Why I Could Never Be a Professional Movie Reviewer

Why couldn't I ever be a professional movie reviewer?

Because, I love movies.

When I go to a movie or put one on at home, the first thing I say to myself is, "Okay, movie, try to disappoint me."

Basically, I enjoy almost every movie I watch. I like movies just for being movies, most of the time.

I read movie reviews at rottentomato.com and most of it sounds phony, like the reviewers are duty bound to fabricate reasons to be critical in order to sound knowledgeable about movies.

When I show movies as a part of the courses I teach, I ask my students not to act like Siskel (RIP) and Ebert and give it a thumbs up or down or use some phony stars system to register their response to the movie.

In other words, I ask them not to be consumers of the movie, but viewers looking to learn from the movie. I ask them to view the movie on the movie's term, not on their terms.

So, in the posts I'm going to write about some movies I've seen recently, I won't be rating the movies or recommending them.

I'll be writing about what I enjoyed; but in the rare case that I watch a movie I didn't enjoy, I'll try to account for why I didn't.

In the last year or so, I haven't been able to remember movie titles of movies I've seen, even if I've seen them recently.

I'm going to write about movies more often in this blog. It'll help my memory to have a record of the titles, if nothing else!