Always a critic

Three things Michael Phillips graciously passed along during my week in his arts criticism class have stuck with me ever since I heard them more than a decade ago:

• The first adjective in a review is the most important. That one word sets the tone.
• When in doubt, use the keyhole approach: Focus on a tiny detail of the bigger picture and use that observation as an entry point to your broader view. It was simple and a technique I inherently knew, but the imagery hit new. I’ve reused it many times since.  
• Reviewing something you love is straightforward. Reviewing something you hate is straightforward. But reviewing that middle 80 or 90 percent—the majority of what you will need to write about—the stuff that’s not great and not terrible but in that vast stretch of in between, is where you make your mark. This is also something I already knew, but it offered a helpful reminder when struggling to type through another review of a ho-hum album, play, concert, etc. Perhaps this no-duh nugget stuck because it came from a critic who spent part of his career forced to either give a film a simple thumbs up or thumbs down. (Phillips served as a fill-in host for and later succeeded the legendary Roger Ebert on the syndicated “At the Movies” TV show.) Hard to make your mark with a single opposable digit.

Phillips left a big impression on me and he became a regular part of my arts consumption long after the class. Following a film that I felt strongly about, he was among a small group of critics who I’d track down to see if we agreed. If there was a movie I was on the fence about seeing, his opinion mattered. I always checked his list of year-end favorites.   

I can’t check his list this year—at least not at the usual bookmarked page of the Chicago Tribune. In August, Phillips announced the paper had “zeroed-out the position of film critic.” After 40 years in the business and 20-plus at the Tribune, he took a buyout rather than be reassigned within the newsroom. Last I checked—because I still check for his byline after watching certain films—he was contributing to the San Francisco Chronicle.

In the giant swirling flush of the current media landscape, Phillips losing his spot at the Tribune is hardly a drop that escapes the bowl. Bad news prevails among traditional media. More change is inevitable. But the Phillips news crystalized for me a specific sort of loss: the critic.

A lot has been written this year on this exact topic because Phillips isn’t the only casualty. Celebrated critics at The Washington Post and Vanity Fair also left. The Associated Press ended its weekly book reviews. The New York Times reshuffled its arts coverage, notably shifting away from traditional reviews. The latter prompted a cover-all-the-bases rally cry from The New Yorker’s Richard Brody titled, “In Defense of the Traditional Review.” Intelligencer referenced Brody’s essay in a piece that asked, “Do Media Organizations Even Want Cultural Criticism?” Drew Magary summed up his thoughts on the topic in his own special way.

“Critics aren’t just random fartsniffers paid handsomely to shit on things you enjoy,” he wrote in “The Critic Counts.” “The best critics have a deep knowledge of whatever art form they cover. That knowledge, paired with skilled writing, grants those critics an authority that @MisterMarvel609 can never attain. A good review also expands the conversation on a work of art rather than just evaluating it. That’s why I’ll read some reviews after I’ve just watched a flick. A seasoned critic will give me background on that movie’s production, cite its influences, and point out other things I wouldn’t have noticed and/or known without their help.”

I’m sure there are other recent examples. But the topic made me recall an older article about a significantly lesser-known critic. In 2024, Pete Croatto wrote about Bryan VanCampen, a freelancer for the Ithaca Times who, before his death earlier that year, wrote movie reviews once a week for more than 30 years. He earned about $25-45 an article. He also hosted a cable-access movie review show—not unlike “At The Movies”—for a decade. That’s it. No syndication, no aspirations for a bigger city, no eyes to become an editor. He wrote reviews (and worked other odd jobs, like delivery driver) because he loved movies.

“VanCampen had a computer but only knew the basics of Microsoft Word. He didn’t have the internet at his house,” wrote Croatto. “Every week, he arrived at the Ithaca Times office with his work on a bright yellow flash drive that looked like a Peep, Butler recalled. He’d hang out, pleasant and open to suggestions, as Butler edited … The city was his backyard. Readers’ trust grew year by year, clip by clip.”

Croatto positions VanCampen as a college town luxury, an anomaly, an endangered species, and perhaps the last of his kind—in Ithaca, or anywhere. I mean, if Phillips can get the axe, the VanCampens have no shot. And the question is whether anyone even cares?

The article at least answers that one. It starts with VanCampen’s friend and former co-host wondering if anyone will come to a memorial service at the local art house theater, a situation that Croatto noted also perhaps offered “a lazy metaphor on the demise of journalism.” How things turned out might be the only thing offering a sliver of hope considering all of the other recent news.