Wanna be a movie critic? Just do it

Forget David Brooks . Let’s get back to movies.

On Monday, when I was talking to Jamie Neely ‘s critical writing class at Eastern Washington University, a student asked me about movie reviewing. The question: How does one start out doing it?

My answer was simple: You just create a blog and start writing. See, in the early ‘70s, when I was still an undergraduate, there were few places where you could place your film commentaries. The first thing I ever had “published” was a promo sheet for a Hitchcock series that played at the University of Oregon. Big whoop, I know, but I was happy. There were my words, my opinions, in print! Wow!

A couple of years later I wrote a review of “Animal House” for the newspaper in Cottage Grove, Ore. the Sentine l. I was working as a reporter/photographer for the Sentinel, and I got to cover the film’s premiere in Eugene because that, and Cottage Grove, was where John Landis filmed it.

But it wasn’t until 1984, when then-Spokesman-Review-entertainment-editor Tom Sowa asked me to review a film playing at the then-Magic Lantern, that I began my actual film-reviewing career. See, in those pre-Internet days we had no way of running reviews of films that didn’t run on the Associated Press wire. So if we wanted a review, we had to send someone to see it before it opened.

To my infintite surprise, no one else wanted to do it. So I jumped at the chance. And I continued to write reviews for the next 25 years.

These days I write this blog. Just as anyone can. And you know what? I’m just as happy.

As, I suspect, is Mike from Milwaukee, who is author of some of the most entertaining-yet-penetratingly-insightful movie reviews I have ever, uh … read? Experienced? Laughed while watching?

Below is the first of Mike’s nine-part review of “Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones” (by clicking on that link you see the entire mess in just five seconds) Either way, enjoy. And revel in what ordinary guys can do with time on their hands and just a bit of inventiveness.