Musings on being a small-time movie critic with small vocabulary
In all these special press screenings of yet-to-be-released movies, I look around and realize I’m the only member of the press not sitting in the special “press section” of the theatre. I’m the only goof sitting in the darkened theatre without a notepad and pen. Every other four-eyed movie critic in the press section sits mercilessly scribbling out notes for their scathing review.
As I hear the scratching, critical pens of the film snobs around me, I’m alerted to the fact that I alone sit wide-eyed and in wonder of the moving pictures in front of me. I am lost in the story, perhaps part of the pop-culture-fed, unwashed masses who consume without discernment. And when the movie’s over and the lights are turned up, I sit and think for a moment while the rest ‘hmph’ there way out, tossing haughty glances down their long noses at me, the naïve newbie. I ponder what I’ll write about the film I just watched; I question whether or not it was worth forking over a chunk of cash to see it.
The movie I just saw may have been brilliant or it may have been a pile of dung, but I sit for a short moment to debate with myself over whether or not I should mention that I loved the movie, but hated the actors. Or that I hated the movie, except for one simple line said off-hand. I wonder how I can convey an overwhelming feeling of ’so-so’ and still make it sound interesting. Or at least interesting enough to read about in my ‘review’.
When that short moment is over, I store the results of the debate in my noggin, I stand, and wade through the cinemuck (that sticky crud on theatre floors) to the exit. I drive home.
Before the movie starts, though, I sit alone or sometimes with a friend in conversation. Topics in these conversations also venture into the nonsensical and non sequitur – wedding videography, spoken word performance, t-shirt printing, web design, and why Cheez-its are the best cracker on planet earth – vastly different from the other members of the press.
Some of these critics review for big bay area papers like The San Francisco Chronicle or the Guardian, and the San Jose Mercury. As they sit and wait for the movie, they schmooze amongst themselves, like they’re at some sort of a business soiree, complaining about all the horrible movies they’ve seen and bragging of their exploits in prestigious film festivals and screenings.
I like to think I have decent critical thinking and writing skills, I have a filmmaking degree (
It’s interesting that the word “amateur” is a French word literally meaning “lover”, from “amare” – to love. To be an amateur is to be a lover. So I guess it sounds cool when you put it that way.
Unfortunately, the connotation of the word, amateur, is not at all what you would call “cool”.
Upon arriving at home, I immediately fall asleep – right there in the car. I wake up in the morning – oh crap – and realize the deadline is two hours away.
My mind now frantically ventures to the idea of being an “amateur” movie critic, and how that’s kind of cool even if no one else thinks so. But even with my feeble attempt at self-encouragement, I sit staring at my computer screen, a few hours from deadline, grasping at the mind-fog for concise and coherent words to describe the movie and what I thought about it in about 380 words, without sounding too film-geeky or like I just wrote down what the Yahoo! said about the movie.
I scream at the fog and regret not also scribbling notes in that darkened theatre of uppity zombies.
Curses. So I instead find myself writing an extended commentary about watching and reviewing movies, simply because I wasn’t able to attend any special screenings this week.
Sighs. And I still don’t have stellar wordage like David Edelstein (”New York Magazine”), Roger Ebert (”Chicago Sun-Times”, “Ebert & Roeper”), or Lisa Schwarzbaum (”Entertainment Weekly”).
All I can do is write and pray I never become so jaded, so cynical that I cannot sit back and enjoy a good story of moving pictures. I hope I never lose the wide-eyed wonder at these stories unfolding before me, telling of life, death, good, evil, and the struggle in it all. May I never become simply a critic.
May I forever be an “amateur”.
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Related Links
Ink Magazine - Entertainment. Real People. Life
A weekly print publication on the arts, entertainment, culture and community in California’s central coast. I write ‘movie reviews’ for them.
Related Reading Material
Movie Critics/Reviewers and further commentary by bigger and better reviewers with larger vocabularies
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