Film criticism
Encyclopedia
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of film
s, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspaper
s, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory
and published in journals.
s working for newspaper
s, magazine
s, broadcast media, and online publications, mainly review new releases. The plot summary and description of a film that makes up the majority of any film review can have an important impact on whether people decide to see a film. Poor reviews can doom a film to obscurity and financial loss.
In recent times, the impact reviews have on a film's box office
performance and DVD rentals/sales have become a matter for debate. There are those who think modern movie marketing
, using pop culture convention appearances and social media along with traditional means of advertising, have become so invasive and well financed that established reviewers with legitimate criticism cannot be heard over the din of popular support. Moreover, this has led, in part, to a decline in the readership of many reviewers for newspapers and other print publications. The vast majority of film critics on television and radio have all but disappeared over the last thirty years, as well. It can be observed that most of the discussion of film on television is focused on the amount of box office business a film does, as if financial success were the only criterion needed to define artistic success. Today arts criticism in general does not hold the same place it once held with the general public.
Conversely, it's been claimed positive film reviews have been known to spark interest in little-known films. For example, independent films with smaller marketing budgets, such as The Hurt Locker
, are promoted more widely thanks to the positive reviews they received. There are those who believe critics are biased towards art-house films (examples: The Hurt Locker
, Blue Valentine
) and against commercial blockbusters (examples: Pirates of the Caribbean
, Cowboys and Aliens
). However, many critics analyze a film by its inexhaustibility, or the range of its impact and appeal on to generations of fans beyond its original release date.
Today, fan-run film analysis websites like Box Office Prophets
and Box Office Guru routinely factor in general public film review opinion with those of more experienced reviewers in their projections of a film. Other websites, such as Rotten Tomatoes
, combines all reviews on a specific film published online and in print to come up with an aggregated rating known as a "freshness rate."
and Metacritic
, seek to improve the usefulness of film reviews by compiling them and assigning a score to each in order to gauge the general reception a film receives. Other sites such as Spill.com
review sites with ratings such as "rent it" or "matinée" to tell the viewer in what setting to watch the film rather than a numerical score. The Online Film Critics Society
, an international professional association of Internet-based cinema reviewers, consists of writers from all over the world.
A number of websites allow internet users to submit movie reviews and scores to allow a broad consensus review of a movie. Some websites specialize in narrow aspects of film reviewing. For instance, there are sites that focus on specific content advisories for parents to judge a film's suitability for children (e.g. Screen it!). Others focus on a religious perspective (e.g. CAP Alert). Still others highlight more esoteric subjects such as the depiction of science
in fiction films. One such example is Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics by Intuitor
. One website, Everyone's a Critic
, allows anyone to publish film reviews and comment on them. There are even websites for special interest groups such as the Christian review site, Movieguide.
Blogging has also introduced opportunities for a new wave of amateur film critics to have their opinions heard. These review blogs may focus on one genre, director or actor, or encompass a much wider variety of films. Friends, friends of friends, or complete strangers are able to visit these sites, and can often leave their own comments about the movie and/or the author's review. Although much less frequented than their professional counterparts, these sites can gather a following of like-minded people who look to specific bloggers for reviews as they have found that the critic consistently exhibits an outlook very similar to their own.
Community driven review sites have allowed the common movie goer to express their opinion on films. Many of these sites allow users to rate films on a 0 to 10 scale, while some rely on the star rating system of 0-5 or 0-4 four stars. The votes are then culled into an overall rating and ranking for any particular film. Some of these community driven review sites include Flixster
, FilmCrave
, Flickchart
, and RottenTomatoes.
or film studies
. These film critics try to come to understand why film works, how it works, what it means, and what effects it has on people. Rather than write for mass-market publications their articles are published in scholarly journals that tend to be affiliated with university presses; or sometimes in up-market magazines.
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
s, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory
Film theory
Film theory is an academic discipline that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large...
and published in journals.
Journalistic criticism
Film criticCritic
A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...
s working for newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
s, magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
s, broadcast media, and online publications, mainly review new releases. The plot summary and description of a film that makes up the majority of any film review can have an important impact on whether people decide to see a film. Poor reviews can doom a film to obscurity and financial loss.
Reviews and film marketing
Traditionally, film reviews have been seen as a way to assess the artistic merit and public appeal of a movie. Filmgoers use reviews to help them determine whether to view a particular film. As the number of film fans following the advice of reviewers grew, film companies saw profits diminish across a broader number of films. In order to counter this development, film studios increased marketing budgets and avenues of marketing to create more interest in a movie prior to the opening.In recent times, the impact reviews have on a film's box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
performance and DVD rentals/sales have become a matter for debate. There are those who think modern movie marketing
Movie marketing
Film promotion is the practice of promotion specifically in the film industry. As with all business it is an important part of any release because of the inherent high financial risk; film studios will invest in expensive marketing campaigns to maximize revenue early in the release cycle. Marketing...
, using pop culture convention appearances and social media along with traditional means of advertising, have become so invasive and well financed that established reviewers with legitimate criticism cannot be heard over the din of popular support. Moreover, this has led, in part, to a decline in the readership of many reviewers for newspapers and other print publications. The vast majority of film critics on television and radio have all but disappeared over the last thirty years, as well. It can be observed that most of the discussion of film on television is focused on the amount of box office business a film does, as if financial success were the only criterion needed to define artistic success. Today arts criticism in general does not hold the same place it once held with the general public.
Conversely, it's been claimed positive film reviews have been known to spark interest in little-known films. For example, independent films with smaller marketing budgets, such as The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker is a 2009 American war film about a three-man United States Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team during the Iraq War. The film was directed by Kathryn Bigelow and the screenplay was written by Mark Boal, a freelance writer who was embedded as a journalist in 2004 with a US bomb...
, are promoted more widely thanks to the positive reviews they received. There are those who believe critics are biased towards art-house films (examples: The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker is a 2009 American war film about a three-man United States Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team during the Iraq War. The film was directed by Kathryn Bigelow and the screenplay was written by Mark Boal, a freelance writer who was embedded as a journalist in 2004 with a US bomb...
, Blue Valentine
Blue Valentine
Blue Valentine is an album by Tom Waits, first released in 1978 on Asylum. The woman pictured with Waits on the back cover is Rickie Lee Jones, another singer/songwriter with whom he was having a relationship at the time....
) and against commercial blockbusters (examples: Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean is a multi-billion dollar Walt Disney franchise encompassing a series of films, a theme park ride, and spinoff novels as well as numerous video games and other publications. The franchise originates with the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, which opened at Disneyland in...
, Cowboys and Aliens
Cowboys & Aliens (film)
Cowboys & Aliens is a 2011 American science fiction Western film directed by Jon Favreau and starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Olivia Wilde. The film is based on the 2006 graphic novel of the same name created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg...
). However, many critics analyze a film by its inexhaustibility, or the range of its impact and appeal on to generations of fans beyond its original release date.
Today, fan-run film analysis websites like Box Office Prophets
Box Office Prophets
Box Office Prophets is a web site that contains movie-related features and information. Debuting on July 25, 2001, the site is a de facto sequel to the now-defunct the-prophets.com, a movie web site started in 1998...
and Box Office Guru routinely factor in general public film review opinion with those of more experienced reviewers in their projections of a film. Other websites, such as Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, combines all reviews on a specific film published online and in print to come up with an aggregated rating known as a "freshness rate."
Online film reviews
Some websites, such as Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
and Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, seek to improve the usefulness of film reviews by compiling them and assigning a score to each in order to gauge the general reception a film receives. Other sites such as Spill.com
Spill.com
Spill.com is an award-winning video game and movie review, discussion, and news website created by cartoonist and animator Korey Coleman. It is the continuation of the 9 year old Austin, Texas based Public-access television cable TV show called The Reel Deal...
review sites with ratings such as "rent it" or "matinée" to tell the viewer in what setting to watch the film rather than a numerical score. The Online Film Critics Society
Online Film Critics Society
The Online Film Critics Society is a professional association for film critics who publish their reviews, interviews, and essays on the Internet.The OFCS was founded in 1997...
, an international professional association of Internet-based cinema reviewers, consists of writers from all over the world.
A number of websites allow internet users to submit movie reviews and scores to allow a broad consensus review of a movie. Some websites specialize in narrow aspects of film reviewing. For instance, there are sites that focus on specific content advisories for parents to judge a film's suitability for children (e.g. Screen it!). Others focus on a religious perspective (e.g. CAP Alert). Still others highlight more esoteric subjects such as the depiction of science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
in fiction films. One such example is Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics by Intuitor
Intuitor
Intuitor is a website promoting creative learning as both a method of enlightenment and a cultural theme in its own right. Created in 1996, two of its earliest features were instructions for the founder's own four-handed chess variant Forchess and an essay entitled Why Now Is the Most Exciting...
. One website, Everyone's a Critic
Everyone's a Critic
Everyone's a Critic is a film community website. It began as an experiment utilizing a collaborative filtering algorithm to obtain film recommendations from people who share similar tastes in film...
, allows anyone to publish film reviews and comment on them. There are even websites for special interest groups such as the Christian review site, Movieguide.
Blogging has also introduced opportunities for a new wave of amateur film critics to have their opinions heard. These review blogs may focus on one genre, director or actor, or encompass a much wider variety of films. Friends, friends of friends, or complete strangers are able to visit these sites, and can often leave their own comments about the movie and/or the author's review. Although much less frequented than their professional counterparts, these sites can gather a following of like-minded people who look to specific bloggers for reviews as they have found that the critic consistently exhibits an outlook very similar to their own.
Community driven review sites have allowed the common movie goer to express their opinion on films. Many of these sites allow users to rate films on a 0 to 10 scale, while some rely on the star rating system of 0-5 or 0-4 four stars. The votes are then culled into an overall rating and ranking for any particular film. Some of these community driven review sites include Flixster
Flixster
Flixster is a social movie site allowing users to share movie ratings, discover new movies, learn about movies, and meet others with similar taste in movies. The site allows users to view movie trailers as well as learn about the new and upcoming movies in the box office. The site is based in San...
, FilmCrave
FilmCrave
FilmCrave is an online movie social network that allows users to write movie reviews, share movie lists, watch trailers and interact with other members. Founded by three college friends in February 2007, the site was launched in August 2007. FilmCrave is privately owned and funded by ImaJAN Media...
, Flickchart
Flickchart
- Description :Launched in September 2009, Flickchart is the brainchild of web programmer Jeremy Thompson and web designer Nathan Chase. The impetus behind the site's creation came from an argument over the placement of Pulp Fiction and The Empire Strikes Back on the Internet Movie Database Top 250...
, and RottenTomatoes.
Academic criticism
It has been claimed that journalist film critics should only be known as film reviewers, and that true film critics are those who take an academic approach to films. This work is more often known as film theoryFilm theory
Film theory is an academic discipline that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large...
or film studies
Film studies
Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to films. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies...
. These film critics try to come to understand why film works, how it works, what it means, and what effects it has on people. Rather than write for mass-market publications their articles are published in scholarly journals that tend to be affiliated with university presses; or sometimes in up-market magazines.
See also
- CriticCriticA critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...
- Film canonFilm canonFilm canon is the limited group of movies that serve as the measuring stick for the highest quality in the film genre, based on criteria that look past personal and popular taste, to encompass only those that "artistically defined film history."...
- List of film critics
- List of film journals and magazines
- List of films considered the worst
- At the Movies, a TV series for reviews of movies, originally hosted by Gene SiskelGene SiskelEugene Kal "Gene" Siskel was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted the popular review show Siskel & Ebert At the Movies from 1975 until his death....
and Roger EbertRoger EbertRoger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
External links
- The Online Film Critics Society
- New York Film Critics Circle
- Kansas City Film Critics Circle
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association
- National Board of Review
- Peter Bradshaw gives advice to young, aspiring, would-be film critics (The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, 8 July 2008) - Independent Red Film Reviews, reviewing and indexing independent films and web series
- Plugged In Online, a service of Focus on the FamilyFocus on the FamilyFocus on the Family is an American evangelical Christian tax-exempt non-profit organization founded in 1977 by psychologist James Dobson, and is based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Focus on the Family is one of a number of evangelical parachurch organizations that rose to prominence in the 1980s...
- London Film Critics' Circle site
- Online Film Criticism, Part One and Part Two, by Paul Brunick, Film Comment, July/August 2010 and September/October 2010, supplemented at The House Next Door with The Top Film Criticism Sites: An Annotated Blog Roll, Part One and Part Two
Hubs for film journalism
- Movies at The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
- Movies at The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
- Film reviews at The IndependentThe IndependentThe Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
- Film at The TimesThe TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
- Film reviews at The Daily TelegraphThe Daily TelegraphThe Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
- Film at The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
- Film Reviews at Critics Choice