Film Criticism: What Is It Good For?

Lately I’ve been pondering just what exactly I use film criticism for and what implications, if any, this has for what I do here at this blog. I came up with the following eight functions that it performs for me:

1. To help me select movies to watch. I try to see one film in theaters each week, and when deciding which one to choose I find it helpful to quickly scan festival dispatches and reviews to get a sense for how everything playing in Ithaca has been received. What I’m looking for here is evidence of quality and significance: which of them are the most likely to contain something I’ve never seen or heard before and/or open my mind to new ideas and feelings? Positive indicators include strong opinions by critics whose opinions I respect, success on the festival circuit, and association with national cinemas, film movements, etc. that I want to know more about. Capsule reviews and articles that mention multiple titles work just fine for this, and I don’t usually need or want to read anything closely at this point, so the ratings provided by review aggregators like Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes are useful here for identifying example positive and negative reactions. My other go-to tool for this kind of research is the Film Blogs, Etc. 2.0 Google Custom Search Engine I created a few years ago. The main thing I need is to be able to search by title, which makes text superior to formats like podcasts and video essays, except where the latter are well-indexed so that I can identify where they talk about the film I’m interested in. This all goes for new movies I watch at home via streaming video or physical media as well either because they never screened theatrically in Ithaca or because I missed them. Here, though, it’s also helpful here when people clearly state “see this movie now playing on platform x!” like Bilge Ebiri did on Twitter with Athena or like Manohla Dargis did by including Kimi in her “Best Films of 2022, So Far” selections for the New York Times, since I might not otherwise know to go looking for them.
2. To check my own impressions of a film I just watched against that of the critical community. Sometimes, but not always, I seek out reviews immediately after I see a movie. The question I’m trying to answer here is typically “what am I missing?” because I’m curious about either why I haven’t heard more about a movie I liked or what others valued in one I didn’t. Capsule reviews and festival dispatches still work just fine here (the Chicago Reader‘s capsule reviews from the Dave Kehr/Jonathan Rosenbaum era, which are discoverable via Film Blogs, Etc. 2.0, are great for this for older films), but this is a situation where I will read longer reviews closely and where I’d be happy to spend time listening to a podcast episode or watching a video essay. Again, though, I need to be able to find them in the first place, so searchability remains key. In addition to the tools I use for category one research, I will also consult the indexes of the film books I own in the case of older titles as well.
3. To conduct more in-depth research into specific directors, film movements, movies, etc. When I am moved to learn more about a specific film topic in order to write about it myself or just because, I supplement all the resources I use for category one and two research with the books and databases I have access to as an employee of Cornell University. Which: I definitely think I take the fact that I’ve worked somewhere I can pop up- or downstairs to grab a book out of the PN 1995 range of a library’s stacks pretty much continually since 2000 for granted! While these types of works are often written by critics, this is where we cross into the domain of academic film studies. In any event, my overarching goal here is to gain an understanding of what has been published on a given topic. I’m also always glad to come across pieces like Kristin Thompson’s recent deep dive into Men and Dan Kois’s discussion of the supernatural elements of Tár when doing this kind of research.
4. To learn more about how movies WORK. There is a theoretical aspect to this category which is again often the domain of film studies, but lately I’ve found myself consulting videos that I find on YouTube and elsewhere which describe how to execute specific filmmaking techniques by way of better practical understanding what I’m seeing in my viewing adventures and so that I can write about movies accurately. This is particularly important to me when working on something for Educational Media Reviews Online or another “real” publication (i.e. not this blog). To cite a point of confusion I see fairly regularly, I don’t want to be guilty of mislabeling a dolly shot as a zoom or vice versa. As with the categories above, I’m typically researching specific topics here and it would be lovely if someone created a handbook specifically for people like me who write about film, but would there actually be a market for such a thing? Or is this something like the snapshot button for screengrabs that I want on all streaming video platforms, but which the vendor community assures me no one else does?
5. To stay informed about what’s going on in the world of film generally. I try to keep up with what’s happening on the festival circuit and the hot topics du jour by subscribing to film magazines like Cineaste and Cinema Scope, newsletters like Film Comment (which I hope will be a magazine again someday soon), and blogs like David Hudson’s invaluable Criterion Daily and MUBI’s Notebook. This category is unique from the ones above in that I’m NOT looking for anything in particular here initially, but it’s adjacent to category one in that these resources are often how I learn about films available via streaming. All of this is why I listen to podcasts which cover current films such as The Cinematologists and The Film Comment Podcast, too.
6. To help me improve my own film writing. I happily acknowledge that my writing has plenty of room for growth, and I try to make time for re-reading books like Negative Space: Manny Farber on the Movies expressly to learn from them. There are also many critics whose reviews I’ll read closely from start to finish even if I’m just figuring out what to see or if I’ve already answered the question that inspired me to read more about something I just watched because I enjoy the way they think and write.
7. For pleasure. One of the reasons I consume film criticism is of course because I enjoy it! I read many books about movies just because they sound interesting, and podcasts like Karina Longworth’s You Must Remember This and Rico Gagliano’s MUBI Podcast are my favorite things to listen to while walking to and from work.
8. To be part of a community. I really should make more of an effort to engage with my fellow cinephiles! After all, there is absolutely no substitute for seeing a movie, then repairing to a diner or bar to talk about it, and the virtual equivalent of this is better than nothing. Even if there’s likely to be a limit on how many people I can convince to accompany me to any given screening at my beloved local theaters Cinemapolis and Cornell Cinema, plenty of people are willing to travel to upstate New York for events like the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival and the Nitrate Picture Show and I want them to drop me a line when they do.

Now comes the tricky part: so what? First off, it’s now obvious to me that my personal brand of cinephile still has theatrical moviegoing at its core. I may spend way more hours watching things on the TV in my own living room than I do on the big screen with other people, but as a child of the home video era, that has always been true for me. In the meantime, I think the time I spend picking out one film each week to see after work and trying to formulate intelligent thoughts about it afterward is probably what makes cinephile more of a PURSUIT for me than just a proclivity. Take that away, and maybe this blog ceases to exist: see by way of evidence the apparently direct correlation between how many movies I see in theaters and how much I post here.

I am reminded by this exercise just how valuable it is to talk about what I’m listening to and reading! The only reason I know about the Slate article by Dan Kois I mention above, for instance, is because Glenn Kenny mentioned it in his “Notable Films of 2022” blog post. I obviously believe that film blogs still have a place in the world of 2023, but they need care and feeding. Hopefully this post is a step in that direction. On a related note, I fully expected one of my conclusions to be that maybe the time has come to finally check out Letterboxd. I’m still not sure I see a void that it would fill, though, at least not as long as Twitter continues to exist in more or less its current form and people like Glenn, the other folks mentioned in this post, and additional denizens of my RSS feed like Zach Campbell continue to plug away at their blogs. I don’t personally feel the need to catalog EVERYTHING I’m seeing, and if I have other ways to plug into the film community outside of Ithaca, what would it do for me? What would be great is if one of the review aggregators would start including “top critics” from Letterboxd on their platform or if someone else would perform a similar service.

Last but not least, one important through-line I see here is the utility of specialization. Although I was surprised to see how many uses I identified for podcasts, the distinguishing feature of all the ones I listen to is that they are film-specific. This kind of focus is also what differentiates, for instance, the people I follow on Twitter and/or add to my Film Crickets list from the ones I don’t. I absolutely do not think that film writers need to restrict themselves just to talking about movies, but for a feed to be useful, the majority of content on it has to be on topic. Ditto for search results, which: this is something that I very much hope the creators of podcasts and video essays are thinking about! Sometimes I’m waiting for the next episode, but usually I’m looking for information about a title, person, or technique. Full-text transcripts with timestamps would be ideal for this, but failing that a good index is essential.