The Rare Examples of Good Film Criticism

I like questions.  I understand there are people who fear that someone will ask them a hard question, but for me, questions are a gift.  A question I can't answer, doubly so — because it describes something I should be thinking about, or researching.

Naturally, I'm not here to answer questions about medicine, the law, mathematics or physics.  This is a D&D blog ... and I'm a soft-science/humanities sort of fellow.  So getting a question about the arts, that's in my bailywick.  On Monday, Dennis Laffey asked,

"You've mentioned YouTube movie "critics" like Lindsay Ellis and maybe Patrick Willems with some disdain (IMO Willems is better than Ellis, but YMMV), and I understand why. So my question is, are there any film critics/analysts on YouTube that you would recommend?"

This is a question I'm researching all the time.  I've wasted far too many hours chasing film critiques on youtube, only to come up empty.  I love film; and when I seek the opinion of someone investigating film, I want to see people who understand what a critique is, what it's for, why film is made, what it arouses in the viewer, how filming is accomplished as an art, what choices were made by the makers and why, preferably without the speaker needing to graft their own agenda into the process.

"Agenda" describes the urge by the reviewer to insert their personal feelings regarding the film's content: the need to say whether or not they liked the film, the need to discuss whether or not the film has broken some covenant that art has with the political will of society, the need to argue whether or not certain characters were given enough lines, or whether the subject material is "valid," or a host of other qualms that would suggest that the purpose of filmmaking it to satisfy a will of the public to see visuals that ONLY meet with their prejudices.

Obviously, the popularity of a film depends on how many people are pleased by its plot, characters and themes.  Popularity has nothing whatsoever to do with whether a film is well made or relevant.  It is a great failing of youtube creators that they understand neither what it means to make a film well or what makes a film relevant.  Very often, many film reviewers fall into a trap of believing that a film is "well made" when it is technically well made.  This is why we see so many reviewers gushing over films made by Kurosawa or Kubrick.  I appreciate when an analyst fruitfully addresses technical prowess, such as this piece by Every Frame a Painting.  EFP stopped posting videos four years ago, a shattering loss.  From a filmmaker's perspective, the series is usefully descriptive about what the director's perspective, the structure of scenes, pacing and space.  I used to love every time EFP posted; but, at the same time, most of his work disappointed, because so little was said about writing or story.  Sorry, but technicals do not make a meaningful film.  No matter how many people want us to worship and adore Kubrick, we can't.  He had nothing to say about the concrete lives of concrete people.  His choice of stories were always irrelevant.

Very few content creators are as consistent as EFP.  Watch everything he's made.  Frankly, I think his worst piece was this one ... which also happened to be his last.  I simply don't feel that Marvel films are lacking because of their music.  On the other hand, watch this video at least twice and this one at least three times.  You're a fool if you don't.

Discussions of a film's overall relevancy are rare and hard to find.  Frustratingly, those persons who are capable of this kind of analysis rarely choose to do films that I would watch more than once.  But that is a matter personal taste — and as I've said, analysing a film and liking a film are entirely different things.  At the same time, watching analysation of a film and liking the film being analysed need not be compatible ideas.  I'm willing to watch a good analyst take apart a film I didn't like — and even willing to sit through the critique even if the analyst states matter-of-factly that they like the film.  Liking/disliking a film is not a deal-breaker.  What matters is what's said about the film's relevance.  I hope that's clear.

Ian Danskin discusses a wide variety of subjects and occasionally discusses film or a film-maker.  Of those, I recommend this about Guillermo del Toro, this 8-part series about the avenging female and this one about the Japanese film The Handmaiden.  I wish there was more.

Dan Olson lives here in Calgary with me, though shit knows what I'd say to him in person.  Like Danskin, he produces work on many subjects, but he's done a lot of work with film.  Starting with the older stuff, I'd recommend this one on Fight Club, this one on Sam Witwicky, this one on the End of Evangelion and very definitely this ironic one on Matrix Revolutions.  For his later work, if you've got the steady nerve, drag yourself through his 2 hour, 42 minute three-part series on the Fifty Shades of Grey movies ... and remember, I'm promoting the quality of the critique and not the quality of the film.  Also this one on Contagion.  There are more, but on the whole, I feel Olson is beginning to lose his way.  I've written about Olson before.

I strongly dislike critics or analysts who spend three quarters of a 15 minute video recounting the plot in excessive detail, only to end by saying, "I didn't like it."  I dislike those who badmouth films because of camera-angles, jerky cam or anything to do with cameras, really.  I dislike those who say "the acting was bad," while making no effort at all to explain why, how or even what "good acting" is.  Like they would know.  I dislike a lot of film reviewers.  Those that were good in the day are gone now, their sites pulled down ... hell, I can't even remember what the sites were called.  Every now and then I think I've found a new content creator; I watch two or three of their videos and think, "Those were pretty good."  Then I watch one more, screaming at the screen, "WHAT THE FUCK?" because they've just explained that the two main characters in a rom-com actually represent Israel and Palestine, Torquemada and Isabella or some other ridiculous pairing of black-and-white historical or religious figures.

Film critique on youtube is one festering pile of shit.

I am constantly looking for better and I am constantly disappointed.  But I'll go on looking.