Do professional film critics still matter? Perhaps everyone is now a critic. Maybe everyone is a journalist.
As the legend of Saint Pauline confirms, the formal critic who published words on paper certainly used to count. Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde did not receive universal raves on its release in 1967. It took a lengthy New Yorker piece by Pauline Kael, published more than two months after the premiere, for the critical tide to turn. Mark Harris, writing in his 2008 book Scenes from a Revolution, sees Kael’s piece as partially a response to Bosley Crowther’s negative notice in the New York Times. Crowther was fired. Bonnie and Clyde belatedly became a sensation. Kael was seen as such a player she was subsequently offered a (short-lived, as it happened) job as consultant to Paramount Pictures.
Over half a century later, the first UK screenings of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie — eventually a colossal hit — are largely for the benefit of influencers. “Feel free to share your positive feelings about the film on Twitter [as it then already wasn’t] after the screening,” attendees were told. There are no reports of dissenters politely asking how free they can feel about sharing negative feelings. In the olden days, producers of films and plays would rush to the news stand before daybreak to get the early notices. It is commonplace now for embargoes to expire earlier for social media than for conventional, full-length reviews. The strategy seems clear. Punters piling out of glossy premieres — some a bit smug about seeing the film before the uninvited — have proved more likely to rave than pointy-headed reviewers swelling their 600 words. To be fair, Barbie did end up getting excellent reviews, but many are the blockbusters that, after initial Twitter hysteria, land to a squelch with the critics. Writing in the Guardian, critic Manuela Lazic argued, pungently, that the strategy is to “ensure that the most dubious potential spectators would be persuaded to turn up to the cinema on the opening weekend”. Who cares if the dubes don’t like the thing? The cash that matters is taken in the first three days. Before you can blink, the movie has made its way to streamers.
For all the benefits last summer’s portmanteau brought to Oppenheimer don’t count on that happening again
It is hard to imagine studios now paying any significant attention to a high-brow magazine review published weeks after the film has left cinemas. Mind you, it is difficult to see an adult drama like Bonnie and Clyde being any sort of smash in the current climate. It would take a once-in-a-lifetime freak of publicity. A BarbieClyde moment if you will. For all the benefits last summer’s portmanteau brought to Oppenheimer don’t count on that happening again.
That is not to say film critics don’t matter at all in the economics of blockbuster distribution. In one brutally reductive sense, they have greater collective significance than ever. Find me a critic who is happy about the Rotten Tomatoes phenomenon and I’ll show you one who has given up. Launched in 1998, that site aggregates worldwide reviews — from the nerdiest blog to the snootiest national broadsheet — into a single percentage that indicates “fresh” or “rotten”. Fans of franchise pictures develop obsessions with what Rotten Tomatoes “thinks”. Differences between critics and audience scores are touted as evidence of rampaging elitism. Last September, Vulture published an exposé arguing that the “most overrated metric in movies is erratic, reductive, and easily hacked — and yet has Hollywood in its grip”. Critics are, as far as many viewers are concerned, just components in a vast hive mind — a less glamorous version of the Borg from Star Trek. And everyone hates them.
The sheer bile that some reviews generate confirms a reach and resonance no social post can match
Yet individual film critics do still matter. You will get a sense of that by looking at a poster for the latest well-received release. Distributors have tried whacky, supposedly democratic scams like printing random Twitter recommendations — “Mind-blowing” @Babboonballs876 — but they always come back to quoting old-school critics from what, alas, we must call legacy publications. The current advert for Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla features, for example, a terse (but representative) “enchanting” from The Irish Times. The public still sees some distinction between a traditional source and a user-generated impression.
The sheer bile that some reviews generate confirms a reach and resonance no social post can match. Observe what recently became of Angelica Jade Bastién when, also writing in Vulture, she dared to comment negatively on Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé. The internet raised torches and stomped furiously about her encampment for days. “Her critique, which contributed to an unjustified drop in the film’s Rotten Tomatoes score, fundamentally misunderstands the essence of Beyoncé's vision,” one Gunner Doyle wrote. (The RT score plummeted to a mere 97 per cent.)
The best reviews will excite those who have no interest in seeing the film under consideration
All this is so much hot air. Critics still have some power that really matters. Reviews may do little to boost or hinder the financial performance of superhero behemoths, but they can have a significant effect on the performance of independent films. Celine Song’s delicate romance Past Lives — a romance with no stars derived from no familiar source — has, in 2023, steadily accrued $20 million (€18 million) on the back of consistently strong reviews following its debut at the Sundance Film Festival. Critics formed the early thin end of a supportive wedge that eventually won sizeable returns and an Oscar nomination for Colm Bairéad’s An Cailín Ciúin. Independent cinema still relies strongly on recognised voices from established outlets.
And there is something else. Much of the argument above is predicated on the assumption that to “matter” a critic must demonstrate an ability to affect audience numbers and financial returns. But film reviews are — or should be — more than a mere buyer’s guide. The best reviews will excite those who have no interest in seeing the film under consideration. They will excite those who have already seen the film (and who disagree with the critic’s take). Pauline Kael’s collected reviews are lucratively in print long after many of the films discussed have faded into obscurity.
Dare one say it. The best criticism justifies its own existence.
Does the world still need professional critics like me?
7
16
30.12.2023
Do professional film critics still matter? Perhaps everyone is now a critic. Maybe everyone is a journalist.
As the legend of Saint Pauline confirms, the formal critic who published words on paper certainly used to count. Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde did not receive universal raves on its release in 1967. It took a lengthy New Yorker piece by Pauline Kael, published more than two months after the premiere, for the critical tide to turn. Mark Harris, writing in his 2008 book Scenes from a Revolution, sees Kael’s piece as partially a response to Bosley Crowther’s negative notice in the New York Times. Crowther was fired. Bonnie and Clyde belatedly became a sensation. Kael was seen as such a player she was subsequently offered a (short-lived, as it happened) job as consultant to Paramount Pictures.
Over half a century later, the first UK screenings of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie — eventually a colossal hit — are largely for the benefit of influencers. “Feel free to share your positive feelings about the film on Twitter [as it then already wasn’t] after the screening,” attendees were told. There are no reports of dissenters politely asking how free they can feel about sharing negative feelings. In the olden days, producers of films and plays would rush to the news stand before daybreak to get the early notices. It is commonplace now for embargoes to expire earlier for social media than for conventional, full-length reviews. The strategy seems clear. Punters piling out of glossy premieres — some a bit smug about seeing the film before the uninvited — have proved more likely to rave than pointy-headed reviewers........
© The Irish Times
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Mort Laitner
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
