n1029

Whatever I'm feeling at the moment, though I lean towards alt rock during the day and downtempo ambient at night. I'm really into the New Retro Wave genre, particularly the likes of Timecop1983 and The Midnight

Well, I did try to go with the "indies need them" approach which is definitely true and addresses your premise that studios don't care about them, but you just dismissed that too.

I'm not sure if there is a way for me to be nicer on this subject while still having any hope of being persuasive. The "critics are useless" rhetoric has existed for as long as I can remember and the original post of this thread (along with the ensuing replies) seemed like more of that groan inducing boilerplate often used by defensive fanboys when they don't like their movies getting trashed. I feel like this mentality has played a major role in the "toxic fan" culture that has become a huge problem on social media today, and it's not one that's easily addressed with cold hard facts alone. I could go on and on about all the movies critics and audiences have in fact been in agreement on recently, but i suspect that it'd just be met with more cherry picked exceptions or vague strawman anecdotes. This issue really is a lot more about personal insecurities with tastes in art than in how "useful" film critics are, and I don't think there is a non condescending way to point that out.

And I never said you did. Someone else in this thread did, though, so I remain unclear on what the actual rationale for their supposed lack of relevance is. Perhaps it was wrong of me to lump all the anti-critic narratives together, but they just all seem so arbitrary and flimsily justified to me that I feel like they're just pulled out at random by anyone for rhetorical purposes. I mean, I recognize people in general (including myself) are more interested in saving face than actually admitting they should alter their feelings about a subject, but I feel pretty strongly on this one and have a lot of experience stating my case on it. I'm content with the likelihood that any minds I might change won't actually give me credit for it, but I'll keep trying as long as I think there's an angle I can work with.

But I thought all the critics were being bribed . Anyway, critic reactions are still very much present in film advertising. Problem is everyone does it and they get blended in with less legit sources and the quotes get taken out of context to seem more enthusiastic. That's where a site like Rotten Tomatoes is most useful as a way to get an idea of what they really think. I have my problems with the Oscars but the point is there are hundreds of movies made every year and laypeople don't ever find out about most of them unless film critics are on board. They wouldn't even care enough to watch it and claim it's overrated unless someone overrated it in the first place.

You realize that taking money to promote a product is exactly what an honorable reviewer is not supposed to do. If this twitch streamer is in the business of just being a promotional outlet that's fine, and maybe it does work. But he's not someone who's giving his unfiltered opinions on his subjects. It truly would be the death of criticism if they all started getting paid millions of dollars to promote films. Film critics might not be a big factor with superhero movies and other big blockbusters that people were going to see no matter what (in which case they act more as a distillation of the reaction to it rather than be the source of the buzz in themselves), but they very much matter when it comes to the movies pining for Oscars and looking for distribution deals out of Sundance. I suspect that isn't an angle that you have much interest in, but it is the big reason the profession still exists today.