And that question is “how did the movie in question make you feel?”
Film critics almost never answer this, certainly not honestly. What they do is dance around and dilly-dally, and at the very most hint at a kind of dry, conclusive razmatazz. But I always answer it. Most of my reviews, in fact, address this question head-on.
Hence my 3.12 review of Project Hail Mary, in which I confessed that (a) the Lord-Miller-Gosling pic sent me into “a vague depression pit” as “an ‘oh, no’ feeling began to take hold” due to “a slight comprehension struggle”, (b) “I didn’t hate it but vague discomfort certainly flooded my system” and (c) “I wound up feeling sorta kinda nothing.”
I realize that most critics have given PHM ecstatic thumbs-up responses, and that most HE regulars are going to call me a pisshead for saying what I’ve said. Fine. I don’t care. I know what I know. And I damn sure how it feels to have lead weights strapped to my ankles, and to plummet down into black heaving seas with no hope of salvation.