Scott’s criticisms remind me of the no-bullshit reviews of Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert. Their perspectives on the history of film anchor their viewpoints.

Example: JOKER

“To be worth arguing about, a movie must first of all be interesting,” A.O. Scott writes. “It must have, if not a coherent point of view, at least a worked-out, thought-provoking set of themes, some kind of imaginative contact with the world as we know it. ‘Joker,’ an empty, foggy exercise in secondhand style and second-rate philosophizing, has none of that. Besotted with the notion of its own audacity — as if willful unpleasantness were a form of artistic courage — the film turns out to be afraid of its own shadow, or at least of the faintest shadow of any actual relevance.”