After my first review of Labyrinth posted earlier today it was suggested to me that perhaps I should not see or review fantasy films, as I am particularly averse to them.  There is logic in that suggestion, but I don’t want to prevent myself from experiencing any kind of movie just because I react poorly to certain formats.  After all, good movies can appear in all formats and genres and styles.  And while I do tend to dislike fantasy stories, I can appreciate good ones when they come along, like Dragonslayer or Somewhere in Time or Field of Dreams.

But the underlying question is this: for whom am I writing these reviews?  As a casual critic who has posted more than one thousand specific movie reviews on this website, am I writing reviews for whoever might be reading them for whatever information and guidance I might provide about them?  Is there any good reason for anyone to pay attention to these reviews at all?  The same questions exist in regard to my Oscar predictions.  Does anyone care?  Should they?

I hope that there is some inherent worth in what I have been doing for the past thirteen years on this site.  If you find some iota of wisdom or humor or profundity in any of this writing, it has been worthwhile.  If you hate them and think me an idiot, that’s okay, too.  Everyone has opinions about movies; this is simply the forum for my own.  What I have discovered is that the answer to my basic question is this — I am really writing these reviews for myself.  It is my repository for my views on movies as they happen.  Writing a review helps me work out exactly what I really think about something.  I cannot count how many times I have set out with a specific rating for something in mind and then discover that by the end of my review that rating has changed.  This process helps me truly think about what I have seen, and record those thoughts in hopefully coherent form in a place where others can stop by and consider for themselves — or wonder if my screws are loose.  Either way, the reviews are doing their job.

I began noting all the movies that I was seeing beginning in October of 1979.  I wish I had started ten years earlier.  I note the title, the date of the viewing, where and how I saw it, and a star rating.  For example: The Hitcher, Thursday, February 27, 1986.  The Ogden Six Theatre in Naperville, Illinois.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  That horror thriller, with C. Thomas Howell and Rutger Hauer, was the only movie I saw that day.

For years, that was enough.  I have four or five journals with these entries, from 1979 up to the present.  In my most recent journal I have added a line noting the director and a single sentence of context about each film.  Why?  Because there are entries in my journals that I do not recognize.  Titles that have completely slipped from memory.  And it would be nice to have some idea of what I thought at the time.  I rated The Hitcher two-and-a-half stars.  Really?  Today that seems egregiously high.  My memory of it is that it was certainly suspenseful and I remember the dismembering scene pretty vividly, but did I really think that The Hitcher was almost good?  That’s what my journal says.  But now I wish I would have written a full review.  Perhaps I would have changed my mind just writing about it.  Or maybe I would have thought it was even better.  I’ll never know unless I rewatch it someday.

That’s what these reviews are for.  Sure, they are snapshots in time (just like the Oscars in that manner), a brief but reasoned judgment of how I felt and thought at the time, with actual facts about the film hopefully included for both historical context and future memory prods.  I’ve been actually writing about movies, in full reviews and articles, since I began the print version of Filmbobbery in 1999 and published my three movie reference books soon after.  The full reviews, as difficult as they are to compose at times, allow me to get my thoughts together and form real opinions — even if I return to them later and still wonder what I was thinking.  At least I have proof.  As I said before, I wish I had started much earlier.

If you find something worthwhile in any of these reviews or articles that is wonderful.  It’s great.  That would make me proud and satisfied.  But mostly I’m doing this for myself, to help prevent my mind from decaying into lumpy molasses and to record my existence.  Maybe it is sad that so much of my life is tied to movies in one way or another, but that’s the way it is, and I have embraced it.  Movies are wonderful.  Life is wonderful, partly because of movies.  See a really good one and perhaps you’ll agree.  10 March 2024.