[F7F7F7]

Not sure what OPs reasoning was but you have to wonder if this far-more-human type of film criticism will see a revival in the age of AI assisted writing.

I always like to remind people that before talk heads were battling it out on cable news or ESPN we had Siskel and Ebert shaking things up. They made me realize that movies could carry subtext, nuance and meaning. They made reading ABOUT movies more interesting.

[TFNA]

Siskel and Ebert the TV show was a good example of the dumbing down of criticism; that trend started already before the internet age. The twentieth-century American television medium simply didn't allow much informational depth and nuance. (Edit: after I posted this comment, I saw that the show's Wikipedia article notes that it attracted such criticsm, so it's not just my own opinion.) Ebert's newspaper criticism was rather better.

[sellmesoap]

TV/Film has a way of naturally dumbing things down, the making of video content can get complicated, so the way your favorite book gets butchered into a movie is a natural consequence (RIP Tom Bombadil) between the writing style tailored for the screen, meeting episode length (gotta fit those ads in the time slot) YouTube pushes towards trending content lengths - like how every 4 minute topic is stretched into a 20 minute journey of how the creator came at the 4 minutes of content... The military brigade approach that film and TV employ to get the footage they need with continuity to some acceptable level etc. Writing about complex things has fewer (yet still infinite) hurdles.

[autoexec]

Siskel and Ebert were limited by time/format, but they did actually talk about what was good/bad about the films they covered even if ultimately it got a thumbs up/down. That's better than a lot of people bother with now which is often just a number or a percentage.

[Papazsazsa]

This is a great insight. Taste is the human moat.