Since the beginning of September, I’ve written about 110 movie reviews. That’s not meant to be a brag, since I write pretty fast and do it full-time. I’d likely be writing around the same amount no matter what the occasion was, but the last month has been the fulfillment of a goal I’ve had for over a decade. I published my first professional film review in November 2013 (it was for a largely forgettable Ender’s Game adaptation that I haven’t watched since), and it was shortly after getting into the critical business full-time that I learned about the “fall festival season.” The idea of spending a week or so watching new films, many of them likely to be award season contenders, became a pipe dream throughout my experience in college, where I learned too late that there aren’t any jobs in journalism.
Attending fall festivals is something that you could technically do as a member of the public, but it’s expensive as a result of lodging, travel costs, and the price of screenings. I’ve always understood what the festivals represent and what type of buzz they generate, but it comes down to cost and opportunity more than it does experience and interest.
It’s for this reason that, for over a decade, I’ve found that the last four months of the year to be insufferable as a film critic who doesn’t live in New York or Los Angeles. Movies will debut at a festival and receive immediate reactions, then they’ll screen at other events and get another cycle of buzz. They’ll eventually reach the coastal cities in limited release before gradually expanding to other cities, where I’d be able to catch them and write a review.
To participate in the end-of-year discourse, you have to have seen the films that are in contention, which is an option offered to those who either a.) have full-time critic positions and b.) those with the money to speed on the festival costs. They don’t hire full-time critics at most publications anymore, and 13 years of freelance never put me in a position to be picked out to attend a festival on the site’s behalf.
I went through a health scare in 2022 that made me think about what I could see myself doing other than writing about movies, and quickly came to the conclusion that there wasn’t another option. A lot of the last four years have been spent emailing websites, racking up as much freelance work as I can get, and reaching out to anyone who might offer advice. Film criticism is a “club” where new invitations aren’t frequent, and the internet has ensured that there is a plethora of click-bait to distract from real critical thought.
The major fall festivals are Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and New York, and the first two are basically inaccessible for those outside of a very select circle. Getting press acceptances to Toronto and New York might’ve been something I was more proud of if I didn’t realize immediately upon arrival that the definition of “media credentials” has expanded dramatically. Most of the engagement that these festivals thrive upon are Tweets and instant reactions made directly after a screening, in which phrases like “revelation” and “riveting” are bandied about. Influencers are treated as equals to the press, and now they’re starting to get more preferential treatment because it’s easy to coax positive reactions out of them.
There are real critics at these festivals, but I was surprised to find myself doing more writing than anyone I talked to. An average day involved waking up very early to get into a screening line (even press seats aren’t guaranteed) and finding time and a wi-fi connection in-between seeing films to do some writing. It’s not something that I mind; four films a day isn’t as exhausting as you’d think , and it’s much easier to write a review when it’s fresh in memory. I could probably get more engagement if I spent time making bold awards prognostications or baiting retweets from distributor accounts, but I (perhaps ignorantly) think that taking the time to do some analysis might be more beneficial in the long run.
I never traveled out of the country before going to Toronto this year. Any plans I had of international travel upon graduation were sidelined due to the unfortunate fact that my college education wrapped in 2020. The aforementioned health concerns have made it a nightmare to plan meals while traveling due to dietary restrictions, but the Toronto International Film Festival is held in a fairly contained location where theaters aren’t that far apart. Since this was technically a work trip, I wasn’t in need of maximum comfort.
The challenge of seeing everything I wanted or needed to was surprisingly easy, even if it required near-constant surveillance of screening availability for the weeks before and during the festival. A press pass can only do so much, and there’s a lot of resale buying and cold-emails to studios that saved me from missing things. It’s still a situation in which anything too exclusive is going to be impossible to get into without having some sort of higher-up connection. I can list my entire resume and point to relevant clips, but that doesn’t mean that a publicist is going to differentiate me from the crowd. I’ve never been accepted into a Critics Circle or been approved on Rotten Tomatoes, so in these cases you're just asking someone to take your word when claiming to be “legit.”
It was after getting back from Toronto that I went to New York, a smaller-scale festival in which I’d seen a lot of the major titles beforehand. This was also beneficial last week when I was at the local film festival in Philadelphia, where I got to check out more international titles because I’d seen a lot of the bigger releases. It’s nice having a local festival, but getting to downtown Philadelphia is at least a 90 minute drive (both ways), so it’s no less grueling than the ones that I traveled to.
I attended the New York Film Festival last year as a member of the public, reviewing films as a freelance writer, and found it much easier this year as an accredited critic. I value getting to see films over meeting celebrities, but going to press conferences with the casts there is admittedly cool. The major title I missed at New York was Artificial, the new Luca Guadagnino film about the 2023 Open AI scandal. I can’t complain too much about not seeing it, given how much I was able to watch, but I was nonetheless disappointed to miss this as a fan of Guadagnino and someone with a lot of time for ripped-from-the-headline tech dramas like The Social Network and Blackberry. Tickets for the New York premiere sold out within minutes, and I think I was in the middle of the screening when they went up. There wasn’t a formal press screening, as the only critics invited were those who, presumably, have some sort of pre-existing connection with the distributor NEON. The film’s set to open on the coasts in December before an expansion in January, and so I hope that someone will screen it for me sooner rather than later.
I’m not a competitive person by nature, and so my desire to get as many reviews written and filed during the back-to-back run of Toronto, New York, and Philadelphia was more of a personal goal than a desire to “outdo” anyone else. I can’t say that I don’t get annoyed when those with less experience than me get favored treatment; I don’t understand the point of calling yourself a critic and attending the restoration screening of a 55-year-old movie if you’re just going to put up an AI-written X post as a summation of your experience. The process of managing and planning is often aggravating and stressful, but I can say that after 13 years it’s better than sitting on the sidelines.