I reviewed films for the whole of the nineties for the BBC and local press in Manchester rarely missing any new releases. With this luxury and dream job though comes a responsibility and after a while it became obvious that I was suffering from Movie fatigue.
It was easy to dismiss much of Hollywood’s fare as formulaic and worthless because we had seen too much and seen better. Some of the movies I panned were perfectly good films and many were extremely successful and popular with audiences, but for me they were dull, and despite fabulous production values left me cold. Mark Kermode (Film Critic BBC) was one of my contemporaries and he said: “You have to see everything so that when something comes along that is good you will really notice it.” Of course, this exacerbated the fatigue and often meant that we were too quick to judge, and after a while, very little appealed because we had set ourselves far too high a standard to be realistic about the film’s quality.
If you look at the reviews in The Guardian, you will see more bad reviews that good. You might argue that a bad review is much better copy than a good review so there might be an editorial decision in there. To a certain extent Movie critics can be a poor parameter for quality and an injudicious contribution to its success or failure.
After ten years of reviewing films, I knew it was time to stop. I wasn’t enjoying it and I was probably doing some disservice to the film industry. Less is so much more. Harry Stafford – The Manchester Film School
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And, perhaps Manohla Dargis and Peter Travers watch far more movies than they write reviews for.
I reviewed films for the whole of the nineties for the BBC and local press in Manchester rarely missing any new releases. With this luxury and dream job though comes a responsibility and after a while it became obvious that I was suffering from Movie fatigue.
It was easy to dismiss much of Hollywood’s fare as formulaic and worthless because we had seen too much and seen better. Some of the movies I panned were perfectly good films and many were extremely successful and popular with audiences, but for me they were dull, and despite fabulous production values left me cold. Mark Kermode (Film Critic BBC) was one of my contemporaries and he said: “You have to see everything so that when something comes along that is good you will really notice it.” Of course, this exacerbated the fatigue and often meant that we were too quick to judge, and after a while, very little appealed because we had set ourselves far too high a standard to be realistic about the film’s quality.
If you look at the reviews in The Guardian, you will see more bad reviews that good. You might argue that a bad review is much better copy than a good review so there might be an editorial decision in there. To a certain extent Movie critics can be a poor parameter for quality and an injudicious contribution to its success or failure.
After ten years of reviewing films, I knew it was time to stop. I wasn’t enjoying it and I was probably doing some disservice to the film industry. Less is so much more. Harry Stafford – The Manchester Film School
"""
And, perhaps Manohla Dargis and Peter Travers watch far more movies than they write reviews for.