So What Do You Want Film Fans?

Film reviewers/critics have several point-of-view options when writing their reviews:

• to educate
• to assess
• to inform
• to provide comedy
• to persuade  (feel free to comment with more...)

These options usually focus on the actual writing and the readers/audience. Not many readers can name many film critics. The individual movie critic has mainly disappeared from high rated television shows and now gets his or her notoriety/interest by association with several films. Good and bad, the critics take on a film garners positive or negative responses or even response that miss the filmmaker's point(s) entirely, which is fine. We can also make predictions. Passion for writing and film should be the only requirements for film reviewers/critics.

However the format changes, the entire discourse dictates that there will always be a need for critics, but ultimately, nothing is going to stop most people from seeing the film they want to see. Reviewers consider the desire when choosing which film to review. Should reviewers just concentrate on their audience like movie studios depend on their test screenings? Probably not because people are very fickle as well. So where to go? 

Well, as the now retired actor Peter O'Toole said in Ratatouille as Anton Ego; it's the "perspective" or, in the case of moviereviewintelligence.com and metacritic.com, the association. Anton's quote says it best:

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."