by Josh Sewell
Back in January 2002, I was a shy, awkward college kid taking a tour of the Times-Georgian building in Carrollton, Georgia as part of my journalism class. Then-editor Bruce Browning was offering advice about the newspaper business and talking with each student about profiles of local business leaders they’d written for a special section of the paper.
When it was my turn, I worked up enough courage to say I noticed the Times-Georgian pulled all of their entertainment coverage from a national news service. Then I took a deep breath and asked, “Would you be interested in a local film critic instead?”
Browning didn’t even hesitate. He just said, “Sure. You wanna do it? We can’t pay you much, but you’ll have the freedom to write about whatever you want.”
That was not the way I expected the conversation to go. I thought he would politely decline and I’d go on my way. Instead, my first review – the Russell Crowe drama A Beautiful Mind – was in print a few days later. (Please don’t go back and read it. Time has not been kind.)
Twenty years later, I still consider this gig a dream job. Granted, it hasn’t been financially lucrative, but it has given me the opportunity to write more than 1,300 reviews, interviews and articles on all kinds of pop culture. It also helped me land my current “real” career, teaching English and film courses at the University of West Georgia for the past decade – that’s been a blast too.
Being a critic has opened countless doors for me, leading to some incredible experiences. I’ve witnessed the movie industry change in real time. I started reviewing just as DVDs were emerging as the dominant viewing method, then saw that change to Blu-rays and 4K. These days, physical media is practically a niche market, existing mostly for collectors and hardcore nerds like myself.
I was there for the death of Blockbuster and the transformation of Netflix from a disc-by-mail service into a streaming behemoth. In the last couple of years, I’ve written a lot about how the pandemic is prompting even more dramatic changes, with already short theatrical windows (four months or so) shrinking to almost nothing. (Just this week, Searchlight announced Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley is hitting HBO Max and Hulu on February 1, a mere 46 days after it opened in theaters.)
As a newbie critic, I saw movies at local theaters opening weekend, along with everybody else. That means by the time my review was published, what I wrote about was already a week old. It wasn’t ideal, but it got the job done.
However, in 2011 – after a few years of hounding people via emails and phone calls – the wonderful folks at Allied Global Marketing in Atlanta added me to their press list for advance screenings. That means I got to see most films early enough that readers could check out my thoughts before heading out to the multiplex to judge for themselves. (If you’re curious, the first one I got an invite to was David Fincher’s remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was pretty good.)
At some point along the way, I was excited to learn my reviews began appearing in the Douglas County Sentinel, the Times-Georgian’s sister publication. That additional boost in readership opened even more doors. Since then, I’ve been privileged to establish solid relationships with colleagues in the metro Atlanta area, with many of us becoming founding members of the Atlanta Film Critics Circle.
I’ve also been fortunate enough to be invited to join the Georgia Film Critics Association and the Southeastern Film Critics Association. There are so many incredible writers in those groups that sometimes I feel like an Ocean’s Eleven-style con artist who scammed his way into membership.
Still, one of my favorite benefits of doing this so long is that I get to have fun, nerdy conversations about movies with readers several times a week. (I know that sounds like I’m sucking up, but I promise it’s true.) Often, when I’m at Target, or the grocery store, or waiting in line at a fast food place, some nice person will ask if I’m the guy who writes about movies for the paper and then we’ll proceed to chat about my favorite pastime for a few minutes.
It always makes me happy, even though I’m introverted and socially awkward. There’s a reason my reviews are still in print rather than on YouTube, which is the format many younger critics are gravitating toward these days.
So, in case it wasn’t already obvious, I owe a huge thanks to the many great people at the Times-Georgian, the Douglas County Sentinel and West Georgia Living, along with you wonderful readers, for enjoying (or tolerating, perhaps?) two decades of my gushing, ranting and bloviating. The time flew by and I look forward to hanging around as long as everyone will have me.
When it was my turn, I worked up enough courage to say I noticed the Times-Georgian pulled all of their entertainment coverage from a national news service. Then I took a deep breath and asked, “Would you be interested in a local film critic instead?”
Browning didn’t even hesitate. He just said, “Sure. You wanna do it? We can’t pay you much, but you’ll have the freedom to write about whatever you want.”
That was not the way I expected the conversation to go. I thought he would politely decline and I’d go on my way. Instead, my first review – the Russell Crowe drama A Beautiful Mind – was in print a few days later. (Please don’t go back and read it. Time has not been kind.)
Twenty years later, I still consider this gig a dream job. Granted, it hasn’t been financially lucrative, but it has given me the opportunity to write more than 1,300 reviews, interviews and articles on all kinds of pop culture. It also helped me land my current “real” career, teaching English and film courses at the University of West Georgia for the past decade – that’s been a blast too.
Being a critic has opened countless doors for me, leading to some incredible experiences. I’ve witnessed the movie industry change in real time. I started reviewing just as DVDs were emerging as the dominant viewing method, then saw that change to Blu-rays and 4K. These days, physical media is practically a niche market, existing mostly for collectors and hardcore nerds like myself.
I was there for the death of Blockbuster and the transformation of Netflix from a disc-by-mail service into a streaming behemoth. In the last couple of years, I’ve written a lot about how the pandemic is prompting even more dramatic changes, with already short theatrical windows (four months or so) shrinking to almost nothing. (Just this week, Searchlight announced Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley is hitting HBO Max and Hulu on February 1, a mere 46 days after it opened in theaters.)
As a newbie critic, I saw movies at local theaters opening weekend, along with everybody else. That means by the time my review was published, what I wrote about was already a week old. It wasn’t ideal, but it got the job done.
However, in 2011 – after a few years of hounding people via emails and phone calls – the wonderful folks at Allied Global Marketing in Atlanta added me to their press list for advance screenings. That means I got to see most films early enough that readers could check out my thoughts before heading out to the multiplex to judge for themselves. (If you’re curious, the first one I got an invite to was David Fincher’s remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was pretty good.)
At some point along the way, I was excited to learn my reviews began appearing in the Douglas County Sentinel, the Times-Georgian’s sister publication. That additional boost in readership opened even more doors. Since then, I’ve been privileged to establish solid relationships with colleagues in the metro Atlanta area, with many of us becoming founding members of the Atlanta Film Critics Circle.
I’ve also been fortunate enough to be invited to join the Georgia Film Critics Association and the Southeastern Film Critics Association. There are so many incredible writers in those groups that sometimes I feel like an Ocean’s Eleven-style con artist who scammed his way into membership.
Still, one of my favorite benefits of doing this so long is that I get to have fun, nerdy conversations about movies with readers several times a week. (I know that sounds like I’m sucking up, but I promise it’s true.) Often, when I’m at Target, or the grocery store, or waiting in line at a fast food place, some nice person will ask if I’m the guy who writes about movies for the paper and then we’ll proceed to chat about my favorite pastime for a few minutes.
It always makes me happy, even though I’m introverted and socially awkward. There’s a reason my reviews are still in print rather than on YouTube, which is the format many younger critics are gravitating toward these days.
So, in case it wasn’t already obvious, I owe a huge thanks to the many great people at the Times-Georgian, the Douglas County Sentinel and West Georgia Living, along with you wonderful readers, for enjoying (or tolerating, perhaps?) two decades of my gushing, ranting and bloviating. The time flew by and I look forward to hanging around as long as everyone will have me.
Reach out to Josh Sewell on Twitter @IAmJoshSewell
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