I love it when Roger Ebert writes about the life and profession of a film critic. In his latest blog entry,“CRITIC” IS A FOUR LETTER WORD, he talks a bit about why he writes and what he hopes to achieve with his own criticism.
“I believe a good critic is a teacher. He doesn’t have the answers, but he can be an example of the process of finding your own answers. He can notice things, explain them, place them in any number of contexts, ponder why some “work” and others never could. He can urge you toward older movies to expand your context for newer ones. He can examine how movies touch upon individual lives, and can be healing, or damaging. He can defend them, and regard them as important in the face of those who are “just looking for a good time.” He can argue that you will have a better time at a better movie. We are all allotted an unknown but finite number of hours of consciousness. Maybe a critic can help you spend them more meaningfully.”
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Tags: Roger Ebert