-Eli Wallach
Movie promoters pepper their trailers with snippets from critics that praise the film. Every film seems to be the "best movie of the year" or the "funniest, saddest, scariest, most powerful thing I've seen," but does that really affect your choices in movies? Most likely, you're in the same boat as me and don't pay attention to the words that fly on the screen. So, why do we care what these "hot shots" have to say? What is the point of critics, period? Are they suppose to be our society's taste makers? I don't think so, because, if that was the case, I would be no better than Ratatouille's Anton Ego. As a critic, I see myself as someone who is a fan of the cinema, a student who knows a thing or two about movies, and someone trying to start a conversation about the phenomena that is film.
Movies have always resonated with me considerably since I was very young. I was a child that respected sleep and the bedtime, but I remember begging my parents to allow me to stay up past my bedtime so I could watch the Oscars, except in 1997, when Titanic was winning every award possible. Even at the ripe age of eleven, I asked myself, "what's the big deal?" The things I loved about the Oscars was that it was one grand night that people got together and conversed about their favorite movies they saw that year and reminisced about films from the past. The montages of past award winners were a favorite of mine. Movies from different eras and countries flashed on our tiny T.V. screen, and I said to myself, "I want to see all of those movies." Movies weren't just entertainment to me; they were shadows of the past that transported me to locations untouched by my fingers and mind.
I'm currently studying media and culture at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida after a couple of years of being uninspired. After high school, I was a nursing student in Nebraska. After learning that the medical field is a pursuit that requires 100% commitment, which I did not have, I found myself out of college and working at a bank. In my spare time, I would visit the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center (aka, The Ross) in Lincoln, Nebraska with my good friend and fellow filmophile, Justin Senkbile. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, the University of Lincoln film studies class would show films at the Ross for their students, but everyone was welcomed. It was the first time I saw movies at the theater that weren't blockbusters or new releases. I discovered Public Enemy (1931), Hold Your Man (1933), and The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), which was the film that rattled my bones and changed the way I viewed films all together. It was those nights that made me realize that I didn't just want to be a fan of movies, I wanted to be sucked into them.
So, I have a couple of years of film and media studies under my belt, and now I'm following my passion to do critical writing. That is the point of this blog; it is the new chapter for my written voice. I want your help, dear reader. I want to know if you're interested in what I have to say, even if our opinions match or not. Do you agree with me that Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer movies stink, or do you disagree; but either way, did you want to and continue to read the whole article? To be crass, opinions are like buttholes; everyone has one. I want my role as a critic to showcase ways that cinema works or doesn't work for me, with the films being my examples. I'm trying to enter in the discourse of film, art, culture, and everything else that wraps around the cinema. That's all I care about. Are my opinions clear and my judgments justifiable? Let me know! Help me walk this tightrope that is critical writing, and I'll have a lot more fun.
-Jonas A. McCaffery
