Open Forum Friday: Who is Your Favourite Film Critic?
In the past we’ve had some discussions on Film Junk about the role that movie critics play, and whether or not anyone actually cares what they think anymore. While their usefulness may be diminishing for the average moviegoer, I do think that most hardcore movie fans still tend to read reviews, if not to help them decide what to see, then to help contextualize and digest a movie afterwards.
With aggregation sites like Rotten Tomatoes, people see a broad overview of the general reaction that a particular movie is getting. However, that broad overview simply can’t compete with the full analysis of a single movie critic that you know and trust. Once you find someone who has a similar taste and perspective on movies, you tend to stick with them and compare their opinion with others. Since it’s kind of a personal thing, I thought this might make for an interesting discussion.
I’ll kick things off by telling you who my personal favourite is: James Berardinelli of Reelviews. I’m not sure why, but I have found that I tend to see eye to eye with him on a lot of things. It may have something to do with the fact that we are both overly logical (he comes from an engineering background), but I also like the fact that he is an independent reviewer doing it out of his own personal interest, with no real ties to the “industry”. So go ahead and tell us, who’s your own go to guy? Is Ebert’s thumb still the be all and end all of film criticism? Give us your thoughts here on Open Forum Friday.
