Do Print Film Critics Matter Anymore When It Comes to Documentary?

Particularly in light of Tuesday's night Cinema Eye Honors, I feel the need to point to Thursday's Hollywood Reporter story by Gregg Goldstein on the fact that many documentary films are no longer being reviewed by major newspapers upon their theatrical release.

Goldstein notes that two of this year's Cinema Eye winners - Alex Gibney's Oscar winning TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE and Asger Leth's GHOSTS OF CITE SOLEIL - were not reveiwed by the New York Post when they opened in NYC. 

The New York Post's top film critic Lou Lumenick (who writes a nifty blog) says that there are just too many indie films:

"The number of films opening in New York City has exploded in the last three years -- 14, 16, 18 titles some weeks, many of them shot on video and playing for a single week in one theater on the way to video.  We simply don't have the space or the staff (three reviewers, all of whom have other responsibilities) to review them all, so we make tough decisions on a case by case, week by week, basis."

Of course, neither TAXI nor GHOSTS fit the description that Lumenick offers, so it's clear that there's something more going on than just separating the wheat from the chaff.

Goldstein further notes that the Post's crosstown rival Daily News "offered online-only reviews of "Taxi," the Oscar-shortlisted docu "Lake of Fire" and the the most acclaimed foreign film of last year, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days."

When KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON began to open around the country last fall, I noticed a huge difference from our release of GIGANTIC just four year's earlier.  When GIGANTIC opened, we were reviewed in NYC by the Times, Post, Daily News, Newsday and Voice.  For ABOUT A SON we were reviewed by the Times, Post, Sun and Voice.  And as we went around the country, nearly 40 percent of our reviews were pulled from wire service reviews.  This only happened once on GIGANTIC.

Goldstein points to recent layoffs of film critics as a prime cause:

"Critics have recently been laid off, bought out of their contracts or left and were not replaced at the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, New York Newsday and more than 15 papers around the country.

In their place, papers have begun running wire service reviews or relying on a mix of stringers. That, however, diminishes the impact of the reviews, because "you don't know enough about a person's voice and what they like for their review to count," according to L.A.-based publicist Fredell Pogodin."

I agree with Pogodin and think that it's at least one of the reasons for the struggle that documentaries are facing theatrically these days.  Unfortunately, Lumenick is of the opinion that readers don't give a damn:

""The only complaints we've gotten [on not running some reviews] are from publicists and distributors," says the Post's Lumenick. "Not a single one from readers." "

That may be true but isn't it disconcerting for a fairly important film critic to defend his paper's failure to review an Oscar winning film by saying that readers didn't complain about it?  Is that the state of film criticism these days - it's OK to skip films if the readers don't mind?  If so, than why should we care if film critics stay or go from the nation's newspapers?

Thankfully, I've noticed (and Goldstein reports) that some of the gap is being filled by a number of online writers who are covering smaller films, particularly documentaries.  And one could argue - for good or for ill - that the Times and Voice reviews are the only ones that matter to regular art house attendees.  But in a trying time for nonfiction, it's a bad sign that when print film critics choose favorites, it's often nonfiction that gets left out.

Comments

[Christopher Campbell]

Obviously they should at least have a paragraph length preview, if they aren't going to bother to see it and review it. Many city papers like the Post should have something about every film that hits the city that week.

But still, I don't mind that a lot of critics don't review docs, because most just don't know how. Look at any doc on Rotten Tomatoes, and it likely has a great score, only because many critics think any doc that gives them some kind of info is a good doc. It's beneficial for docs, in that it showcases them, and in a way most professionally made docs are worthy of view to an extent, particularly if, yes, they supply some interesting information or story. But I'll take a critic who can actually look at a documentary critically any day, and that's a rarity. And I don't mean judge the politics or the message of the film. I mean discussing the structure, the success of the thesis, and/or any other such constructive review of the film's quality as a film.

[AJ Schnack]

Ah, Christopher, you're just saying that to make me happy.

You're entirely right, of course. But, I still find it to be shocking to see the lead film critic at a major NYC daily brush off the fact that his paper never reviewed an Oscar winning film. Granted, they'd probably have given it to Kyle Smith, who seems to pounce on anything that even has a whiff of trouble for the Bush administration, but still...

[Christopher Campbell]

Yeah, that's my least favorite thing about doc reviews. They're often only given a long review if a political doc. And then it's either favorable or negative depending on the politics of the critic. It is also upsetting that if I harshly criticize a left-leaning Iraq War doc, or especially a Michael Moore movie, then I'll receive comments saying I'm too right-wing. Or vice versa in the case of the opposite. So, even when you do the job correctly, readers don't always know.