How To Review Movies & Influence People

A step-by-step guide

A lot of people ask me “What are your credentials to do what you do?” What gives me the right to critique movies and tv shows? A few people have even asked it in good faith. So what are my credentials?

If I was being cheeky I would say “a pulse and a camera.”

Did I go to film school? Did I get a degree in journalism? No. Neither of those things. I went to college, but it was to study English Literature with a double focus in Philosophy. That’s a pretty common thing that real critics do—they’re writers who like movies. Roger Ebert got a bachelor’s degree in journalism but his PhD was in English. Unlike Ebert, who shortly thereafter won a Pulitzer Prize for film criticism, I dropped out of college and spent a couple of years as a homeless addict.

Took a sabbatical, if you will. A few gap-years.

Most of your favorite directors never went to film school, or they dropped out. Stanley Kubrick, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Ava Duvernay, Sergio Leone, David Fincher, Tarantino, Wes Craven. Jordan Peele and Peter Bogdanovich studied theater and acting. Alfred Hitchcock didn’t go to film school because it didn’t exist. Steven Spielberg dropped out of film school and later went back to complete his degree.

But they did study film. Everybody who is any good at making or talking about movies studies film. They love it. Do you think Christopher Nolan ever walks out of a movie and thinks, “Hmm, 7.4 out of 10.” I doubt it. They think about theme and tone, the way the camera moves, they learn about pans, tilts, dollys, zooms, dolly zooms, cranes, snorricams, tracking shots, gimbals, static vs. dynamic, handhelds and tripods.

But a movie is a story told with pictures, so the photography is important, but the story is king. So, they learn about three-act structure, how an act is made of sequences which are made of scenes which are comprised of beats.

But all of that is intellectual, it’s secondary to how a movie makes me feel. So that’s where I start. I walk out of a theater and I think, “How do I feel.” Am I bored? Am I angry? Elated? Inspired? Sad? Am I put-off or turned-on? Maybe I feel nothing. That’s a bad movie, the only unforgivable thing.

I think the most important skill I have is that I’m really good at figuring out how I feel. I’m really good at being honest with myself. Once I know that, using the intellectual things I talked about earlier, the things I’ve studied about movies, I try to reverse engineer that feeling. What is it about those moving pictures that made me feel that way?

I write that down. Boom. It starts as a conversation between my emotions and the movie. But it should go deeper. You can then look at text and subtext, cultural relevance and context. Nowadays, people talk about “visuals” and “pacing” like they’re toppings on a pizza. Forget pacing. Some movies want to be slow. Slow cinema is a whole subgenre. And if not, maybe the reason it felt slow has to do with the character, or the performance, or the derivative score, or the muted color-grading.

Maybe I had a headache, or I was stressed about my medical issues or, god forbid, I was on my phone and didn’t watch the dang thing. Maybe I didn’t understand the homage or have no perspective on the cultural trauma it was referencing. Maybe I need to learn something, or maybe it’s just not for me.

That’s what I do. I recognize that movies are the highest artform, the conjunction of photography, literature, fashion, music, theater, athletics, dance, even science and carpentry, with hundreds, sometimes thousands of people working together to tell a story.

And yes, produced in an industry that is historically corrupt, labyrinthine in its cruelty, warped by its obsession with celebrity and wealth. An industry often used to manipulate, oppress, and not tell a story but change the narrative.

That’s why it’s extra important to study. Or, maybe you’re more into books or sports. That’s cool, too.

You can see more of my work on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram. I also host a podcast called Streaming Things, wherever you find your podcasts.