… or anything, but you could read Adrian Searle’s wise yet acerbic essay in the Guardian about how art criticism has fared against the flood of money in the art world, read it and replace “art” with “film” as needed, and you’d gain all the insights you need.

For that matter, replace “art criticism” with “literary criticism” or “music criticism” and ditto.

Critics aren’t doctors. We can’t fix things. We are not here to tell artists what to do. They wouldn’t listen anyway. … Criticism might blow the whistle on overhyped art, flabby curating, moribund institutions or the odd fly-blown administrator, but that is because you cannot divorce art from its context. …

Writing about art only matters because art deserves to be met with more than silence …. An artist’s intentions are one thing, but works themselves accrue meanings and readings through the ways they are interpreted … This, in part, is where all our criticisms come in. We contribute to the work, remaking it whenever we go back to it – which doesn’t prevent some artworks not being worth a first, never mind a second look, and some opinions not being worth listening to at all. …

Some things are not easy to grasp. We have to work at them. This, in part, is what criticism tries to do. It is also where a lively engagement with the art we encounter begins. And it is where we all begin to be critics.