Film criticism itself has suffered greatly in recent memory; at the end of the day, whatever trouble a critic might have gone to to watch, process, and articulate their thoughts on a given film is now reduced almost entirely to a number on Rotten Tomatoes.
Youtube is a great place to start looking. It has a lot of trash, but there are some extraordinary essayists and writers giving robust and insightful looks into films new and old.
Off the top of my head:
1. House of Tabula - Essays on art and culture, with a heavy emphasis on film, old and new. https://www.youtube.com/@TheHouseofTabula/videos
2. Deep Dive - Lewis from House of Tabula doing 10-15 min reviews of recent theatrical releases: https://www.youtube.com/@DEEPDIVETHOT/videos
3. Spikima Movies https://www.youtube.com/@SpikimaMovies/videos
4. Thomas Flight https://www.youtube.com/@ThomasFlight/videos
These channels (expect for #2) all diverge from straightforward reviews, but what they give you are the tools to articulate what the film is doing, how it is doing it, and therefore equip you to become your own critic. Someone capable of thinking critically.
I think this effect is worse on YouTube because YouTube creators live or die by the algorithm. There's no organization backstopping them if they publish something their audience doesn't like.
Wow, great channel. Addresses[1] some of what I said with much more insight than I could.
I come back to this video once a year to renew my spirit and orient myself.
The Dissolve alumni are all (mostly) writing at various publications: https://thedissolve.com/
While David Bordwell sadly passed, his blog is still a great resource (books, too!) and actively updated: https://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/
I always like to remind people that before talk heads were battling it out on cable news or ESPN we had Siskel and Ebert shaking things up. They made me realize that movies could carry subtext, nuance and meaning. They made reading ABOUT movies more interesting.
I'm not sure what you mean by separating review from criticism. Can you expand on that?
Let's start with applying both to "Eraserhead":
A critical approach might have a thesis on how it links with Lynch's interest in Buddhism and how those concepts surface in the film, how different events and characters in the film can be read through that lens and how the resolution of the film makes sense in a Buddhist context. Absolutely none of this tells you whether the person who watched the film was enraptured by it from the first scene or whether they got through it out of academic obligation and immediately bitched about it on social media afterwards. Criticism has a thesis about a work and defends it, which doesn't usually involve how enjoyable the work is.
A review of "Eraserhead" would tell you about the experience of watching it, whether the person writing the review thought it was a well-constructed and engaging film, and maybe some thoughts on how much sense they made of it, but the analysis wouldn't be the focus. Thumbs up, thumbs down, that's the meat.
It's entirely possible to mix the two realms, but there's a difference in focus and intent. The better YouTube channels (Folding Ideas) mix the two quite deftly, in fact, but I'd put Folding Ideas in the realm of criticism more than reviewing because he does tend to have a thesis and defends it in addition to saying how much he enjoyed (or, more often, didn't) the films he talks about.
For example, in his video about The Nostalgia Critic's review of Pink Floyd's movie The Wall (that is, his video about another person's review of a band's movie made from their rock opera album) his thesis is that the person behind The Nostalgia Critic character is creatively stalled and fundamentally lazy. He defends this thesis while lambasting the video he's talking about, but the thesis is centered. That's criticism.
"He Lost It at the Movies" means nothing to me, and even after I knew what the article was about still means nothing to be, it's no more than click bait. The summary on the other hand, gives you enough context to know what the writer was even trying to write about.
Yes. That's why I'm on substack. Good writing can be a pleasure to read even if it's about something I don't care all that much about. A summary can tell you about the subject matter, but fails to capture the quality of the writing itself.
To put it another way: I'd rather read an idlewords post about taking a Russian boat to the Antarctic[1] - something I care little about as a subject - than read AI generated slop about some Python programming subject that's immediately relevant to my career.
also taking: "suggesting that writing as whole has no more value than a random list of words" from me just saying it'd be nice to know what I was reading before I spent the time reading it seems kind of melodramatic.
I love Mark Kermode as a critic, normally, but for his review of Triangle of Sadness (imo a great film!) I don't think he was paying attention, or was even there.
See here https://youtu.be/ciJnhGNPS60 am I right?