The new movie-review policy at the Times gives smaller films and online releases a more even playing field. But as the cultural clutter increases, critical judgement is more crucial than ever. Photograph by Bert Hardy / Getty

It’s welcome news that the Times has changed its policy regarding movie reviews. Until early this year, the newspaper reviewed, in principle, every movie that received a theatrical release in New York—though I’m not certain how they defined “theatrical release.” In practice, it seemed to mean any film playing for seven consecutive days in the same Manhattan theatre. That policy has been the horse driving the cart of releases: many movies that have little chance of making money at the box office get limited theatrical releases in New York through the practice of “four-walling.” A distributor rents a theatre (or, more likely, a screen in a multiplex) and stages their own release, mainly for the purpose of garnering a Times review, which in turn helps push viewers to the film’s simultaneous video-on-demand release.

In other words, distributors have been using the Times policy to generate free advertising for themselves. That’s why the policy change is good news: distributors can no longer, in effect, buy themselves coverage. Also, the resulting inflation of theatrical releases driven by the Times_ _policy (often twenty or thirty in a week) made it tougher for low-budget films—often given shoestring releases by small, intrepid distribution companies—to break through the din and clutter.

Nothing against video-on-demand (V.O.D.); sometimes, movies released straight to video have great artistic merit, and it’s part of the critic’s responsibility to seek them out. (In an interview last week with Sam Adams of Criticwire, A. O. Scott, the chief critic at the Times, explained that the change in policy also involves an effort to consider “digital platforms and non-theatrical release options.”) Most recently, for instance, Abel Ferrara’s “Welcome to New York” went straight to video. It’s a film that’s near the top of my list of the best of the year but that, because of its lack of theatrical release, may not be eligible for consideration on year-end lists.

Of course, this ineligibility aligns with the movie studios’ protection of their unique domain, the movie theatre. I’m reminded of a similar industry crisis, in the fifties and early sixties, when television cut deeply into American movie-going habits; Jerry Lewis spoofed movie executives’ defensive pose in “The Errand Boy.” Though there’s something distinctive, even magical, about the communal movie experience—the size of the screen, the public nature of the event, the theatrical sense of the event happening independent of the viewer’s control, the darkness, the sticky floors—movies and television have been overlapping, at the highest levels, for decades.

The cinema isn’t a place, it’s an idea. When Fassbinder made “Martha” for German TV or Steven Soderbergh made “Behind the Candelabra” for HBO or Bruno Dumont made “Li’l Quinquin” for Arte, the resulting works were movies, no different in kind from their films “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” or “Magic Mike” or “Humanité,” which premièred in theatres. The aesthetic and the artistry are the same.

The lack of a theatrical release doesn’t prevent anyone from writing enthusiastically about films available only on V.O.D.—but it does keep those films out of Oscar consideration and out of the journalistic confines constructed to coincide with it. I heartily agree with Scott: being a film critic now entails paying attention to V.O.D. releases. Yet that’s why the changes augured by the Times’s new policy won’t do much to clear space for independent-film releases. With coverage expanding to on-demand and online releases, the clutter—and the demands on a movie critic’s attention—will only increase. The changes in critical coverage make critical judgment all the more crucial. Only a discerning sense of what’s important—artistically and therefore journalistically and even historically—will enable a critic to bring a little-marketed film of great merit to the attention of readers and viewers. Without that exacting taste, no change in policy will ever help.

I have mostly been discussing smaller releases, but the big studios have also, in effect, been buying themselves coverage—rendering themselves un-ignorable by dint of sheer advertising volume. Writing about the Times policy, Adams suggests that, “if the Times is no longer reviewing every movie, then everything should be on the table, from microindies to ‘San Andreas.’ After all, which of them needs a review more?” I agree that no film has a legitimate claim on attention because of sheer numbers—and I think that “microindies” have been the source of the greatest artistic advances in recent years and are in desperate need of discerning critical attention.

But there are several good reasons why critics should be paying attention to films in wide release. First, there’s the obvious journalistic fact that, since readers are likely to be aware of these films, explaining what they are—and evaluating them over and above the studios’ self-crafted publicity—serves a crucial informational function. It’s important to call out the artistic failures of some ballyhooed productions—but it’s even more important to reveal the noteworthy artistry of great films that sneak in, in plain sight, in the guise of mere products. The crucial moment of modern cinema is the discovery that some of the best directors ever have worked in Hollywood studios, making movies within the norms of commercial productions. A big budget shouldn’t count against a filmmaker any more than a small one should.

But there’s an extra phenomenon that arises from major releases—the phenomenon of popularity. The very fact that a movie captures the interest of millions of viewers is a mark of its makers’ creativity. Popular success is no random flick of the finger of fate, but the result of a combination of ability and acumen—which, however, isn’t the same thing as aesthetic merit. Popularity is inseparable from the consideration of movies as politics—as phenomena that transcend their aesthetics to become news in themselves. The very formality of the notion of a movie’s theatrical release has a grand political connotation, like a candidate for office throwing a hat in the ring. Just as candidates’ appeal is different from their stated platform, it’s worthwhile to consider the source of a movie’s power over a wide range of individual imaginations (often called, oxymoronically, the public imagination).

Reviewing a popular movie in this way involves a double-edged discernment—a virtual look behind the curtain at the kinds of decisions that brought the movie into being, and a look into the virtual soul of the abstract viewer whose enthusiasm the movie sparks. At its best, the result is a Nietzschean artistic psychology that acknowledges and understands the ways of power. At its worst, the commentary is a blend of armchair sociology and political ruefulness. We’re often treated to the unintentionally comical spectacle of critics reviewing not movies but the audience, reviewing the world. Presuming that a discussion of a movie’s politics has an earnest nobility that the consideration of mere aesthetics doesn’t, they turn their criticism into aspirational punditry, and they turn their dissatisfaction with popular movies into a display of hand-wringing at the state of things at large.

That’s why—with both widely advertised studio productions and with microbudget independents—there’s no formula for critical usefulness, no policy that can establish a view of the cinema that sees into the future of the art. Only individual critics can do that. Criticism is, in its own way, a unique variety of artistry that is no more confined to a format, a platform, or an outlet—and no less personal—than the art of filmmaking is.