[spondylosaurus]

Trusted (human) reviewers and critics are more important than ever to me. Like you said, lists of whatever's popular or trending are just... things that are trending. For good reasons or otherwise.

Meanwhile if I read a Richard Brody review I get a sense of whether a movie might be worth watching—even though we don't have identical taste, I've learned a lot about his, and now I know how his taste translates into reviews. Curation is totally the name of the game now.

[pjlegato]

The problem with that arrangement is that it doesn't scale: a tiny number of popular critics become the gatekeepers. Success in the field then depends entirely on somehow gaining the notice -- and good reviews -- of one of these few critics.

Countless other pieces of art are never noticed by anyone, countless talented artists are forced into day jobs and eventually abandon art -- no matter how high quality (for whatever definition of "quality" you prefer) -- simply because they were not able to catch the attention of one of the elite critics, for a variety of reasons, almost all unrelated to the quality of the work itself.

[ghaff]

Back in the day there were some movie critics who I felt I could generally rely on, some I either mostly aligned with or realized we had different tastes in specific ways, and a few who I could reliably count on to be a counter-indication of what I would like.

But it may be a reflection of the modern media landscape but I don't have critics that I gravitate to any longer. Admittedly I couldn't even name the critics at publications I actually subscribe to.