Amateur Movie Critics Online?

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I have been wanting to know if any of you has an online critic they have a pleasure looking at.

So for months, I was intrigued with this one amateur movie critic known as Simbasible. I got addicted even though the reviews were not very great. He might be a user on this site but I do not know. He usually did a movie a day(quite unhealthy don´t you think). His favorite movie is Gone With The Wind which I find a little hard to believe. IDK maybe he likes well made movies and GWTW is certainly one of them. Although I notice that some users on this site love it too(I infer Allaby loves epics from looking at his top 2). I also found it hillarious that he found Dark Knight ¨overrated¨ and Brokeback Mountain to have Heath Ledger´s best performance instead. After some months, I found the reviews formulaic and decided to read reviews from professional critics and their lists. Anyone heard of him?

So that was my experience with ¨amatuer¨ critics, I wonder what amateur critic you had experinces with whether it be the internet or in real life. It could even be one of those angry reviewers on Youtube.



matt72582's Avatar
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I'd like to know more... Also, I was hoping there would be some great movies uploaded onto YouTube by independent talented people, also to advertise getting a good budget for the second movie.



It's my experience that, to rise above the din, amateur critics are heavily incentivized to find some kind of schtick, and provocative contrarianism doesn't ever age as an attention-getter.



For the billionth time, I'll mention that I really enjoy Folding Ideas on YouTube. Yes, probably his most watched episodes are where he's taking down movies. But even when he's explaining why the editing in Suicide Squad is so bad, or why The Snowman is a trainwreck, I always learn something about editing or story beats. And he also does episodes where he talks about what he likes in films, like the way that Annihilation resists any literal readings, or even his "Lukewarm Defense of 50 Shades".

What I enjoy most about amateur critics--or any critic, really--is that they can help me see something I never noticed before or give me a vocabulary to talk about something I noticed (or sensed) but couldn't articulate.

I think that a lot of amateur critics don't succeed because it's about what you're saying and how you're saying it, and a lot of people have one or the other but not both.



Honestly I find it remarkable how few movie reviewers there are online like on youtube - at least for the movies I watch and want to hear other people talk about. Also this includes podcasts too.

And the thing is, of the few people on youtube I find doing these reviews....their reviews are just...I dont understand how virtually all reviews (actually whether they be video, podcast or articles/blogs) of movies spend a majority of time simply summarising the plot, context and characters of a movie and various trivial information about the movie- behind the scenes, production, etc. If I wanted to know what the plot of the movie is, I would just watch it or read its like, wikipedia entry (the same with other trivial information about the movie).

Very few reviews actually give any actual OPINIONS (beyond surface level of like, saying "it was a really good movie") about the movie- which is the whole reason I am looking to watch/read these reviews in the first place. How did it make you feel? What did you learn or take away from the movie? Do you relate to the issues or the characters? What are your theories about the ending? What could have been done better about the movie? How would you compare this to other similar content? What were your favorite lines or scenes in the movie? etc. The actually interesting stuff. Anyway, rant over.



the best critics are mostly youtubers now. they blow away old school types.

eg red letters massive thesis on star wars prequels and every frame a picture for tokyo godfathers.



Honestly I find it remarkable how few movie reviewers there are online like on youtube - at least for the movies I watch and want to hear other people talk about. Also this includes podcasts too.

And the thing is, of the few people on youtube I find doing these reviews....their reviews are just...I dont understand how virtually all reviews (actually whether they be video, podcast or articles/blogs) of movies spend a majority of time simply summarising the plot, context and characters of a movie and various trivial information about the movie- behind the scenes, production, etc. If I wanted to know what the plot of the movie is, I would just watch it or read its like, wikipedia entry (the same with other trivial information about the movie).

Very few reviews actually give any actual OPINIONS (beyond surface level of like, saying "it was a really good movie") about the movie- which is the whole reason I am looking to watch/read these reviews in the first place. How did it make you feel? What did you learn or take away from the movie? Do you relate to the issues or the characters? What are your theories about the ending? What could have been done better about the movie? How would you compare this to other similar content? What were your favorite lines or scenes in the movie? etc. The actually interesting stuff. Anyway, rant over.
Very astute, that. My opinion (biased due to professional deformation, of course), is that once the focus shifts towards growing one’s subscriber count/increasing interaction, opinions as such somewhat naturally give way to, “Is Raoul Silva cooler than Craig’s Bond? Like and subscribe and let us know what you think in the comments.” (Using one of the most egregious irl examples I ever encountered). They are disincentivised to offer their own definitive views because that’s how you limit your follower count; whereas if you simply ask open-ended asinine questions, you’ll get people commenting, which is all this online crowd seems to care about.

For that reason, I don’t read/watch/follow any “hot takes” online (a part of me just doesn’t count this online reviews business as fully legitimate, despite myself). Kermode & Mayo have launched “Kernode & Mayo’s Take”, which is being advertised in Picturehouse and all over the place, and I’m sure that’s a bit more sophisticated, but I still get the same vibes, given that it’s a podcast (the ad made a very pointed reference to “subscribe for our jokes & banter”, which is a bit like pandering to all this blogging business, and immediately turned me off it).

I’m just old-fashioned, I know.

I suppose Kogonada is technically precisely that, an online movie critic, though no longer an amateur and now known as the director of After Yang, and such. I’m not saying this is necessarily a hack or anything like that (not before I’ve seen the film, anyway, though this other stuff didn’t really touch me in any sense), but it does feel a bit too random/illegitimate/overly amateurish.

I like the idea of going by a mononym, though.