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Kicking This Back up: Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is


 

So it's time to kick this blog back up, I think. I can't count how many times over the past couple years I've found myself infuriated by both professional and armchair critics online, and said, "I would be a better reviewer than these people." 

It's time to prove it. 

In my experience, for the most part, film critics (professional and amateur) fall into two categories: either they know squat about film but worked their way up from the mailroom in some newspaper, or they know too much about film and consider themselves frustrated auteurs. It's chic to issue bad reviews, to nitpick, and to make assumptions about what characters in films should be doing that are as stupid and unbelievable as what they actually do. People actively go into movies these days looking to figure out what's wrong with them, so they can bitch about it on social media. 

My favorite term that's come out of this is "toxic positivity." 

I've never heard a more laughable term in my life. The truth is, this term came about from--was created by--actually toxic "fans" whose negativity infects everything, but who are angry about having their right to piss on everything called out. The truth? If everything sucks to you, you're part of the problem. People who read comics and novels, who see movies and listen to music and love it? They're not toxic. They're a lot fucking happier than you, and you deserve to be called out for your bullshit. 

But I digress. Sort of. 



Years ago, I started this blog with the subtitle: Film Reviews for the Rest of Us, and that's what it is: movie reviews by someone who went to film school, who went through the toxic period of looking for flaws in every movie, and came out on the other side, someone who realized that complaining about every tiny continuity error or every story element that was different than what I would've done, was ruining my ability to enjoy movies. 

So here we go. I'm not going to say you'll never see a negative review from me. I freaking hated Midsommar, for example, and if this blog was around when that film came out, I would've torn it to shreds. I love most movies. I don't love all of them. It's my hope, however, that being positive about most films will make it the more impactful when one comes out that I don't like. We shall see, though. 

So that's that. First up to re-inaugurate the blog will be Halloween Kills, another one the critics hated, but actually was really brilliantly done. But then again, professional critics don't know anything more about movies than you do, and they have ZERO qualifications to tell you what to see. 

They're just more jaded than you.  

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