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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 9634323">Even in newspaper a lot of reviewers are journalists who happen get assigned to the review beat, I'd certainly call most of them experts in journalism, but I would be reluctant to call them all experts in film. I do think many journalists out there are experts in different aspects of film. That said, I don't think a person having expertise in critical theory means their opinion of Mean Streets is more valid than one's own. It is art and what matter's is how it makes people feel in when they are watching it. I was a stringer for a little while for example (I didn't review but I easily could have). I had zero education in journalism (my education was in History) and zero training in anything related to film. I am sure there are plenty of professional reviewers who have no expertise but are very good at reviewing movies I mostly read print reviews of movies. And I often read old compilations of reviews. While I enjoy youtube reviews, that isn't my main diet. But that said, I don't think there is anything wrong with someone being a youtube critics. I do not see cinema as belonging uniquely to journalism or academia. I think it is an art form everyone can participate in talking about. Besides critics for newspapers are also a mixture of experts and non-experts. They are usually professional journalists, but they aren't necessarily experts in film. Though I agree that some are and that academic film critics are coming from a place of a specialized expertiseSure, I don't disagree that this can be the case. But you can definitely tell lots of reviewers are coming from very different places here. And I did say, I think seeing this volume of cinema gives them unique insights. However I also think they develop blinders from consuming so much media and it being part of their professionYou don't have to understand critical theory to talk about movies. Critical theory is one way of interpretation media. I am much more concerned about films emotional impact on viewers than that kind of analysis. I may be wrong, I am certainly open to the possibility that I am abusing the word expert or something. But I do not think I am ignorant. I am no expert myself, but I do follow film criticism and am aware of the kinds of experts you are talking about. The main reason I made this statement was more to say the people don't have to listen to what critics say. They can have their own ideas. But I think it is also fair to say critics as a group aren't necessarily experts. Calling them experts and giving that weight on what people should think about a movie, feels wrong to (it isn't like a physicist having an opinion on gravity for example, it is a much different situation because movies are so subjective). I do get though that there are aspects of movies where expertise can be valuable (film history, explanations of the mechanics of film making, etc). Sure, and I think it is totally fine for this guy to give his opinions, even if he is ignorant of movies before a certain era. We are talking about movies, I think it is okay for people to publish their opinions about them on the internet. That doesn't make him right, but he might still have other interesting things to say. Hopefully he ends up learning more about cinema from before the 80s. I've encountered this too when I have seen reviewers on youtube. It is like anything else online, you take it with a grain of salt. One of the benefits of this kind of criticism on youtube, and elsewhere on the internet, is genres that may be underserved get more coverage. I watch a lot of very niche genre movies and a lot of times there are zero professional reviews on them. But there are often dedicated blogs, youtube channels, and fan sites where you can get reviews to gather a sense of other peoples opinions. You can also sometimes get information in them, but obviously given these are pretty much just blogs people are doing for free, and so they aren't going through an editorial review, you should take it with a grain of salt and verify (but you can often find good leads). And I have found tons of factual errors in even professional reviews (I have been surprised how little many professional reviewers know for example about some of the genres I am interested in: so even there you will get sweeping generalizations that aren't true if one has seen enough movies from the genre). This just reinforces my point that they aren't necessarily experts though. I don't play video games so I can't comment there. Unfortunately I don't have the NYTs on subscription. There are a lot of paywalls I am privy to <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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