Five Stars

In the late 90s I had a website called “A Film A Day” where I tried to review 365 films in a year. It ran for two full years and I achieved my goal both times. Sadly, it expired and it was not indexed by the Wayback Machine so it’s lost to time. It is one of my two great data losses and I’m still sad about it.

On the website, every one of my film reviews was a 5-star review. The goal of the review text was to inform the reader how they should prepare, mentally and physically, so as to enjoy a 5-star experience from the film. Should you watch something else first? Do you need extra snacks? Should this only be seen with close friends while very, very drunk? Do you need to imagine you’re a knight from medieval Europe who has stumbled through time into the theater and are witnessing what can only be a wizard’s masquerade?

Earlier tonight I was discussing a critic review of a holiday concert here in Iceland. The reviewer lambasted the concert just as they had done to several other high profile ones recently. In looking a bit deeper, it seems the general take that can be expected.

Learning that wasn’t a surprise. It happens a lot, not just in professional circles. It’s easy to find something to criticize even if it’s not objectively real. There’s enough subjective moments of anything that they are open doorways to a scathing critique. Is the criticism even something the author believes, or might this be an easy way to maintain authority in a cultural space? Might this be a learned behavior from a career that rewards being loud? Whatever the impetus, I’ll call it what it is: lazy.

Don’t tell me why this Star Wars show fails to live up to the expectations of your deified childhood experience. Tell me how to recreate that experience when I go see it. I challenge you as one who has done it. Don’t cop out and claim the high ground of taste. Use that sensitivity, that finely tuned instrument, and direct the rest of us how to maximize our experiences.

Is this film intended to make me feel sad, to fall in love, to forget my feet are on the ground? Surely your exceptional background in the subject matter makes you more equipped than anyone to be a guide on that journey. So do it.

We are faced with a historically inconceivable amount of suffering in our lives thanks to the torrent of information reaching us every moment. Our cultivated spaces for art and entertainment are the products of so much human effort to climb out of that mire and share a connection with one another. If you stand in the way of that by critiquing that effort without providing us a better means to appreciate it you are subtracting from the human experience.

I give that two thumbs down.