Film critic reviews are the Hacker News of the film world: nerds nerding out.
I once went out with a woman who was highly steeped in film criticism and such. I think she volunteered as dramaturg at a theater company or something like that. We watched "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" together, and I thought it was the most dismal, dispiriting, horrible movie I'd ever seen. Afterward she opened my eyes to how a critic would interpret it, the symbolism, the cultural currents, etc. I hadn't picked up on any of that. I still hate that movie. But I guess I can see a bit better how, if you're in on it, it can be fun to pick things apart in that certain way. It's like a secret language that only you and a few others speak. There's nothing quite like speaking your native tongue when living in a foreign land.
I think a lot of the professional critics are like that. We don't speak their secret language. We commoners are the foreign land they must survive in. They're having a conversation among themselves. It's not for us.
This is giving me some flashbacks to starting a course at college on Film Studies. I left after a few weeks, the constant over analysis was too much. Let me enjoy (or hate) the movie is please. It does seem weird to me that the creatives involved would put so much effort into things that the bulk of the population won't interpret.
I once went out with a woman who was highly steeped in film criticism and such. I think she volunteered as dramaturg at a theater company or something like that. We watched "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" together, and I thought it was the most dismal, dispiriting, horrible movie I'd ever seen. Afterward she opened my eyes to how a critic would interpret it, the symbolism, the cultural currents, etc. I hadn't picked up on any of that. I still hate that movie. But I guess I can see a bit better how, if you're in on it, it can be fun to pick things apart in that certain way. It's like a secret language that only you and a few others speak. There's nothing quite like speaking your native tongue when living in a foreign land.
I think a lot of the professional critics are like that. We don't speak their secret language. We commoners are the foreign land they must survive in. They're having a conversation among themselves. It's not for us.
At least, that's what it's become.