be fewer and farther apart every day.  As highly as they're touted, commentary on the big social media platforms is often chaotic and participation can be difficult.  I've found that they just don't do the job as well as good, old fashioned message boards and site forums.  However, the old standbys are quickly fading away.

 

So where should the Dissolve community go?  Letterboxd seems to have drawn a good crowd.  The Red Letter Media folks are fun.  Some might go back to the AV Club, though it won't ever be the same.  Never head of Solute, which was mentioned in the Dissolve's goodbye announcement.  I can't recommend my old stomping grounds, the Rotten Tomatoes forum, which currently appears to be in its death throes (again), or the Usenet movie groups, which are long dead and buried beneath an avalanche of bots.  Reddit has the tools in place, but the user base just hasn't been up to snuff.  Other promising movie sites have turned commenting off completely, not having the resources to handle moderation.  

 

I feel guilty now that I hadn't spent as much time at the Dissolve as I wanted.  I was linked to its various articles and essays often, and I was always impressed by the level of discourse I found there.   I loved how they revisited the classics in particular.   About a month ago I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to get the site's podcast on my iPod without having to download it.  I gave up eventually and vowed to go back another day.  I thought I had more time. 

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The Rise of the Video Film Essayists

Initially I was planning to do this post in a list format, spotlighting some of my favorite online film critics and commentators who create digitally distributed videos to discuss films and filmmaking.  However, upon reflection I decided that the topic really needed more of a proper write-up.

There have been online movie reviewers with their own web programs for a while now, and various film commentary web series that analyze films, mostly comedically.  The popular Red Letter Media dissections of the "Star Wars" prequels are a good example.  They're often described as reviews, but are really analysis pieces.  They go into far more depth and detail than you'd want for an opinion piece meant to inform the viewer about whether or not they're likely to enjoy watching the films.  I was never much of a fan of Red Letter Media because I wasn't too fond of the serial killer persona he adopted as his main gimmick.  However, his basic arguments and his nicely edited presentations of them appealed to me.  This was somebody who was really using the looser, free-form web video format to its fullest.   

However, recently we've seen a new crop of content creators whose first goal is to inform rather than entertain, while using many of the tools of the mashup culture.  The most prominent of these is Tony Zhou, creator of Every Frame a Painting.  The series is about analyzing filmmaking techniques, mostly cinematography and editing.  Some of the early entries had snarky voice-over and digs at bad filmmakers, but over time the commentary has been refined and focused so that the explanations and examples of various filmmaking concepts remain center stage.  Zhou is excellent at breaking down films into their basic components and showing how they work.  Each installment is devoted to a particular artist or element of film.  My favorite of his videos so far is his look at the work of Jackie Chan, particularly where he compares Chan's Hong Kong films to the ones he's made in Hollywood.

Then there's Kyle Kallgren, whose webseries Brows Held High initially started out as a more typically comedic commentary series, meant to poke fun at the pretensions of arthouse films.  However, over time the videos became less about mocking the arthouse and more about exploring it.  With an academic background in film, Kallgren creates videos that are well researched with lots of cultural and historical context to back up his analyses.  I knew he was someone to watch when I found one of his early videos on the notoriously vile exploitation pic, "A Serbian Film," contained an impressive rundown of the history of Serbia as part of the commentary.  Kallgren still employs his share of gimmicks, but it's all in service of bridging the gap between casual film viewers and the often alienating world of highbrow cinema.  His more recent  videos have been his better ones, including an analysis of Gus van Sant's "Gerry" that turns into broader look at how recent films have started incorporating the visual language of video games. 

However, the video that really got me excited was something completely different from the traditional web series   It was the latest installment of critic David Ehrlich's annual top 25 countdown of his favorite films from the past year.  Countdown videos are extremely popular, and they're a common first project for new web talents trying their hand at making web videos.  Ehrlich is the Senior Editor of Film.com and writes text reviews like a traditional critic.  However, his countdown video is in the style of the year-end movie supercuts created by amateur editors like Matt Shapiro and Gen I.  There's no voice over and barely any onscreen text at all in this thing - just the names of the films and a few title and credit screens. What drives it is almost solely the editing - films clips and music.  And it's so much fun to watch.  Clips of the Japanese comedy "Why Don't You Go Play in Hell" set to Redbone's "Come and Get Your Love," recently heard in the opening of "Guardians of the Galaxy," were a better recommendation for the movie than Ehrlich's text review.  He completely reinvigorated both the supercut and the year-end critic's top ten list by mashing them together.

The term "video essay" has popped up to describe the new crop of informative film-related web videos in this vein, and they're quickly becoming popular with my fellow media nerds both as an educational resource and as conversation pieces.  Pop culture comedy commentary like "How it Should Have Ended" and "Honest Trailers" are still a lot of fun and have plenty of fans, but I really like the new trend of more substantive content that's been emerging.  We have so much more access now to the classics and to world cinema, and it's great to see more informed, more thoughtful pieces starting to emerge, reflecting that.

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Oh, Armond

Awards season was going so well. Oh sure there have been the usual little controversies - Harvey Weinstein's underhanded marketing tactics and grumbles over the state of the Best Foreign Film shortlist again - but it's been a good year overall. There' no shortage of possible contenders, and no real consensus about anyone leading the pack. The various regional critics' circles have been putting forth a variety of different picks. The New York Film Critics Circle picked "American Hustle" for Best Film, but the Best Director award went to Steve McQueen for "12 Years a Slave." And then came the awards ceremony a few days ago, where McQueen's acceptance speech was heckled by one of the critics and his associates. That critic? Armond White.

If you've been around film culture much you already know who Armond White is, the famously contrarian and provocative film critic currently writing for CityArts, and previously for the New York Press. He's chaired the New York Critics Circle multiple times and there have been other abusive outbursts before, most memorably toward documentary filmmaker Michael Moore. I've read several of White's reviews over the years and heard him speak on podcasts and other venues. I don't always agree with him, and I'm pretty sure that some of his positions are designed to be controversial (he claimed 2009's "Precious" was worse than Eddie Murphy's notorious "Norbit," and compared "Jack and Jill" to the Greek classics for example), but he's no slouch as a critic. I agree with many of his points and I like that he keeps the critical conversation interesting.

I'm fully behind White's CityArts review of "12 Years a Slave," for example, where he took McQueen to task for the use of extreme content in his depictions of slavery, which he felt sensationalized and detracted from the portrayal of the African-American experience. There's been overwhelming praise for the film that has positioned it as a major awards contender, and it was important to see a dissenting opinion, especially from an African-American film critic who was perhaps in the best position to deliver it. Were the comparisons to torture porn like "Human Centipede" a bit much? Sure, but it got the point across. And he's certainly not alone is his opinion - Hollywood Reporter critic Kirk Honeycutt, has called "12 Years a Slave" "slavery porn" and Slant magazine's Ed Gonzales accused it of "artistic posturing."

But heckling McQueen at an awards dinner? Throwing F-bombs and comparisons to garbage men around to follow up a great presenter speech by Harry Belafonte? Good grief, it's hard to take Armond White seriously after this. There were other ways of showing disapproval for the society's pick for Best Director. White could have refused to attend the ceremony, refrained from clapping, or stayed seated during the standing ovation that Belafonte received. People would have gotten the message loud and clear. Shouting obscenities makes him look like a spotlight hog and a bully. Moreover, the controversy really does nothing to help his position or the wider discussion of the film. Only the gossip sites are happy about this incident.

What really gets me is that now McQueen is trying to deny he heckled anyone, in spite of a roomful of his colleagues being present at the event. It's not just one source who identified Armond White as the heckler, but a dozen of them, and mostly critics with a lot more credibility than he has. The New York Film Critics Circle has already delivered an apology to McQueen and is taking action to possibly oust White from their ranks - an unprecedented move. I knew an apology from Armond White wasn't likely, but denying his actions really makes me lose a lot of respect for him. We need critics like Armond White around to keep everyone on their toes, but what can his opinion really count for after this?

Part of me wonders if this isn't all an elaborate bit of reverse-psychology, perpetrated by White to improve the Oscar chances of "12 Years a Slave," which is facing a lot of stiff competition. McQueen has a lot of momentum on his side, but he's been a bit awkward in public appearances and the film itself is a notoriously difficult watch. White has now brought more attention to the film and its director, and has set up a great opportunity for Belafonte and McQueen to get a second chance to do things right on a much larger stage.

Anyway, right now matters are still unfolding. Now that he's in the spotlight, Armond White is far from done talking. We're still awaiting a decision from the New York Film Critics Circle regarding disciplinary action. Rumors are still flying about who actually said what, and who actually heard what.

And it's still early in awards season yet.
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The Worst of Lists

It's that time of year when all the critics are putting out the "Best of" lists of all the great movies and films and music and books and webisodes and memes that have come out way since January. I love these lists, because they're a great source of recommendations and never fail to make my "To See" queue considerably longer every December. At the same time, though, "Best of" lists are often accompanied by "Worst of" lists, which I have far more mixed feelings about.

There's no denying that "Worst of" lists are a lot of fun. The critics get to rant about cinematic dreck like "Movie 43" and "A Good Day to Die Hard" and the reader gets to either share in the catharsis or be glad that they dodged a bullet. However, I'm not sure how useful these things are. "Best of" lists, even the ones that have been written by people who haven't seen more than a handful of movies in a given year, are a good way to become informed about films that you might have otherwise overlooked. "Worst of" lists, on the other hand, often depend greatly on how many and what kind of films a viewer has watched over the course of a year.

The trouble is that most dedicated movie fans do their best to avoid bad movies, and it's usually not hard to spot a stinker from a long way off. A Wayans brothers horror parody dumped in a January release date? A spinoff of a popular animated film made by a completely different studio that should have gone straight to DVD? The crumminess is obvious. Most critics who write "Worst of" lists write lists of the worst movies they happen to have seen that year, which avoids the real dregs. The more highbrow the critic, the fewer really awful films they're likely to have subjected themselves to. That's why you see so many "Worst of" lists featuring mediocre, but not awful movies like "Oz, the Great and Powerful," or "Identity Thief." Some of these lists are better described as "Most Disappointing" lists, or "Failed to Live To Expectations" lists.

Of the "Worst of" lists I've seen so far this year, not many have mentioned the notorious "Movie 43" or the similar, but lower profile "InAPPropriate Comedy," which were widely panned across the board by the people who actually saw them. Prestige pictures and foreign films generally seem to be excluded too, since most viewers are less likely to stumble across them accidentally. Critics will go out of their way to include obscurities on "Best of" lists, thus raising their profile and encouraging moviegoers to seek them out. Nobody bothers with the "Worst of" counterparts. This makes sense to an extent, as bad foreign and independent films don't tend to get distribution in the first place. However, a few clunkers do wrangle limited releases every year. One of the lowest rated movies of the year was that Winnie Mandela biopic with Jennifer Hudson, but nobody seems to have bothered to see it.

The long and the short of it is that the "Worst of" lists aren't really the worst films of the year by any reasonable measure. And honestly, it would be counterproductive for critics to really strive to catalog the most awful films of the year the way that they do with the best. We don't want them wasting their time digging up direct-to-video depravities or incompetent film festival rejects . We want their opinions on the films that we might actually be interested in seeing. And sure, there's potential for some nice schadenfreude or commiseration in reading about a poor critic having to sit through "Smurfs 2" or the Justin Bieber movie, but then it also feels kind of pointless. Hollywood puts these movies on three thousand screens across the country because there is a particular audience out there for them, and it doesn't seem fair to judge them the same way we'd judge something like, say, "The Counselor." There are still people out there who genuinely enjoy Adam Sandler movies, and the rest of us should have learned to avoid him long ago.

I've never written a "Worst of" list because I've never been able to quite reconcile these different competing interests. Also, because this isn't my real job, I don't see most of the movies I'm likely to hate anyway. I'll single out a few really disappointing movies and television shows in year-end posts, but worst? I'm just not qualified. I do like reading these lists though, especially from those movie viewers who don't bother trying to be objective at all, but instead use it at an opportunity to vigorously vent their spleen about their worst cinematic experiences of the year and take the time to call out Hollywood on their bad habits.
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Goodbye, Roger

Well, we all knew it was coming, didn't we? Roger Ebert, film critic of the Chicago Sun Times for nearly fifty years, passed away today at the age of 70 after a long battle with cancer. A few days ago he posted an announcement to his blog that he was taking a "leave of presence," reducing his workload significantly after discovering that his cancer had returned. I'm glad he got to say goodbye, even if it wasn't meant to be such a final one.

To say that Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel had a great influence on my development as a movie fan is a massive understatement. It was thanks to years of watching "Siskel & Ebert" every Sunday evening before "60 Minutes" that I understood that you could discuss films seriously, as pieces of art as opposed to entertainment. Of course, they clearly enjoyed the films they reviewed, and Ebert was always the one who was more inclined to stick up for the mainstream blockbusters, the genre pictures, and the oddball efforts. Ebert was, after all, the screenwriter of "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," directed by the supreme 70s schlockmeister, Russ Meyer.

I followed the program up to the bitter end, through the years with Richard Roeper, through the idiot Bens, and through the brief return to form with Michael Phillips and A.O.Scott before it was finally cancelled for good. During grad school I'd even stay up every weekend to watch it in the post-midnight timeslot where the local ABC affiliate had banished it. Fortunately, episodes went online and it was easier to access. A new version of "At the Movies" came along on PBS a few years later with other hosts, but I lost track of it after a few months, and it didn't last much longer after that. I still see movie ads sometimes and find myself expecting to see the once ubiquitous "two thumbs up!" quote pop up somewhere. People used to parody that line to death, but I haven't heard it in years.

I didn't have regular access to Ebert's written reviews for the Sun Times until the internet came along, and soon I became a regular reader, not just of the reviews, but of his columns, the Q&As, the letters, the interviews, festival reports, awards commentary, and much more. His writing was so strong, so personable, so funny, and so inviting. Even after I stopped visiting the site regularly, I still kept up with this blog as best I could. And when I first started writing reviews myself, it was his work I modeled myself after. How long should a movie review be? I checked his stuff and noted that he got the job done in 600-700 words per review. I also noted that he would revisit and write new reviews for older, beloved films. And he would write opinion pieces, simply because he had an opinion that he felt should be shared. And once in a while, he would change his mind.

I so admire the relationship that he had with his readers, the dialogues and discussions that he would have, and his ability to share so much with his fans. When he championed a movie, he would do it passionately and wholeheartedly, no matter what anyone else thought. I remember him getting behind the little-seen science fiction film "Dark City" in 1998, eventually declaring it the best film of the year. My DVD of the film has the commentary track he recorded for it. I probably never would have seen the movie without his recommendation, and now it's one of my favorites.

And then there was his Overlooked Film Festivals, and his shot-by-shot analysis screenings at the University of Chicago, where he taught many classes over the years, and so many other fascinating film events that he was at the center of. I would read the recaps or hear about them from other fans, and wish I could have attended somehow, even though I was always hundreds and hundreds of miles away. It was never hard to find fans of Roger Ebert though. He's clearly the most influential film critic of our times, the most popular and among the most trusted. There's no one who writes about film that hasn't benefited from his success or his example.

We've had a very long time to get used to a world without Roger Ebert. After his illness he was still very active as a film critic, but you could see him slowing down bit by bit, and it was clear he would never recover from the disastrous surgery in 2006 that robbed us of his physical voice. On a recent visit to his site, I was alarmed to see that almost all the recent reviews had been contributed by other critics, notably Richard Roeper. I hurriedly checked his blog to make sure he was still there, that he was still writing.

And then a few days ago we got the announcement of his effective retirement. And now the balcony is closed.
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More Podcast Recs

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, so I thought I'd pass along links to some of the movie-related and television-related ones that I've been enjoying. All of these are free through iTunes or the links below. Enjoy.

The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith - The host is a giant fanboy and it took me a while to get used to his style, but he conducts great Q&As with working screenwriters. Most of the interviews are conducted in conjunction with screenings of the writers' new movies, so after Goldsmith’s done with his questions, there's often a little audience participation too, nicely edited so that there are none of the breaks or the awkward pauses that usually come with live Q&A sessions. I recommend waiting until after you've seen the specific movies being discussed prior to listening to the podcasts, because they focus on the writing process, and how scripts are developed, and what got cut and what got changed on the way to the big screen. This is the side of filmmaking I love I hearing about, and as far as I'm concerned the writers never get as much of the spotlight as they should. Some recent highlights include Joss Whedon on "The Avenger," David O. Russell on "Silver Linings Playbook," and Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee discussing "Wreck-it-Ralph."

SModcast - This pick requires a little filtering. "SModcast" is both the name of a podcast and also a collection of podcasts associated with writer and director Kevin Smith. He's got a bunch of different ones related to the entertainment world, including "Hollywood Babble-On," which is a pretty free-form weekly discussion about current movies and television, "Smoviemakers," where he interviews filmmakers, "Film School Fridays," where he throws down with film students, and the main "SModcast" occasionally has guests like "Looper" director Rian Johnson. Some of the smaller shows aren't updated all that often, or were just kind of abandoned by the wayside after a few installments. However, my favorite at the moment is still going strong, and that's "Fatman on Batman" which is exactly what it sounds like. Kevin Smith geeks out about the Batman universe every week, and the 1992 "Batman: The Animated Series" in particular. He's had one several key members of the cast and crew, including a fantastic two-parter with Mark Hamill. Smith certainly doesn't neglect the comics though. I'm saving the recent Grant Morrison appearance for a rainy day.

Firewall and Iceberg – I've recommended this one before, but it was sort of tacked on to another post, and I really think these guys deserve all the kudos I can give them. Alan Sepinwall and Dan Fienberg are two prominent television critics who host the best television podcast, bar none. These are the guys who know the industry inside out, who understand the inexplicable network decisionmaking, and who can juggle talking about multiple shows, old and new. They'll review each individual episode of the ones they consider the most important, like "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Man," episode by episode, every week. Others only need to be checked in on from time to time. The lousy stuff gets a quick review, and only ever comes up again if there's been a major development. It's amazing the amount of ground these two can cover in a single show, and they don't even run that long. I tend to get more out of one of their ten or fifteen minute episode reviews than the podcasts that spend a whole hour on the same subject. And thanks to them, I know about pilot season, and about press tour, and exactly how “Community” is doing, because they’re just as obsessed about it as I am.

Kermode and Mayo's Film Review – Film critics Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo review films for BBC radio. They do more or less what every other movie review show does, offering their critiques on the new releases, related interviews, and some lively discussion about the recent entertainment news. This one stands out for the personalities and the professionalism. Mark Kermode's quite the character, and I suspect his personality may come across as grating to some, but I find him very informative and entertaining. And because it's the BBC, the show has the clout to get some big names to come by to promote their movies, though at the same time that means you get more actors and fewer directors and writers. It's also nice to hear the perspective of a couple of Brits who are working off of a difference release schedule and aren't as Hollywood oriented as most of the other shows I listen to. I've gotten some great recommendations for smaller films like "Perfect Sense" and “Chico and Rita,” that were higher profile in the UK than in the US, that I might have otherwise missed.
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The List Season

I hear a lot of complaints about the "best of" year end critics' lists, how they're so reductive and they're so repetitive, and how everyone just ends up reinforcing each other's choices. There's a lot of validity to these arguments, but I love year end lists and often I depend on them for recommendations. There hasn't been a single year where I haven't come away from perusing the major and not-so-major critics' lists of the best movies or television shows without having dozens of new titles to add to my personal "to watch" lists. I always hear the same complaints every year around this time about how recent movies have been underwhelming, and there aren't as many good films as there were in years past. And every year, the critics' lists put my fears to rest, because of the sheer scope and volume and variety of different titles.

The professional critics are the most informed members of the media establishment, because it's their job to see and evaluate everything. I try to keep up with all the reviews and the festival reports during the year, but there are always titles that slip through the cracks. The year end lists are a handy aggregation of every critic's biggest recommendations, and a great way to suss out what I've overlooked. I get a huge number of foreign, independent, and documentary titles to look out for, especially the ones that haven't been very high profile. Sure, people are buzzing about "Amour," "Holy Motors," and "Rust and Bone," as possible foreign contenders in the Oscar race this year, but then you have titles like Ann Hui's "A Simple Life," that popped up on Roger Ebert's list today, and Kleber Mendonça Filo's "Neighboring Sounds," a Brazilian drama that appeared on A.O. Scott's. I didn't know either film existed before yesterday. "Bully" and "Searching for Sugar Man" have been the most talked about documentaries, but I'm more excited about tracking down "Detropia," "The Gatekeepers," and "How to Survive a Plague."

Sure, lots of these lists do largely look the same. According to Metacritic, which aggregates many critics' lists and keeps track of how many mentions each films gets, the most popular films of the year among the critical set are "The Master," "Zero Dark Thirty," "Moonrise Kingdom," and "Lincoln," which is not unexpected. However, you're not likely to see many lists that look exactly alike, and there's such a wide range of pictures that make appearances. Crowd-pleasing genre films like "Cabin in the Woods" and "The Raid: Redemption" show up on several lists apiece right alongside obscurities like "Dark Horse" and "Compliance." "Ted" is sitting pretty in the #2 spot of Peter Bradshaw's list, sandwiched right between "The Master" and "Amour." I didn't think much of "The Dark Knight Rises," "Premium Rush," or "Cosmopolis," none of which got a particularly strong reception, but I've seen them on individual lists too, because somebody out there loved them enough to save them a spot.

I tend to trust lists like this more than review aggregators or award wins, because the choices are very personal to a particular reviewer, and the limitation to ten or fifteen or twenty entries means they have to weigh all these different films against each other and weed out the mediocrity. Though they got roughly the same percentage of positive reviews, it's telling that a grand total of nobody put "Hitchcock" on any of these lists, but more than a few found room for "Cloud Atlas." And while every reviewer paid lip service to PIXAR's "Brave," when it came down to it, "Frankenweenie" and "Wreck-It Ralph" emerged as the best regarded mainstream toons of the year. I say mainstream, because there are a pair of independent animated features, Chris Sullivan's "Consuming Spirits" and Don Hertzfeldt's "It's Such a Beautiful Day," that have been picking up a lot of critical buzz despite tiny theatrical runs that didn't even qualify them for the Oscars.

As usual, my own best of the year list won't be ready until next October because I'll be busy tracking down many of these titles. Most people are getting down to the last handful of theatrical releases and ready to call it quits on 2012, but my current "to watch" list still has roughly fifty entries and I don't think I'm done adding to it yet. How could I write an honest list worth a damn without first getting a look at intriguing films like "Chicken With Plums" or "Berberian Sound Studio" or "War Witch"? "Holy Motors" has been such a divisive film, I feel I really should have an opinion on it. After all, at this point last year, I'd only seen six of the films that ultimately ended up on my 2011 Top Ten list. (And more on that in a day or two)

So it may be the end of the year, but for me 2012 movies are just getting started.
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Goodbye to the Nostalgia Critic

It had been a while since I've written about comedian Doug Walker and his web series, "The Nostalgia Critic," where he reviews older movies and television shows aimed at the children of the 80s and 90s. I admire the collection of talent that he and his partners have put together through their production company, Channel Awesome, and the variety of super low-budget programming that they've created for the That Guy With the Glasses website, mostly other media review shows. Once a year, they get all the various contributors together and make an anniversary special, usually a feature-length spoof. This year they did an eight-part web series called "To Boldly Flee," tacking science-fiction films and shows. And in the last installment (spoilers ahead, though the news is everywhere), the character of the Nostalgia Critic was killed off. The next day, Walker posted a video clarifying that he was indeed ending "The Nostalgia Critic" as a weekly show to move on to other, more ambitious projects.

And good for him. There were some signs over the last year that "The Nostalgia Critic" concept was facing a dead end. The show started on Youtube back in 2007, and there have been over 200 episodes produced since. Walker was clearly starting to hit the bottom of the barrel for nostalgic material to review. He pulled a few wild stunts like reviewing every single Disney animated feature during the month of December and gave in to fan requests to review more recent bad media like the live action "Scooby Doo" movie. Before "To Boldly Flee" was released, he appeared in a long string of crossovers with other reviewers on the site. I think Walker could have easily kept the show going for another year or two by changing up some of his criteria, but I'm glad he stopped now before he ran it into the ground completely. Still, it's a pretty gutsy move considering that "The Nostalgia Critic" is far and away the most popular show on the Channel Awesome roster, and brings in the most revenue.

When I first stumbled across the show, I liked Walker enough to keep coming back week after week, but I didn't think there could be enough interest to sustain the efforts of more than one or two of these amateur critics reviewing bad movies and video games. But what did I know? After four years in operation, That Guy With the Glasses and its affiliate sites currently feature over fifty different contributors who tackle everything from comic books to Doctor Who episodes to obscure beverages. Walker's easily the most talented of the bunch, but I also like Lindsay Ellis's "Nostalgia Chick," a "Nostalgia Critic" spinoff that has evolved into something more complex and interesting, and Kyle Kallgren's "Brows Held High," devoted to the dregs of pretentious art house cinema. Walker has also developed a couple of other characters who host their own shows like "Bum Reviews" and "Video Game Confessions," though they aren't nearly as successful or popular as "The Nostalgia Critic." Then again, they've never had nearly the amount of time or attention from Walker.

The rise of Channel Awesome has been fascinating to watch unfold because it is one of the first, rare examples of a group of entertainers who have built a niche for themselves through the internet and attracted a loyal audience completely apart from the traditional models. Similar online talent like video game guru James Rolfe have occasionally partnered with bigger commercial outfits, but Walker has avoided Hollywood completely, supported by a mix of ad revenue and donations. I don't think they even advertise the sites at all, aside from the occasional talent appearances at anime conventions. Walker's stuff is still heavily dependent on Hollywood output because so much of it is commentary on existing media, but there's never a sense that he's beholden to any of the usual media corporate overlords, which is great. He can be as profane and weird and creative as he likes without worrying about stepping on too many toes.

As traditional media has been in the midst of endless upheavals recently, with the doomsayers predicting all sorts of terrible things, it's nice to remember that web-based "new media," is out there. It's not a really viable alternative for most of your entertainment needs yet, but it is making in an impact, especially among the internet-savvy younger audiences. And it's been around long enough now for a guy like Doug Walker to have made a modest success of himself and want to strike out and do new things. So I'll be rooting for his success, not that I think he really needs it. Walker's built up quite a reputation, and I'm sure most of his fans will stick around to see what he comes up with next.
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Sight and Sound's Latest Poll Surprises

After fifty years, "Citizen Kane" has fallen. Yes, the latest once-a-decade Sight & Sound poll from the British Film Institute, that asks international film professionals to choose the best films of all time, has elevated Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" to the top spot. "Citizen Kane," has moved to second place, followed by Ozu's "Tokyo Story" and Jean Renoir's "The Rules of the Game." It's an announcement that means a lot to film historians and academics and the people who like talking about films as art. I'm sure it means very little to the average movie viewer, who hasn't heard of most of the films on the new Top Ten list, which includes entries like Dziga Vertov's experimental film, "Man with a Movie Camera" and F.W. Murnau's "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans." The most recent entry is from 1968: Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey."

This makes sense, though. If you're looking at the development of film art since its inception, you have to take into account the innovations and impact of each film on the others that came after it, and the earlier ones made greater strides comparatively to the ones that came later. One of the reasons that "Citizen Kane" is so highly regarded is because it pioneered or popularized a large number of film techniques that are still in use today. The more recent films are harder to evaluate because it's not always so clear how they contribute to the art of filmmaking, or how they embody its best qualities. Sight & Sound also released a Top 50 list of the runners up (really 52, because of a three-way tie for the last spot), that includes only two films from the new millennium, "Mulholland Dr." and "In the Mood for Love."

Why is this poll such a big deal, though? There are a lot of different organizations and publications that run similar movie polls. The prestige of Sight & Sound's Top Ten comes from its exclusivity and its longevity. The poll has been run every ten years since 1942, and provides a great snapshot of what the major film critics and historians of the day use to measure everything else against. We can see different trends come and go as different films move up and down in the standings. The only film that has been on all seven lists has been "The Rules of the Game." "Battleship Potempkin" is six for seven, edged out this year, but only just. It's currently sitting at 11, and I'm sure it will be back in future lists. Meanwhile, the winner of the first poll in 1952, "Bicycle Thieves," disappeared entirely from the Top Ten after 1962. It came in at 33 in 2012.

There were some other developments that are unique to this particular list. A tweak in the rules required that films that are part of a series should be considered individually, so the first two "Godfather" films," which came in fourth place in 2002, are now 23 and 31 in 2012. The number of participants in this round has also increased dramatically, 846 in all, compared to the 145 who voted in the 2002 poll. We don't know who all of these people are, but the sheer number of new voters suggests that the 2012 list might be a better indicator of critical consensus than some of the lists that have come before. It's hard to be certain without more information, and I hope we get it soon.

So what do I think of the latest poll results? Well, I'm not much of a fan of "Vertigo," and I don't think it's in any way superior to "Citizen Kane." So much of the the film's reputation for greatness seems to be coming from critics hellbent on taking it apart and sussing out meanings that may or may not actually be there. I certainly agree that "Vertigo" is a great film, but I don't buy that it's the best of all time. If I had to pick a Hitchcock film, there are plenty of other contenders. It's hard to argue with most of the other entries. "Rules of the Game" is beyond reproach. I would have preferred a different Murnau, but I understand why "Sunrise" is there. Ditto "8 & 1/2" and "Tokyo Story."

However, I've always disagreed with the amount of praise for "The Searchers," and the newest addition, "Man with a Movie Camera," strikes me as very odd. Sure, it shows off a lot of different film techniques and uses them to enliven its documentary narrative, but it comes across as so gimmicky. If you're curious, back in May I wrote up a post with my own picks for the the new list, the movies I would have voted for. I ended up with two films in common with Sight & Sound, "The Passion of Joan of Arc," and "2001: A Space Odyssey."
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The Reviewer Consensus Problem

The worried murmurs started last week. Did you see that PIXAR's "Brave" racked up three negative reviews out of eleven, bringing its early score down to 73%? As of this morning, it's at 71%, with six negative reviews and fifteen positive ones. The early reviews always tend to skew toward the positive because of marketing pressure, so this would seem to indicate that "Brave" may be in serious trouble with the critics. However, when you read the reviews, they run the gamut from raves to pans, with most falling somewhere in the middle. People are reacting to the film very differently, and there is no apparent consensus. And that's a problem.

One of the deep dark secrets of most movie goers is that we like consensus. We're easily swept up in hype, we like to be part of a mass experience, and we like our reviews and reviewers to be simple and declaratory. We like star ratings and letter grades and Rotten Tomatoes percentages. We want the critical establishment and their opinions to be monolithic, because then it's easier to process and react to them. Analysts and box office watchers who still occasionally believe that the reviews do matter, also find it easier to quantify their impact if they're uniform. The urge to conform can be strong. Witness the mockery and abuse heaped on the few reviewers who didn't like "The Avengers," and the few who defended "Sucker Punch." The trouble is that in most cases there isn't a consensus, and attempts to create the appearance of them can be seriously misleading.

Look at the reviews for "Madagascar 3," our reigning box office champ, currently sitting pretty with a 75% positive review score. Most of the reviews say more or less the same thing - it's a big improvement on the first two "Madagascar" films and exceeds expectations, resulting in positive marks. However, there's still a wide range of opinions about why the film deserved those marks. Some reviewers are adding points for improvement, while others aren't making comparisons to the previous films at all. Some are grading on a curve because the movie is aimed at kids, while others make no such allowances. There are commonalities that you can derive from looking at these reviews in aggregate, but the 75% figure only tells us that 3/4 of the reviewers came out it favor of the film overall. To get a better figure of how much the average reviewer actually enjoyed "Madagascar 3," it would be better to look at Metacritic, which assigns numerical values to each review and averages them to reach a final score, in this case a 59, indicating predominantly mixed reviews.

The only thing the Rottentomatoes score tells us about "Brave" is that there will be no positive consensus on the film, as there have been for the past PIXAR films. And yet the rumors and whispers keep circulating, and I've started to see premature speculation about whether this could make a dent in the box office returns, and whether there might be something seriously amiss at PIXAR to result in two critical misses in a row. In some ways I think this kind of anti-hype is helpful in countering the ridiculously high expectations that some viewers place on the most anticipated new films like "Brave," "Prometheus," and "The Dark Knight Rises." On the other hand, jumping the gun with these kinds of conclusions should be discouraged. There's so much pressure in the entertainment press to be the first in time with analysis, there's been a growing tendency to slap a label on film's performance before it actually has a chance to perform.

I don't think there's too much danger of that happening to "Brave" because it's PIXAR, and their reputation is still very good with the family film-going set. True, this is technically a "princess" film with a female lead, making "Brave" a harder sell to little boys, but that didn't stop Disney's "Tangled." Also, animated family films are notoriously critic-proof. "Cars 2," in spite of all the negative press, still made a respectable $191 million domestically. Meanwhile, the very well received "Kung Fu Panda 2" underperformed with $165 million, and it's unclear whether we'll see that series continue. I have no idea whether the masses will embrace "Brave" or not.

However, right now the small collection of raves for "Brave" sound a lot more convincing to me than all the lukewarm praise for "Madagascar 3." I hope that the Rottentomatoes commenters trying to shout down the negative reviews on the site will get their heads around that idea. Consensus is often illusory, and not worth the trouble. Controversy is often more interesting, or at least more fun.
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