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fallinditch 4 hours ago [-]
Do film critics ever 'dial it in' without properly (or actually) watching the film?
I love Mark Kermode as a critic, normally, but for his review of Triangle of Sadness (imo a great film!) I don't think he was paying attention, or was even there.
When David Lynch’s “Inland Empire” first came out, my friend invited me to come with for a screening. The film had barely started when I heard a loud snore in the empty cinema: he had fallen asleep. Woke up a couple of minutes before the credits rolled.
The review was published a couple of days later - it was as good and engagingly written as it could be, and if I didn’t know, I’d never have guessed he just actually slept through it all.
Papazsazsa 6 hours ago [-]
Interesting to see this on HN, I'd be curious to know OP's rationale, but I'm glad they posted it.
Film criticism itself has suffered greatly in recent memory; at the end of the day, whatever trouble a critic might have gone to to watch, process, and articulate their thoughts on a given film is now reduced almost entirely to a number on Rotten Tomatoes.
Slow_Hand 6 hours ago [-]
Good movie criticism is alive and well. You simply need to expand your vision beyond anyone who relies on Rotten Tomatoes or (probably) Letterbox. That's probably not it.
Youtube is a great place to start looking. It has a lot of trash, but there are some extraordinary essayists and writers giving robust and insightful looks into films new and old.
These channels (expect for #2) all diverge from straightforward reviews, but what they give you are the tools to articulate what the film is doing, how it is doing it, and therefore equip you to become your own critic. Someone capable of thinking critically.
AlexandrB 5 hours ago [-]
I think a bit problem with any kind of art criticism in 2026, especially on YouTube, is audience capture. It's rare to find analysis that examines a piece as it is without dipping into some kind of political angle. A few channels try, but you get more clicks by choosing a side in the culture war and catering to those that agree with you. Once you go down this road, woe be to you if you stray from the path - your audience will turn on you in an instant.
I think this effect is worse on YouTube because YouTube creators live or die by the algorithm. There's no organization backstopping them if they publish something their audience doesn't like.
While David Bordwell sadly passed, his blog is still a great resource (books, too!) and actively updated: https://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/
cptroot 37 minutes ago [-]
Film Crit Hulk continues to put out good essays on film and much more besides, over on Patreon [1]. I agree that finding good critique is hard now that we're past the heyday of magazine critique.
I think Dan Olson and Folding Ideas is doing a fantastic job of bringing thoughtful criticism to all kinds of modern media, most recently Mr. Beast Games.
Does film criticism even matter anymore? There used to more cost and friction associated with watching a movie and so good critics provided a useful gatekeeping service. But now with most people using streaming services (or pirating) if you don't like something it's easy to turn it off and watch something else.
F7F7F7 6 hours ago [-]
Not sure what OPs reasoning was but you have to wonder if this far-more-human type of film criticism will see a revival in the age of AI assisted writing.
I always like to remind people that before talk heads were battling it out on cable news or ESPN we had Siskel and Ebert shaking things up. They made me realize that movies could carry subtext, nuance and meaning. They made reading ABOUT movies more interesting.
TFNA 6 hours ago [-]
Siskel and Ebert the TV show was a good example of the dumbing down of criticism; that trend started already before the internet age. The twentieth-century American television medium simply didn't allow much informational depth and nuance. (Edit: after I posted this comment, I saw that the show's Wikipedia article notes that it attracted such criticsm, so it's not just my own opinion.) Ebert's newspaper criticism was rather better.
Papazsazsa 3 hours ago [-]
This is a great insight. Taste is the human moat.
msla 5 hours ago [-]
The problem with "criticism" from the perspective of the average person is that "Is this film worth my time and money" isn't really a question criticism answers. The linked article touches on this when it bemoans "the consumer guide approach" but until we firmly separate criticism from reviewing we're bound to keep going around and around on this.
bandofthehawk 3 hours ago [-]
I think that's not true for me and a lot of other people. If I read a specific criticism/review of a movie or book I often make a decision not based on good/bad but based on what the criticism is about. If a movie has slow pacing for example, I might be ok with that depending on the mood I'm in.
I'm not sure what you mean by separating review from criticism. Can you expand on that?
TLDR AI summary : the essay functions as a eulogy of sorts for serious film criticism — mourning the conditions that once allowed critics to matter culturally, while holding up Hamrah as a stubborn, perhaps quixotic example of what that tradition looked like at its most uncompromising.
I really like authors that respect their readers enough to put the summary at the top of their articles. Do people really just go around reading large blocks of random text they find on the internet hoping they'll find it interesting?
projektfu 3 hours ago [-]
I'll be honest, I tired of the article after a while, but I found your AI summary to be unrewarding. In the few paragraphs I read I got a feeling for some of Hamrah's personality. I don't think I would have expected that given the summary.
analogpixel 2 hours ago [-]
The thing about summaries is they should give you enough information to tell you what you are about to read, and if that would be something you are interested in pursing. It gives your brain some context of something to latch onto when you start reading.
"He Lost It at the Movies" means nothing to me, and even after I knew what the article was about still means nothing to be, it's no more than click bait. The summary on the other hand, gives you enough context to know what the writer was even trying to write about.
AlexandrB 5 hours ago [-]
> Do people really just go around reading large blocks of random text they find on the internet hoping they'll find it interesting?
Yes. That's why I'm on substack. Good writing can be a pleasure to read even if it's about something I don't care all that much about. A summary can tell you about the subject matter, but fails to capture the quality of the writing itself.
To put it another way: I'd rather read an idlewords post about taking a Russian boat to the Antarctic[1] - something I care little about as a subject - than read AI generated slop about some Python programming subject that's immediately relevant to my career.
I guess you are not alone in wanting to fill you mind with random bits of nothing; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48269580 <-- here is an article voted up that is just a list of random host names with no context to anything else.
convolvatron 3 hours ago [-]
I have seen an a stunningly large amount of anti-intellectualism on HN recently, but suggesting that writing as whole has no more value than a random list of words has to be really quite up there
analogpixel 3 hours ago [-]
The post with the random hostnames was ranked higher than this post of "intelligently meaningful words", so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
also taking: "suggesting that writing as whole has no more value than a random list of words" from me just saying it'd be nice to know what I was reading before I spent the time reading it seems kind of melodramatic.
5 hours ago [-]
hank808 2 hours ago [-]
"...came to widespread attention in the late 2000s..." Weird. I thought we were all living in the year 2026, which seems like the early 2000s to me. Huh...
Shuang1 2 hours ago [-]
I think it's pretty obvious that we refer to more recent times like this, e.g. 2000s, 2010s, 2020s.
hank808 2 hours ago [-]
Nope. 2000s would refer to the century. We're still in the 2000s and still early. The Wright brothers flew the first plane in the early 1900s. Accurate. Ford introduced the Model T in the late 1900s, inaccurate. 1908 was not the late 1900s.
hank808 2 hours ago [-]
I watched this until I saw the first down vote, 5 minutes later. Would anyone refer to the year 1909 as "the late 1900s?" Nope.
I love Mark Kermode as a critic, normally, but for his review of Triangle of Sadness (imo a great film!) I don't think he was paying attention, or was even there.
See here https://youtu.be/ciJnhGNPS60 am I right?
Film criticism itself has suffered greatly in recent memory; at the end of the day, whatever trouble a critic might have gone to to watch, process, and articulate their thoughts on a given film is now reduced almost entirely to a number on Rotten Tomatoes.
Youtube is a great place to start looking. It has a lot of trash, but there are some extraordinary essayists and writers giving robust and insightful looks into films new and old.
Off the top of my head:
1. House of Tabula - Essays on art and culture, with a heavy emphasis on film, old and new. https://www.youtube.com/@TheHouseofTabula/videos
2. Deep Dive - Lewis from House of Tabula doing 10-15 min reviews of recent theatrical releases: https://www.youtube.com/@DEEPDIVETHOT/videos
3. Spikima Movies https://www.youtube.com/@SpikimaMovies/videos
4. Thomas Flight https://www.youtube.com/@ThomasFlight/videos
These channels (expect for #2) all diverge from straightforward reviews, but what they give you are the tools to articulate what the film is doing, how it is doing it, and therefore equip you to become your own critic. Someone capable of thinking critically.
I think this effect is worse on YouTube because YouTube creators live or die by the algorithm. There's no organization backstopping them if they publish something their audience doesn't like.
Wow, great channel. Addresses[1] some of what I said with much more insight than I could.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_-t3i6ipz4
I come back to this video once a year to renew my spirit and orient myself.
The Dissolve alumni are all (mostly) writing at various publications: https://thedissolve.com/
While David Bordwell sadly passed, his blog is still a great resource (books, too!) and actively updated: https://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/
[1] https://www.patreon.com/filmcrithulk
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyNtlmLB73-7gtlBz00XOQQ
I always like to remind people that before talk heads were battling it out on cable news or ESPN we had Siskel and Ebert shaking things up. They made me realize that movies could carry subtext, nuance and meaning. They made reading ABOUT movies more interesting.
I'm not sure what you mean by separating review from criticism. Can you expand on that?
I really like authors that respect their readers enough to put the summary at the top of their articles. Do people really just go around reading large blocks of random text they find on the internet hoping they'll find it interesting?
"He Lost It at the Movies" means nothing to me, and even after I knew what the article was about still means nothing to be, it's no more than click bait. The summary on the other hand, gives you enough context to know what the writer was even trying to write about.
Yes. That's why I'm on substack. Good writing can be a pleasure to read even if it's about something I don't care all that much about. A summary can tell you about the subject matter, but fails to capture the quality of the writing itself.
To put it another way: I'd rather read an idlewords post about taking a Russian boat to the Antarctic[1] - something I care little about as a subject - than read AI generated slop about some Python programming subject that's immediately relevant to my career.
[1] https://idlewords.com/2016/10/cape_adare.htm
also taking: "suggesting that writing as whole has no more value than a random list of words" from me just saying it'd be nice to know what I was reading before I spent the time reading it seems kind of melodramatic.