Trusting individual voices in a world of white noise

Even as the state of writing about pop culture gets more and more dire - with great media websites shutting up shop because Google farted; or AI rubbish replacing the point of view of an actual human being - one thing has remained constant: you gotta trust somebody.

It's harder than it has ever been, because there is just a tiny number of professional critics around these days. But there are still people to follow, because experience can shown you that you can trust what they are going to say.

My number one movie critic for the past few decades has undoubtedly been the mighty Kim Newman, who comes to every movie he reviews with an open mind, and can find new things to say about the trashiest of films, all with a heavy dose of wit and intelligence. 

I've been a huge fan of Newman's fictions sicne first stumbling over Anno Dracula at the local library, but his reviews have also been consistently great. I will see a movie just because the good Doctor Shade recommends it, and will avoid anything he says is not worth it. He knows what he is talking about, and who could ask for more? 

I can, because I also like different tastes. There are writers who I don't always agree with, for various reasons, but I find their reasoning and writing so compelling that I never miss their opinion. 

These days, the two who come to mind first  in that regard are the dynamic duo of Sean T Collins and Gretchen Felker-Martin. I've followed both of them for years, and even when I've violently disagreed with their conclusions - they are both out of their minds when they say Mad Max Fury Road is trash - they have written with incredible eloquence, passion and insight about the last episodes of Game of Thrones, or the most genuinely unsettling horror movies.

I'll often still try out something they've panned, and give others a go because they raved about it. But I always read what they write - Felker-Martin is busier with her excellent fiction work these days and I'm really looking forward to the Manhunt adaption, but Collins is still in the muddy trenches of regular recaps and reviews of TV shows, and doing remarkable things on a weekly basis - his takes on the recent Mernandez Brothers films is just shattering.

And there are plenty of others like Chris Ready, who is still astonishingly astute, able to find something interesting to say about all sorts of movies with just a few short paragraphs, or Matt Zoller Seitz and the rest of the crew at he Roger Ebert website, (which is a little funny, because I never actually rated Ebert's stuff that highly, too much baggage, man); or Tegan O'Neill, who has been doing regular video reviews of the most beautifully random comics - nobody else is talking about Paul Chadwick's The World Below, but Tegan is getting stuck in there.

These are the main voices I like listening to, and can trust in a ocean of rotting chum. I'm putting my money where my mouth is next month with four weeks of daily comic reviews, but I walk in the shadow of pop culture giants. Find your own, and you won't ever regret it.