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Best Movie Critics
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From Ask MeFi, which movie critics do you trust?

My answer: I use the incomparable MetaCritic to figure out which films to see. Aggregated critical opinion really is a wondrous thing. (And MetaCritic, as one astute AMeFi commenter puts it, “is what Rotten Tomatoes wants to be when it grows up.”)

So critics have a different function for me. My favorite critics give me smart, unexpected analyses that make the moviegoing experience richer. Often I read their reviews only after I’ve seen a film, to see what they saw in it that I didn’t. For this purpose, my favorites are the NYT‘s Manohla Dargis, Salon‘s Stephanie Zacharek (especially for commercial movies), and James Berardinelli. And my second-tier critics are The New Yorker‘s Anthony Lane, Slate‘s David Edelstein, and Ebert.

2 comments

I think that I have your first and second tier reversed (plus, I’d replace Dargas with A.O. Scott). Dargas is too loud for me at times.

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I used to stick up for Rotten Tomatoes, but then it totally got too ugly and banner-y. I’m on the MetaCritic bandwagon now.

One of the things I notice about MC, though, is that its reviews are always weighted towards the middle — more 80s than 90s, more 20s than teens. If there’s one thing I still like about RT, it’s the fact that Ultraviolet can get 8 percent. Ultra-meta-slam!

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