I'm a film critic for a weekly national magazine.

Not so long ago, one of my fellow New York-based critics began a review by calling film criticism (I'm paraphrasing from memory here) "the most envied profession in America".

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. If you conducted a straw poll of 5,000 of my immediate peers (straight, white single men aged 30-35) and asked them whose life they'd rather lead-Paul Allen's, Tom Byron's or mine-I 'd be stunned if more than three of them elected to live in my shoes. But it's undeniably true that a lot of people want to do what I do for a living, otherwise there wouldn't be (per the New York Times last week) more than 600 reviews of "George Lucas In Love"-an eight minute short, for Pete's sake-floating around out there on the 'net.

Not a lot of 32-year-olds can lay claim to doing what they said they wanted to do when they grew up when they were 13, but I can. The thing is, people who wanted to be lawyers, doctors or astronauts when they were 13 but wound up being graphic designers, computer programmers or what have you don't have too many options when it comes to indulging their adolescent fantasies of practicing law, performing open-heart surgery or flying in space. But thanks to the Internet, anyone can be a movie critic.

Some of the best film critics I know write primarily for the web-some of them for their own sites (among them Mike D'Angelo, who recently went "legit" when he inherited my old job at Time Out New York, and Theo Panayides), others for online magazines (David Edelstein of Slate, Dave Kehr of Citysearch) or print publications that reach most of their readers electronically (Scott Tobias of The Onion). But they're far outweighed by people who seem to misunderstand what film criticism is all about.

Film criticism-as I see it anyway-isn't about being first with a review. Nor is it about just coughing up a plot summary and saying "it rocks!" or "it sucks!" The critic's role is to put a film in context-within the history of a particular genre, within the history of cinema as a whole, and within the culture at large--and evaluate whether or not it succeeds on its own terms.

That's what Pauline Kael and James Agee did, and it's what I try to do too. Of course, I have no illusions about being even an eighth as talented as either of them, but I do what I can within the parameters of the magazine that employs me. But while pulling duty as an amateur critic on the web can be a great incubator for someone who gets the chance to turn pro (as was the case with D'Angelo, who Entertainment Weekly tapped to write video reviews after Ty Burr stumbled across his website a few years ago before inheriting my job), I'm inclined to think that the 'net has grown too big and too commercial for anyone who posts amateur reviews to the web or newsgroups to really get noticed anymore the way Mike did.

Anyone who reads rec.arts.movies.current-films is probably familiar with the work of Steve Rhodes, who posts reviews to the newsgroup on a regular basis (according to the IMDB, he's posted 1403 reviews to the newsgroup since 1994 as I write this). On his bio page at the Online Film Critics Society-a group that counts genuine luminaries such as Edelstein and The Christian Science Monitor's David Sterritt among its members in addition to the infamous Paul Wunder of WBAI Radio and several dozen amateur critics), Rhodes cites a pet peeve: "Studio ads," he says, "will quote extremely obscure newspaper and radio film critics and ignore much more widely read Internet-based film critics as if we still lived in a paper-and-ink world. It's the electronic age, studios. Wake-up (sic)."

As the old saw goes, be careful what you wish for 'cause you just might get it. The studios have been on a tear lately with quoting online critics when they need someone to say something nice about a turkey, but they go to people like Chad Dougatz of music site Launch.com (who Miramax blurbed for their stinkbomb Boys and Girls). Rhodes is far from being the least insightful critic on the web, but there's something truly disturbing to me about his remarks. He's suggesting, basically, that getting blurbed is the most important form of recognition a critic can receive.

As I see it, the only form of recognition that counts for a critic is not whether a studio advertising department is willing to put your name in print, but whether an editor deems you skilled enough to give you a platform and pay you to practice your craft. Sure, I've written blurb-friendly reviews in the past, but only when I felt like using my platform as a bully pulpit to sing the praises of a film that I felt deserved special attention for one reason or another. Being blurbed should never be an end in itself (I don't think I'll ever live down my embarrassment over having been quoted out of context on the video box for Baby Geniuses).

Unfortunately, Rhodes isn't alone in thinking as he does, or else I wouldn't have heard rumors that the leadership of a certain online critics group put pressure on its members to put a certain recent Oscar winner on their top ten lists to increase the chances of the group's name being mentioned in ads. The sheer volume of online critics (again, why 600 people would take the time to write reviews of "George Lucas In Love" is beyond me) strikes me as something that's likely to lead them to make increasingly hyperbolic claims on behalf of films just to draw attention to themselves in an extremely crowded field.

As a movie fan and a profesional entertainment journalist, the Web has been a godsend to me. Movie rumor sites like AICN and Coming Attractions help me evaluate which movies are going to be worth following through production and focusing attention upon when they're released, and the instant availability of reviews from film festivals around the world is a refreshing alternative to the celebrity-heavy coverage of festivals like Cannes in the mainstream press and the dry coverage in the trades. But when it comes to real film criticism, I think there was a window of opportunity for the web to make a difference that has now been closed.

There's an incredibly high signal-to-noise ratio in newsgroups like re.arts.movies.current-films, but if you wade through the chaff, it's obvious that the 'net has energized a generation of serious young cinephiles who have a lot to say about the work of directors such as Wong Kar-Wai, Lars Von Trier and Hou Hsiao-Hisen as well as the blockbusters du jour, and this generation has arrived on the scene at a time when America's serious film magazines-Film Comment and Cineaste are about all that's left-have started to seem ossified and directionless. Two or three years ago-heck, even a few months ago-I bet it wouldn't have been hard to sew up some VC money to launch a site intended to be the Cahiers du Cinema or the Sight and Sound of the Web. A publication that could have really meant something. But in an era when a resource like crime-news site APBnews.com, which does serious journalism of a kind that could only be done on the web, can't support itself, I'm not so optimistic anymore.

Besides, real criticism-be it of films, music, games, what have you-requires an element of serious consideration that doesn't lend itself too well to the instantaneous world of the Internet. I love that the 'net makes it possible for me to read Roger Ebert's Chicago Sun-Times reviews every week (and for out-of-town readers to read local alternative paper New York Press's superb critics Godfrey Cheshire, Matt Zoller Seitz and Armond White). But until the dust settles from the apparent boom-and-bust of online media, I don't really think the 'net's as-yet-fully-unrealized potential for helping film criticism to evolve will ever really flower.

I don't begrudge anyone the right to an opinion, of course, nor do I begrudge anyone with the ability to write the opportunity to post that opinion to the Internet. The overcrowding of the web isn't a problem for people like D'Angelo and Panayides, who aim their reviews at hardcore cinephiles and could give a toss about appeasing the PR machine. But the transformation of a mass of armchair critics (many of whom don't realize that knowing how to write and actually having something to say are not the same thing) into a platoon of aspiring quote whores desperate to have their voices heard over the din can only further the belief of many that critics are not to be trusted at any cost. So sue me, I actually think that film criticism serves a greater good-but if I wasn't lucky enough to be getting paid to be a critic, you probably wouldn't see me writing amateur reviews on the web in my free time when I could be out there living life instead.

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