3 Film Critics You Should Read

Studying film can look scary and strange. Why? Well because there are so many people seemingly gate-keeping this study at an academic level. Even as a woman on the subject during my M.A, there were certain groups of men who were gatekeeping their study but then there were other men who were very accepting of females in film studies. But, when it comes down to it, whether man or woman, nobody should be gate-keeping a study of academia and this is why I am here. I am not here to gate-keep anything and I am not here to tell you that you cannot do it. Actually, the opposite is true. I enjoy telling people about my studies, explaining it to them and getting them in on it. Why? The more people we have in film studies, the more chance we have for the subject to evolve and change. So what we’re going to have a look at today are three critics who changed the world of film via their incredible writing, their incredible eye for film and their brilliance in the world of film reviewing. So let’s start this article and hopefully, you and I can learn along the way of my ‘filmmaker’s guide’ and I hope you’re also enjoying my ‘one thousand and one films to see before you die’ book review which seems to be taking forever at the moment. I did not think it would take this long at all. I thank you for reading along.

Here is the list and they are in no particular order.

Vincent Canby

From the late forties in Chicago to his death in the millennium, Vincent Canby served many news outlets as a film and theatre critic and he was absolutely brilliant. He was a supporter of subversive styles in film including the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Spike Lee. Including the following directors: Jane Campion, Woody Allen and James Ivory. He criticised the likes of: Rocky, Night of the Living Dead, The Exorcist, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Godfather II - offering an amazing counter view in the face of blind faith. He worked for the New York Times mostly and many of his articles can be found online.

Roger Ebert

Known as one of the great gods of film, Roger Ebert is one of my personal favourite people in the whole world. I adore this guy because everything he says is so intelligent, he never approached film from the point of view of anger or reaction. Instead, he was always very clear about his points and even when I did not agree with him, I could definitely see where he was coming from. Working for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert produced some of the most amazing and honest reviews of films I have ever seen. His favourite films included: La Dolce Vita, Citizen Kane, Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull, The Tree of Life, Tokyo Story and Goldfinger. He often addressed the fascism in certain films, giving them bad reviews based on their moral and political agenda. But seriously, I really enjoyed reading his reviews on controversial films he addressed such as “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “Dirty Harry”. He was one of the most amazing things to ever happen to film and I was really upset when he passed away in 2013.

Bosley Crowther

Many of you have probably already heard about my adoration for Bosley Crowther. He was a brilliant human being and a writer for the New York Times for almost thirty years. He was a massive advocate of world cinema and foreign-language films and was one of the pioneers of the modern craft of film reviewing. I remember reading his scathing reviews of some films starring Joan Crawford, which was obviously a controversial opinion but he was not afraid to say it and even back up his opinion. He was a big supporter of Ingmar Bergman, as you know I am as well and has always backed up his work on world cinema, stating that it brought some new content to cinema that Hollywood had not yet discovered. He was a radical opponent of McCarthyism and is known to day as one of the most trustworthy and scholarly reviewers of film.