7 Female Film Critics You Should Be Reading

A study released today by San Diego State professor Martha Lauzen, as reported by The Wrap, has some pretty distressing statistics about gender equality in the world of film criticism. The study tracked more than 2000 reviews written by authors designated as “Top Critics” on the aggregation service Rotten Tomatoes over the course of several months and found, incredibly, that a whopping 82% were written by men. A similar study conducted in 2007, which tracked reviews written for the top 100 American dailies, found that men accounted for 70% of the material—which suggests not only have the numbers gotten worse, but that, more alarmingly, things are actually worse for female critics online than they were exclusively in print media. Whatever the reasons (or excuses), this is clearly a sorry state of affairs.

There are many great female film critics writing outstanding film criticism every week, and maybe the best thing we can do in response to a study like this is read more. We need more women writing about movies, certainly, but we also need to be more aware of the women who are writing about movies already. Men have a tendency to shout over other people; we don’t need to hear more of that.

With all of this in mind, we thought it would be a good idea to highlight a few of the most essential female critics working today, from some of the most respected names in criticism to less established voices on the rise. If you’re not reading these women already, get on it.

- Farran Nehme – New York Post, Self-Styled Siren
Twitter: @selfstyledsiren

Nehme has long been well-regarded for her incredibly insightful film blog “The Self-Styled Siren”, where she muses on obscure works of classical Hollywood cinema and unearths rare bits of film-legend arcana. Over the last year or so she’s been steadily contributing feature reviews to the New York Post, which is an excellent fit.

Read: Her hilarious takedown of “No One Lives.”

- Kiva Reardon – Cleo Journal, Cinema Scope, Reverse Shot
Twitter: @kiva_jane

Kiva Reardon made a name for herself as a regular contributor to respected outlets like Cinema Scope and Reverse Shot, offering in-depth criticism that goes much deeper than an ordinary review. But her biggest achievement is also her most recent: last month she founded Cleo, a new journal offering feminist perspectives on film.

Read: Her thorough consideration of Soderbergh’s “Magic Mike”

- Zeba Blay – Slant Magazine, Black Voices
Twitter: @zblay

Blay’s recent festival coverage for Slant Magazine’s House Next Door has been superb, but some of the most notable writing she’s offered to date hasn’t been strictly reviewing movies, but looking at them more deeply for issues of race and representation (including a provocative piece for Huffington Post about Lena Dunham and “Girls”). Her deep engagement with issues too few critics pay mind to is refreshing and important.

Read: Interesting thoughts on the use of “yellowface” in “Cloud Atlas”

- Miriam Bale – The L Magazine, NY Daily News, MUBI, Filmmaker Magazine
Twitter: @mimbale

Miriam Bale is one of my very favorite film critics for the simplest of reasons: her writing makes me think. Writing with intelligence, curiosity, and wit, the only bad thing about Bale is that she doesn’t write enough. We need more critics like this.

Read: A sharp analysis of “Sleeping Beauty” 

- Stephanie Zacharek – Film.com, The Village Voice
Twitter: @szacharek

Our former critic, the wonderful Stephanie Zacharek has been rapidly gathering readers and esteem lately, culminating in her recent and much-deserved takeover as chief critic for the Village Voice.

Read: A killer D+ pan of “Les Miserables” 

- Karina Longworth – LA Weekly, Grantland Vanity Fair
Twitter: @KarinaLongworth

Karina Longworth might be the most widely read name on this list, and so needs no introduction. But her writing remains as vital as ever, not only in her role as a film critic but also as the author of a newly published book on Al Pacino.

Read: Her award-winning piece on the Sundance Film Festival

- Dana Stevens – Slate
Twitter: @thehighsign

Dana Stevens is one of the most respected film critics working, and for good reason: her direct, candid style is engaging and inflected with personality, her voice as open as it is authoritative.

Read: A recent reappraisal of “Heaven’s Gate” 

Categories: Features, Lists

Tags: Calum Marsh, Dana Stevens, Farran Nehme, Female Film Critics, Karina Longworth, Kiva Reardon, List, Miriam Bale, Stephanie Zacharek, The Wrap, Zeba Blay

Spoiler Alert: Critics Shouldn’t Care About ‘Ruining’ a Movie

Late last week, a few hours before the American embargo on “Oblivion” reviews lifted, Universal’s publicity department forwarded critics and journalists the following polite recommendation:

“During the course of your reviewing or reporting, we request that you not reveal plot points toward the film’s climax and conclusion so that those surprises are retained for the audience.”

At first glance this would appear to be a reasonable request: the film, after all, opens in wide release imminently, and, because its narrative is uncommonly laden with sudden twists and turnabouts, it’s likely to play better to a first-time audience if they can retain the sensation of surprise. There’s a reason we call revelations of important plot points “spoilers”: there’s a shared sense that knowing this information in advance of seeing a film will somehow spoil the experience of watching it. We tend to think of movie spoilers the same way we think of, say, hearing the final score to a football game we recorded but haven’t watched, which is to say we strain to avoid them while we can and feel deflated if we find we cannot.

Part of the problem with Universal’s request is that it betrays a certain anxiety toward the buying power of intrigue. It’s nice to think that a studio has only the moviegoing pleasure of its target demographic in mind when it urges critics to forgo spoilers, but I suspect it’s more likely that, at the end of the day, Universal is more concerned about dissuading prospective ticket-buyers than it is with preserving the artistic integrity of “Oblivion” and its myriad twists. If the appeal of “Oblivion”, at least from the perspective of a potential audience member being lured to the theater by marketing, is the mystery at the heart of the story, it stands to reason that knowing the answer to the mystery in advance—and maybe even being disappointed or put off by that answer—will be enough to keep the now-sated audience member at home. This isn’t a guarantee, mind you; knowing, for instance, that Bruce Willis was dead along (spoiler alert) might not be enough to deter people from rushing out to catch “The Sixth Sense”. But “The Village” might seem less attractive if an opening-day review lets slip the fact that it all takes place in the modern day (oh, um, also spoiler alert).

In other words, when a critic elides spoilers simply because a movie studio demands it, a critic is helping the studio more than the audience—and doubly so in the case of bad movies, which don’t have as much to fall back on once their secrets have been spilled. Only the thinnest and cheapest films can be truly spoiled by knowing their twists ahead of time, which is why, for instance, “Citizen Kane” seems no less great if one knows that “Rosebud” is the name of a sled. The kind of pleasure offered by plot twists are by nature superficial: it’s a momentary feeling of surprise and perhaps astonishment, a quick gasp that hardly lingers after the end credits role. It’s a nice feeling, one that we hope is preserved but not needlessly prioritized.

Also check out: Our (spoiler-free!) review of “Oblivion”

Preserving the surprise isn’t necessarily a problem for broadsheet journalists authoring quick-hit capsules as a kind of consumer guide for what to see over the weekend, since this sort of thumbs-up/thumbs-down reviewing wouldn’t benefit from drifting into spoiler territory in most cases. But being thoroughly averse to spoilers on principle does present problems for long-form film criticism, which by its very nature demands full disclosure and the ability to engage seriously with every aspect of a film, including major plot points and, indeed, even the ending. Film criticism is supposed to help illuminate a film, not simply offer a yay/nay declaration of its quality, and in order to do so well it needs to assume that its readers will be familiar with the material in question in full.

This, of course, raises an important point that typically goes unmentioned: film criticism is intended to be read by people who have seen the film under discussion. That isn’t a hard rule, mind you—people are free to read whatever they’d like, and if someone finds reading about a film in advance of seeing it helpful or even just interesting, so be it—but it should at least be an assumed truth of the practice, which would allow critics to tailor their writing to a knowledgeable audience and allow readers to be aware of what they’re getting into in advance. It would also almost single-handedly obliterate concerns about spoilers in criticism—concerns which, frankly, are altogether unfounded.

Consider the real issue here: if you haven’t seen a film and you are concerned about spoilers, the onus is on you to not read reviews before seeing the film. It’s not only unfair to demand that critics pander to people who shouldn’t be reading their work yet in the first place, it’s absurd; it presumes that a critic should be talking around a film instead of talking about it, and it makes the practice of criticism useless except as a vehicle of undescriptive opinion. While a spoiler warning is an easy courtesy for those readers who enjoy tempting fate, the responsibility remains their own (this, of course, applies only to articles with which a reader has voluntarily engaged, and not a tweet that appears from the blue like a broadside attack).

If you spent any time last week reading reviews of “Oblivion” without having seen it, you should ask yourself an obvious question: what exactly were you hoping to find in those reviews? If you wanted nothing more than a sense of the quality of the film, reading an 800-word essay is probably unnecessary. Review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic exist, in part, to offer a fleeting summation of professional opinion, a quick measure of a film’s critical temperature that gives a clear (if imperfect) indication of whether a given film is worth your time and money. While those aggregators catch a lot of flack from film critics, it’s crucial to reckon with how they empower us to speak to our audience as though they’re looking for insight rather than broad opinion. Reading more ought to come after the fact: the criticism is there to help you make sense of what you saw, to offer validating or challenging opinions, to make you think about the film differently or better. “Spoiling” the plot should be irrelevant.

Categories: Features

Tags: Citizen kane, Oblivion, Op-ed, Spoilers

‘Argo’ and ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ Win Big at 2013 Critics’ Choice Awards

Hey, Ben Affleck — who needs an Oscar nomination when you’ve got a Critics’ Choice Award, right?

He may have been snubbed by the Academy this morning, but “Argo” director Ben Affleck has emerged the big winner of this year’s Critics’ Choice Awards as he beat out such filmmaking veterans as Ang Lee, David O. Russell and Steven Spielberg in taking home Best Director.

“Argo” was the big toast across the board this evening as the CIA thriller won Best Picture, beating out such heavyweights as “Lincoln” and “Zero Dark Thirty.”

“Silver Linings Playbook,” which earned eight Oscar nominations this morning (including one in each acting category), emerged as another big winner at the Critics’ Choice Awards, taking home Best Acting Ensemble, Best Comedy, Best Actor in a Comedy (Bradley Cooper) and Best Actress in a Comedy (Jennifer Lawrence). Lawrence also took home Best Actress in an Action Movie for “The Hunger Games.”

Meanwhile, Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor for “Lincoln” and Jessica Chastain won Best Actress for “Zero Dark Thirty,” two wins that probably foreshadow the Oscar wins in their respective categories. Ditto Anne Hathaway’s win for Best Supporting Actress in “Les Miserables” and Adele’s win for Best Song for her still-haunting “Skyfall” single.

Finally, many congratulations are due to Quvenzhané Wallis, who won Best Young Actor/ Actress for her astonishing performance in “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” The nine-year-old star also made history today by becoming the youngest-ever Oscar nominee for Best Actress.

The complete list of winners of the 18th Annual Critics’ Choice Awards is below.

BEST PICTURE
“Argo”
“Beasts of the Southern Wild”
“Django Unchained”
“Les Misérables”
“Life of Pi”
“Lincoln”
“The Master”
“Moonrise Kingdom”
“Silver Linings Playbook”
“Zero Dark Thirty”

ACTOR
Bradley Cooper – “Silver Linings Playbook”
Daniel Day-Lewis – “Lincoln”
John Hawkes – “The Sessions”
Hugh Jackman – “Les Misérables”
Joaquin Phoenix – “The Master”
Denzel Washington – “Flight”

ACTRESS
Jessica Chastain – “Zero Dark Thirty”
Marion Cotillard – “Rust and Bone”
Jennifer Lawrence – “Silver Linings Playbook”
Emmanuelle Riva – “Amour”
Quvenzhané Wallis – “Beasts of the Southern Wild”
Naomi Watts – “The Impossible”

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Alan Arkin – “Argo”
Javier Bardem – “Skyfall”
Robert De Niro – “Silver Linings Playbook”
Philip Seymour Hoffman – “The Master”
Tommy Lee Jones – “Lincoln”
Matthew McConaughey – “Magic Mike”

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Adams – “The Master”
Judi Dench – “Skyfall”
Ann Dowd – “Compliance”
Sally Field – “Lincoln”
Anne Hathaway – “Les Misérables”
Helen Hunt – “The Sessions”

YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS
Elle Fanning – “Ginger & Rosa”
Kara Hayward – “Moonrise Kingdom”
Tom Holland – “The Impossible”
Logan Lerman – “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”
Suraj Sharma – “Life of Pi”
Quvenzhané Wallis – “Beasts of the Southern Wild”

ACTING ENSEMBLE
“Argo”
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”
“Les Misérables”
“Lincoln”
“Moonrise Kingdom”
“Silver Linings Playbook”

DIRECTOR
Ben Affleck – “Argo”
Kathryn Bigelow – “Zero Dark Thirty”
Tom Hooper – “Les Misérables”
Ang Lee – “Life of Pi”
David O. Russell – “Silver Linings Playbook”
Steven Spielberg – “Lincoln”

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Quentin Tarantino – “Django Unchained”
John Gatins – “Flight”
Rian Johnson – “Looper”
Paul Thomas Anderson – “The Master”
Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola – “Moonrise Kingdom”
Mark Boal – “Zero Dark Thirty”

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Chris Terrio – “Argo”
David Magee – “Life of Pi”
Tony Kushner – “Lincoln”
Stephen Chbosky – “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”
David O. Russell – “Silver Linings Playbook”

CINEMATOGRAPHY
“Les Misérables” – Danny Cohen
“Life of Pi” – Claudio Miranda
“Lincoln” – Janusz Kaminski
“The Master” – Mihai Malaimare Jr.
“Skyfall” – Roger Deakins

ART DIRECTION
“Anna Karenina” – Sarah Greenwood/Production Designer; Katie Spencer/Set Decorator
“The Hobbit” – Dan Hennah/Production Designer; Ra Vincent & Simon Bright/Set Decorators
“Les Misérables” – Eve Stewart/Production Designer; Anna Lynch-Robinson/Set Decorator
“Life of Pi” – David Gropman/Production Designer; Anna Pinnock/Set Decorator
“Lincoln” – Rick Carter/Production Designer; Jim Erickson/Set Decorator

EDITING
“Argo” – William Goldenberg
“Les Misérables” – Melanie Ann Oliver and Chris Dickens
“Life of Pi” – Tim Squyres
“Lincoln” – Michael Kahn
“Zero Dark Thirty” – William Goldenberg and Dylan Tichenor

COSTUME DESIGN
“Anna Karenina” – Jacqueline Durran
“Cloud Atlas” – Kym Barrett and Pierre-Yves Gayraud
“The Hobbit” – Bob Buck, Ann Maskrey and Richard Taylor
“Les Misérables” – Paco Delgado
“Lincoln” – Joanna Johnston

MAKEUP
“Cloud Atlas”
“The Hobbit”
“Les Misérables”
“Lincoln”

VISUAL EFFECTS
“The Avengers”
“Cloud Atlas”
“The Dark Knight Rises”
“The Hobbit”
“Life of Pi”

ANIMATED FEATURE
“Brave”
“Frankenweenie”
“Madagascar 3?
“ParaNorman”
“Rise of the Guardians”
“Wreck-It Ralph”

ACTION MOVIE
“The Avengers”
“The Dark Knight Rises”
“Looper”
“Skyfall”

ACTOR IN AN ACTION MOVIE
Christian Bale – “The Dark Knight Rises”
Daniel Craig – “Skyfall”
Robert Downey Jr. – “The Avengers”
Joseph Gordon-Levitt – “Looper”
Jake Gyllenhaal – “End of Watch”

ACTRESS IN AN ACTION MOVIE
Emily Blunt – “Looper”
Gina Carano – “Haywire”
Judi Dench – “Skyfall”
Anne Hathaway – “The Dark Knight Rises”
Jennifer Lawrence – “The Hunger Games”

COMEDY
“Bernie”
“Silver Linings Playbook”
“Ted”
“This Is 40?
“21 Jump Street”

ACTOR IN A COMEDY
Jack Black – “Bernie”
Bradley Cooper – “Silver Linings Playbook”
Paul Rudd – “This Is 40”
Channing Tatum – “21 Jump Street”
Mark Wahlberg – “Ted”

ACTRESS IN A COMEDY
Mila Kunis – “Ted”
Jennifer Lawrence – “Silver Linings Playbook”
Shirley MacLaine – “Bernie”
Leslie Mann – “This Is 40”
Rebel Wilson – “Pitch Perfect”

SCI-FI/HORROR MOVIE
“The Cabin in the Woods”
“Looper”
“Prometheus”

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
“Amour”
“The Intouchables”
“A Royal Affair”
“Rust and Bone”

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
“Bully”
“The Central Park Five”
“The Imposter”
“The Queen of Versailles”
“Searching for Sugar Man”
“West of Memphis”

SONG
“For You” – performed by Keith Urban/written by Monty Powell & Keith Urban – Act of Valor
“Learn Me Right” – performed by Birdy with Mumford & Sons/written by Mumford & Sons – Brave
“Skyfall” – performed by Adele/written by Adele Adkins & Paul Epworth – Skyfall
“Still Alive” – performed by Paul Williams/written by Paul Williams – Paul Williams Still Alive
“Suddenly” – performed by Hugh Jackman/written by Claude-Michel Schonberg & Alain Boublil & Herbert Kretzmer – Les Misérables

SCORE
“Argo” – Alexandre Desplat
“Life of Pi” – Mychael Danna
“Lincoln” – John Williams
“The Master” – Jonny Greenwood
“Moonrise Kingdom” – Alexandre Desplat

Categories: Awards

Tags: awards, Critics Choice Awards, Critics Choice Awards 2013