No, critics don't "secretly hate" movies

If a critic doesn't like a movie, you'll know it, because they will tell you.

I’ve made no secret that I love the upcoming movie The Brutalist. It’s my favorite movie of the year by a considerable margin. I expect to write a lot about it in the coming months while encouraging others to see it, and advocating for it to win awards from the critics organizations I belong to.

I’ll also root for it to win lots of Oscars, although it’s only November and I strongly believe it’s too early to be thinking about the Oscars, and especially to be making predictions about what gets nominated for them. (The one exception? Daniel Blumberg’s score is the one thing I most want to see honored this awards season.)

While The Brutalist has been pretty strongly acclaimed in critical circles (88 on Metacritic, as of this writing), it has its detractors. It’s a film that’s very, very long and is not for everybody, and some have made cases against it, for various reasons. I do not expect a three-and-a-half-hour movie about Holocaust survival, architecture, and the disappointments of the American dream to go down easy for the vast majority of people. And even the most critically beloved films usually have a few prominent detractors.

And while I believe that Conclave is about the 15th or 17th best movie of the year, I think it’s much more likely to emerge as the Best Picture Oscar winner than The Brutalist is.

All that said, I took an interest in this social media message, from film critic Scott Menzel:

I don’t know Scott. We’re both members of CCA, but I don’t believe I’ve ever met him.

Now, if by “secretly hate,” he means that a lot of critics have seen The Brutalist but haven’t written their reviews yet, on account of the film still being weeks away from release? I can see it. But if the implication is that they’re lying about not liking the movie? That’s very clearly false.

If critics don’t like a movie, I assure you: We’re not going to be quiet about it. We’re never going to shut up. And if their opinion goes against the dominant critical consensus? We’re going to be even louder. There’s nothing we critics love more than an argument and the idea of bucking the critical conventional wisdom.

This is a staple of fanboy conspiracism going back years, whether it’s Marvel vs. DC fan bullshit or all the dumb fights about “woke casting” or whatever else. It’s this idea that film critics have their opinions but are afraid to say what they think due to pressure from the studios, fear of losing access, political bias, or whatever other conspiracy is afoot.