What's a review worth? AKA. There is no democratic artistic review process.

This is more of a philosophical question than a specific film related question, but I'd say the problem most people run into is that the criteria they establish is too vague to be useful, for example whether or not a film is "good" or "bad". Usually when this is used in conversation it is not meant as a statement of universal truth, but a claim that you enjoyed the film, and that you think it has qualities that the person/people you're communicating with will enjoy too.

Now, while knowing or predicting another person's subjective experience is impossible, there are some relatively safe assumptions we can make. For example, they will be able to distinguish between a person or a chair, and will be able to follow the narrative if it is presented in a clear enough manner. Again we're not measuring any universal truth, but making a safe assumption that this film has properties that will be appreciated by humans in ways that wouldn't be appreciated by say dogs.

Of course you can never 100% predict other people's reactions to something because we all have different personalities and lived experiences, but humans like to socialize and what makes film criticism fun is figuring out what traits have broad appeal and what traits appeal more specifically to you, you're friends, or the community you're writing to. What's important is being specific about you're remarks and being specific about what claims you're making and how they apply. I.E. you should be able to more or less agree on things we've all evolved to perceive, but perhaps differ on whether or not you like an actor, or whether or not a certain story is engaging or worth telling.

If you are capable of and find value in socializing/communicating with other humans, even ones without identical personalities/thoughts as you, then you can also review/discuss films. Just be clear/specific about you're criteria if you want the discussion to be productive. Film discussion is not a boolean logic problem where you're trying to simplify down to a true/false statement, but you have evolved a real perceptual system that's capable of experiencing a real roll of a film spinning in front of a projector, it's not so hopeless as it may seem.

/r/TrueFilm Thread