New 'At The Movies' premieres: Now with real film critics!

I just finished watching clips from the “At The Movies” website, and I have to say that Phillips and Scott are two intelligent men with great insight on film discussion. But I am concerned with the two being overly serious and not incorporating enough lighthearted humor into the mix. The strength of Siskel & Ebert was their ability to balance knowledgeable discussions with off the wall humor if they disliked a movie. Like when Siskel told Ebert to “look into the camera and take back your recommendation of Cop and a Half,” after Siskel retracted his thumbs up vote on the movie, “Broken Arrow.” But I did see some slight potential with Scott’s ripping of that upcoming Charlize Theron movie where he purposely started the review out of order and simply said, “Skip it.” I just hope that the two hosts can get more comfortable as the show goes on and provide some witty banter, to keep things lighthearted as well as analytical.

Like Curtis and NetheRealm, I liked the Lyons-Mankiewicz duo. Although they had them just to attract a younger audience, but it didn’t work and ratings went down 23%. But, I liked them because they made the show more fun, but A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips as the new hosts are making the show more serious again. And I’m not too comfortable with that! Anyway, the Bens left the show too soon, and we’re going to have these critics for the next couple of years. Oh well, fine by me!

I didn’t think the Bens were that bad. Being female, and leaning toward “art house” fare, I seldom find much insight from any of the always-white-male critics. I loved Siskel and Ebert, but I could nearly always predict what each would say about each movie before he opened his mouth. Though no one could actually replace Gene Siskel, I thought Richard Roeper pretty much maintained the balance pretty well. I’ve learned that the always-white-male reviewers *all* like mindless action more than I do, but I thought the younger Bens were a bit less predictable than the usually-older white male critics, so I’m not totally happy about getting two older white males again.

There are enormous umrbens of fans in that generation many of the blogs I read are from film fans between the age of 20 and 30, who throw around references to Stroheim and Antonioni with the best of them. It’s certainly a specialized group one need only look at the top blockbusters of each week to realize that but film fans like that will always be specialized. Some people call us snobs. I accept that moniker gladly.If you go on my blogroll and look in the film section, you’ll get a sense of who is out there, and that’s not even scratching the surface.Again, things like TCM and Criterion Collection have actually created MORE fans due to the ease of access which I think is awesome.

I do consider all of the ideas you have etespnred on your post. They’re really convincing and will definitely work. Nonetheless, the posts are very short for newbies. May you please prolong them a little from next time? Thank you for the post.