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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 9634369">It is possible I am wrong but based on reading about reviewers whose background was often not in film until they became reviewers. My understanding for example is that Gene Siskel was a philosophy student, not a film student. This seems to have been the norm with a lot of film reviews. But if it is in fact the case that all film critics or most have backgrounds in things related directly to film expertise, I will gladly acknowledge that. I was a stringer for a local paper and at the local level at least, this seems to have been what was going on. It is also my impression that that is the case with larger papers, but I admit it is just an impression. It isn't like I have data supporting the impression. Yes but many of them do not seem to be. And frankly I think that is a good thing. Sometimes I want a very academic review of a movie, but most of the time that is the last thing I want. I want someone whose opinion is informed (which I do think most reviewers are) but more importantly I want to read a review by someone who is good at writing about movies and passionate about them. Tell me what you think makes someone an expert. Is being a reviewer for 10 years the baseline? Is some kind of education the baseline? Is seeing 1000 films the baseline? If you just mean they are informed and experienced, I agree. But the reason I pushed back a bit on expertise, is because while they may have very solid expertise in some instances on the technical aspects of film, the history, etc, we are talking about opinions on movies, and I don't think bringing in expertise on that is the same as bringing in expertise on say peoples opinions about antibiotics or whether the earth is round This is based on my own experience reviewing a lot of movies and it is something I have noticed with critics too. This isn't meant as a criticism at all. But when you watch movie after movie, you don't see movies the way many audiences do. You can start to lose touch with audiences and you can even get kind of dizzy from just consuming so much. You can also begin to think your opinion matters more than the people who are going to see the thing. First off, I like Pauline Kael. I don't always agree with her. But I like her. That doesn't mean the man on the street's opinion isn't also important. I personally like film critics. What I am talking about is not putting them on a pedestal and not dismissing other peoples opinions simply because they don't have the same credential (when what we are talking about is art, and everyone is going to have a different reaction to art). On the one hand you say no one is talking about validity based on whether they are critics or not, but then you keep saying things like "audiences who you actually are probably worse at assessing than most expert critics are.". Perhaps I misunderstood your meaning here, and perhaps I misunderstood the poster's point about critics when it was first raised. But I mentioned validity because I was sensing that kind of meaning operating behind the post Because emotional reactions are individual. People understand their own emotional reaction to a film. Because for me all of art, music, film, literature is about how it makes me feel. What I care about is how music makes me feel. What I care about is how a movie makes me feel. For me that is the most important aspect of it I am not saying it is the only aspect. But it is very important when people are deciding if they like something. I do think that what a movie makes you think about can be important to. I think the two measures I have of a movie are 1) my emotional response (which for me is the most important part) and 2) how my mind goes back to the movie after I see it. But neither of these are things critics have a monopoly on. We can all feel in response to a film and we can all think in response to a film. And I am not uninterested in what an informed critic has to say about a movie's ideas. At the same time, I am not uninterested in what audiences have to say about a movie's ideas.</blockquote>

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