On 15 years as a film critic
It's been a blast, but what comes next?
The year 2021 marks 15 years that I’ve been a published film critic, but for as long as I’ve been able to write, I’ve been writing about the movies.
It began in grade school, when I discovered that a movie’s story didn’t have to end when the credits rolled. With just a spiral notebook and a pencil, I could write my own sequels, and I could give my friends and I roles to play. Much of my free time in the third through sixth grades was spent scribbling stories with my friends that imagined us fighting ninjas and busting ghosts.
I joined the school newspaper in high school because it gave me the excuse to sit in a class and write every day for three years. The problem? I was a teenager with severe social anxiety, and couldn’t muster up the courage to interview any of my classmates. While everyone else chased stories and learned how to design a layout, I hunkered down at an ancient desktop in the back room and pounded out movie reviews. My first was for the John Woo/John Travolta action flick Broken Arrow, and I can still remember the pride I felt as I typed out the words “so many things blow up in this movie.”
In college, I still struggled with social anxiety, but I found that when I went out to talk with people for articles, a switch flipped and I was actually quite good at conducting interviews. I began to do more of them, and I developed a love for journalism. It should be no surprise that much of what I wrote still circled back to movies. I interviewed a student who was heading to Cannes the next week to sell his indie vampire film to schlock-house Troma. I talked to the publicity directors for two local movie theater chains about the then-novel idea of multiplexes with stadium seating. One of the few articles I wrote for the school paper was a review of avant-garde submissions for a student film festival. About the same time, I was a daily reader of Ain’t It Cool News, devouring the latest tidbits of information about upcoming releases and filling my diet with all the sci-fi and horror films I hadn’t seen yet. During a late-night AIM chat, a friend suggested I read Roger Ebert’s reviews, and my life changed.
I’d known about film critics, of course. Every Friday, I opened the Weekend section of the Detroit Free Press or turned to the Entertainment page in the Detroit News to see what our local critics had to say about the latest releases. When I took a summer college prep course in high school, I had to interview someone who did a job that fascinated me. I called and talked with Terry Lawson, the head critic at the Detroit Free Press, who regaled me with his “origin story,” which was that his first piece at writing film criticism was a high school opinion piece trying to convince his parents to let him watch an X-rated film. But Ebert’s writing awoke something in me and changed the way I looked at films and considered their impact on me.
After getting my undergrad, I worked as a customer care representative in the call center for a major cellphone company. In my free time, I delved into the nascent world of blogs, where I started a Xanga that provided a platform for my thoughts on faith, politics and current events, although I mainly used it for venting romantic angst. But it was also a place for me to write about movies. The blog is no longer in existence (thank God) but a few years ago I looked back at it. You can definitely see my critic muscles developing, my writing deeply influenced by whoever I was reading at that time, segueing from the geek speak that I absorbed from Ain’t It Cool to an attempt to do something more thoughtful, influenced by Ebert. I don’t know that any of it was good, but I could see a writer pushing himself, and over time I noticed growth.
On Feb. 2, 2005, 16 years ago this past week, I was fired from my call center job. It’s a long story, but suffice to say that the long hours spent dealing with screaming customers was not good for my mental or physical health. I often had cricks in my neck and headaches from spending eight hours being screamed at. A large part of me thinks the job was responsible for a small stroke I had in 2002. I was depressed and anxious, to the point where there were several mornings where I called off just because I couldn’t get out of bed and go face the day. Ultimately, I burned out, and it was noticed. I remember sitting in the HR conference room listening to my boss tell me they had to let me go, and all I remember thinking was “I don’t have to come back in tomorrow.”
That day changed the trajectory of my life. I was out of work for four months, and I made a commitment that I wouldn’t take just any job. I had a college degree, I knew I was a good writer, and I committed to getting a job at a paper. This was still when a newspaper job was seen as a stable career; smartphones hadn’t made it possible to read the news with your morning coffee without having to lug a laptop into the breakfast nook. And during that time, there was a last gasp for papers hiring reporters. I ended up landing a job at a weekly paper in Shelby Township, MIchigan, a suburb about 30 minutes outside Detroit.
To this day, I don’t think I ever had a better job than working as a reporter at the Advisor and Source Newspapers. I covered two growing communities. I wrote about city council fights and township elections. I climbed a tree to take pictures of an osprey nest, interviewed community artists and writers, attended a seance at the local bar, and had a township supervisor indirectly threaten to punch me in the face over a headline. I worked with maybe the best group of coworkers I’ve ever had, and regularly left the office sore from laughing so hard.
But most importantly, I had editors who encouraged me to experiment and take chances. I began writing monthly columns about politics and current events. And, beginning in 2006, I started regularly writing movie reviews. After a few months, my boss got me on a list for press screenings. This was huge; it gave me credibility, but it was also a sign I had made it. Where 10 years earlier I was talking to Terry Lawson about film criticism, now I was sitting a row behind him at press screenings. When the Detroit Film Critics Society formed in 2007, I was invited to be a member, and briefly was part of the same organization as him (although his position was cut shortly after and I don’t believe we ever met).
During my time at the Source, I treated my position as a fledgling film critic with just as much seriousness as I did my role as a reporter. I pushed myself to be as insightful as I could in my reviews. I interviewed people like Jason Reitman, Diablo Cody, Danny Boyle, Saoirse Ronan and Rainn Wilson. It was a part of my identity that I was particularly proud of. When people asked what I did, I always made sure they knew about the film reviews.
Eventually, as the newspaper industry imploded and I felt a weird sense of responsibility to pay the rent, I left the paper. I found my way into marketing, first as a contractor with the U.S. government and then to my current job with a university. It’s been a good career move; I’ve had the opportunity to stretch my writing, taking on new challenges, and I’ve been lucky enough to work with great, talented teams throughout. I’ve been at my current employer for eight years — twice as long as I’ve worked anywhere else — and it’s been a wonderful fit, with enough challenges to keep me going and benefits that have really been great for our family.
But film criticism has always remained a passion. I continued to serve as a film critic for The Source on a freelance basis until about 2015. When my daughter was born, I stopped writing for a bit, but somehow always found my way back, whether it was writing for a magazine that never quite got off the ground, blogging as a faith and film writer for Patheos, writing freelance pieces for sites I admired, or most recently serving as a film critic for Big Heads Media. I’ve enjoyed it immensely, and I’m grateful that I’ve been able to marry my loves of writing and film. Some people think that critics are just frustrated artists. That’s never been the case for me. Writing about my love of a movie is something I do out of love for the form. I don’t feel like my experience with a film or TV show is complete until I’ve written about it or talked about it. It’s similar to what C.S. Lewis once said, “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.”
It’s no secret that the world of film criticism has changed. Papers have laid off critics while the internet has thrown the door open for anyone to set up their own website and push out their thoughts. Some still manage to hold down full-time careers as critics; others do it as a second job or on a part-time basis. For many, it’s a hobby that sometimes throws them a check or a free screener. I’ve spent the better part of the last 10 years trying to navigate this changing landscape, watching physical journalism die out, trying to tread water at blogs and often feeling lost in the crowd. It’s baffled me so much that I dedicated my entire master’s thesis to understanding film criticism in a digital age.
And right now, after 15 years of this, I feel both tired and excited.
Tired because I’m going to be honest, the old way of doing this gets wearying.Trying to see every movie coming out in a given week to have at least one thing to review was always tough, even when there was a typical release calendar. Setting aside one evening to run out to a screening and another to write a review is hard when you have a full-time job and two young kids; oddly, getting the time to commandeer the TV and the energy to watch something after the kids go to bed in the age of COVID has been even tougher.
Writing a review for opening date or weekend just to hit a certain number of views on your page is getting old, and I’m not sure who’s reading them anymore. While I’m sure there are people who consult their favorite critics before seeing a movie, I have a feeling that Rotten Tomatoes takes care of that for many these days. I think there are many film lovers who like to turn to a piece of criticism after a film and dive deep into what the critic thought about it, things that most 600-1,000-word reviews really can’t capture in our days of spoilerphobia and rushing to be the first with a review. When I think back to the most rewarding things I’ve written over the years, they’re most often pieces about older films or works of criticism that delve deeper into themes and nuances that go beyond the typical “should I pay to see this'' review. There’s a difference between a work of film criticism and a review, and I think after so long I’m tiring of writing reviews and more eager to dig into actual criticism.
For instance, I enjoy the Marvel movies. But I never want to write another pre-release review for one again. What’s the point? I already know what to expect; there’s very little that changes between the films, and after 12 years, people already know whether they’re going to buy a ticket. There’s nothing new to say about them; they’re factory-processed, like McDonald’s. And as much as I love a good McDonald’s cheeseburger, I’m not going to be raving about the experience. We all know what a McDonald’s cheeseburger is, and you already know whether you like it or not. If and when I write about Marvel movies again, I’m more interested in writing something after the fact, where I can explicitly detail what worked and what didn’t, examine the winding mythology, or drill down into something that struck me about it.
Likewise, if I see something really great that people are passing by or view an old film that I feel is worthy of bringing back into the discussion, I don’t want it to be off limits for discussion simply because it’s not part of the current release cycle. I don’t want to have to chase views or likes; if this is a hobby that sometimes makes money, then I’d rather lean into the enjoyable part of that, carve out my own path and see where that leads, rather than stick to the obligation of how we’ve always done this.
There are critics, some who I know, who have the energy and skill to see every release, write about it and keep up with that cycle. Well into my forties, with other obligations, I think I’m more interested in writing about the films when I have something to say, when I feel it’s worthy of discussion. Writing about everything will only get me lost in the crowd; honing my voice and knowing which films I am best-suited to converse on seems more satisfying, even if the work is harder.
But like I said, I’m also excited. I’m excited because the digital tools we have have really blown open the doors to change how we talk about movies.
Ten years ago, I couldn’t have imagined how easy it would be to do a newsletter like this, where people automatically sign up and all I have to do is make sure I’m writing a new entry each week. Each week, I have this outlet that is mine to craft and write about whatever I want, and I have an audience of readers I’m deeply grateful for who have signed up because they are interested in what I have to say. This is freeing, and the writing I’ve done for this newsletter is some of the most fulfilling writing I’ve done in a long time. I’m already looking for ways to make this dig a bit deeper and I’d love to hear what some of you might want me to write about in future installments.
But I’m also eager to take advantage of the opportunities the internet affords to engage with film outside of the written word. For two years, fellow critic Perry Seibert and I have been putting out the We’re Watching Here podcast, and I feel like we’re just hitting our stride. Perry has a daunting knowledge of and love for cinema, as well as a real knack for banter. The best episodes of our podcast have often involved me not knowing exactly what I think about a movie but processing that through the conversation, sometimes finding my previously ecstatic thoughts cooling a bit and other times finding new appreciation for something that initially passed me by that Perry caught. It’s that kind of experience that you don’t always get in the solitary act of writing a review, and doing this podcast has also reintroduced the communal joy of seeing and talking about a movie.
In the pandemic, podcasting has been such a blessing. I’m not going to get rich over it, but it’s fulfilled a real social need for me this year. Talking about movies with Perry brings back that joy from back when we could still hang out in the lobby with friends and discuss our reactions at a coffee shop. Likewise, one of the benefits of the past few months has been reviving Cross.Culture.Critic. with Joe, where we talk about faith, pop culture, movies and other nonsense. While we can’t all get to a bar and hang out, this is the next best thing; maybe better, because we invite so many others into these conversations. I’m not going to pretend I’m the most skilled podcast editor or the smoothest speaker, but there is a great deal of fun in crafting these. I’m really excited about a third podcast project that I’m about to get rolling on, which you can hear later this year. My friend and former co-worker Matt told me about an idea late last year and as soon as he proposed it, I was in. We’re going to get working on it soon and hopefully release it late spring/early summer, and I’m really amped. It combines movies, podcasting and writing in a way that I’m really intrigued about.
And I’m really eager to play around with other forms of media for film criticism. While I think Film Twitter can be the worst at times, the truth is that some really skillful users have found ways to deliver profound or funny criticism in their 240-character bites, and I want to keep getting better at that. And I think there’s a lot of potential in using video to review films; after all, what better way to critique than by using the medium itself? Some of the best film criticism right now is coming from people like Patrick H. Willems, and I’d love to learn more about creating video content and see where I can go with that.
All that to say, I’m eager to rethink this criticism thing in the coming year, moving away from the way I was doing things and experimenting with some new stuff. I’ve moved away from Big Heads Media and am hoping to have a new home for my criticism in the next month or so that I can tell you about. I’m pushing myself to pitch some freelance articles throughout the year, looking to do some more longform pieces. The podcasts will continue, and I look forward to learning the video tricks. As all that happens, this newsletter will be ground zero. I have some fun ideas in store for the next few weeks, and I think however my next phase as a film critic develops, this will be where it all begins to take shape.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ll continue to read and share!
The Digest
Where I am online this week
Average Jerks podcast: I’ve written before about my Cross.Culture.Critic co-host’s other show, a funny hangout podcast where Joe and Dre talk about working out, men’s fashion, sports and more. Dre couldn’t join Joe this week, so he asked if I’d fill in as a co-host. I had a great time. I knew I wasn’t going to cut it if I pretended to be knowledgeable about their usual topics, so I leaned hard into self-deprecation. We talk a bit about our podcast history, discuss cologne and pedicures, and then talk a bit about true-crime documentaries. Bonus: Due to a recording snafu, my mic wasn’t off when I yelled at my kids at one point or when my wife fell down the stairs outside the room. So you’ll get the raw Williams experience! Listen and subscribe!
Note: In terms of a Chrisicisms this week, most of what I’ve watched lately has been items I want to write about more in future newsletters or delve into in some podcasts. So we’re going to hold back this week. In lieu of that, here are some places where you can follow what I do and stay up to date:
We’re Watching Here podcast
Cross.Culture.Critic. Podcast