Watch the movies, get a pink slip

The New York Times today added movie critics to its endangered newspaper jobs list. As a movie critic for eight years and member of the Phoenix Film Critics Society, I must admit this is very frightening. The article goes on to mention that many reviewers, along with other staff from newspapers around the country, are accepting buy-out packages or just being canned outright. The main culprit: movie reviewers are expendable in a time when revenues at print publications are in the decline. The article goes on to suggest that the Internet plays a major character in this movie critic drama. After all, it says, many readers aren't tuning in to printed movie reviews, preferring instead to go online and read a vast array of movie blogs which offer the same thing … and with swear words. "No one would argue that fewer critics and the adjectives they hurl would imperil the opening of Iron Man in May," but, it goes on, what about smaller movies that are made by the constant chatter of the movie critics who love them? No Country For Old Men, it suggests along with the film's Oscar-winning producer, would not be a best picture winner if it weren't for the critics who studied its themes, rallied around its villain or devoured its gritty story.

I agree that the content on the Internet is easier to get to, and features a wide variety of writers, but online blogsters are too frequently reviewers — not critics; there's a difference — who rehash plot points and dish on the star's red-carpet appearance, nip-slip or not. Too little attention is paid to film theory or deeper analysis of the film's messages.

Sadly, though, if this subject were ever put to a vote to the American public, they would have every movie critic fired on the spot, before the reporters even. Moviegoers tend to hate us because we dislike the movies they cherish, whether it's something that's been misunderstood or maybe it's truly wretched. Regardless, it's sad that the situation has become so bad that newspapers are beginning to trim from the edges.