Suddenly, the amateur critic wasn't a voice of liberation. They were just... cheap labor for SEO. You might be thinking, "I don't need a critic to tell me if a movie is good. I have a 92% on the Tomatometer."
Why Your Hot Take on Morbius Owes Everything to a Dead White Guy in a Bowtie
Enter a few stubborn visionaries.
Because the next time you type "This movie slaps" or "This movie sucks," remember: You are participating in a century-old argument. And thanks to the rebels in this documentary, that argument is a sacred one.
But then the business model collapsed. Newspapers fired their veteran critics to save money. The documentary shows a montage of empty desks. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Rocky Mountain News. The voices that had spent 30 years learning the history of cinema were replaced by generic wire service roundups or algorithmically generated "what to watch" lists. for the love of movies the story of american film criticism
We live in the age of the “amateur critic.” Scroll through Twitter, Letterboxd, or TikTok for five minutes, and you’ll find a thousand hot takes. We all have a star-rating system built into our thumbs.
But For the Love of Movies makes a subtle, powerful argument: Suddenly, the amateur critic wasn't a voice of liberation
Without critics like Kael and Sarris, we wouldn't have the vocabulary to argue about "cinematography" or "pacing" or "subtext." Without Ebert, we wouldn't have the empathy to sit through a slow foreign film.
Suddenly, the amateur critic wasn't a voice of liberation. They were just... cheap labor for SEO. You might be thinking, "I don't need a critic to tell me if a movie is good. I have a 92% on the Tomatometer."
Why Your Hot Take on Morbius Owes Everything to a Dead White Guy in a Bowtie
Enter a few stubborn visionaries.
Because the next time you type "This movie slaps" or "This movie sucks," remember: You are participating in a century-old argument. And thanks to the rebels in this documentary, that argument is a sacred one.
But then the business model collapsed. Newspapers fired their veteran critics to save money. The documentary shows a montage of empty desks. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Rocky Mountain News. The voices that had spent 30 years learning the history of cinema were replaced by generic wire service roundups or algorithmically generated "what to watch" lists.
We live in the age of the “amateur critic.” Scroll through Twitter, Letterboxd, or TikTok for five minutes, and you’ll find a thousand hot takes. We all have a star-rating system built into our thumbs.
But For the Love of Movies makes a subtle, powerful argument:
Without critics like Kael and Sarris, we wouldn't have the vocabulary to argue about "cinematography" or "pacing" or "subtext." Without Ebert, we wouldn't have the empathy to sit through a slow foreign film.