Meet the Critic: Clint Worthington
In the Chicago Critics Film Festival’s new “Meet the Critic” series, we’re introducing our readers to some of the many talented members of our Chicago-area print, online and broadcast critics group, which celebrates the art of film and film criticism.
In today’s feature, meet Clint Worthington, the Assistant Editor at RogerEbert.com and a Senior Staff Writer for Consequence. He’s also the founder and editor-in-chief of The Spool, which he’s transformed into a space for rising voices in the industry. In addition to being a CFCA member, he also is a member of the Critics Choice Association. You can also find his byline at Vulture, Block Club Chicago, and elsewhere.
Read his answers to our inaugural Meet the Critic Q&A below.
How has being based in Chicago informed your criticism?
Illinois has been in my blood for my entire life; I grew up downstate, an only child growing up on a farm surrounded by corn and soybeans and little else. No wonder I gravitated towards movies, really; they helped raise me, show me a bigger world than the one I was living in. (Siskel & Ebert on the TV played a huge part in that, as well.) But it was really moving to Chicago after college that cemented my place in a community of filmgoers and filmmakers; I found fellowship at screenings at the Music Box and other repertory theaters, forged relationships with friends and loved ones in the crazy, heady days of MoviePass, etc. I started a podcast with my best friend from college, with whom I moved to the city with starry-eyed dreams of conquering Chicago's theater scene; that we'd find modest success with our podcast, Alcohollywood, would prove life-changing, for me especially.
That was my window into professional film criticism, as higher-profile guests bounced off us and I started following that into work for Consequence of Sound, then later RogerEbert.com and other outlets. The city has such a vivid film community, with so many places we can gravitate towards (Music Box, Facets, The Gene Siskel Film Center, the list goes on) for unique film experiences outside the usual multiplex fare. And here, I've also found a place amongst some of the most insightful, funny, welcoming critics the industry has seen.
We often gripe about the struggles that come with being a non-coastal critic; LA and New York, after all, get the lion's share of the access and perks. But being here, in the home of Roger Ebert, I feel all of us working to live up to his standards and ideals, even as we forge our own paths through film criticism. There's a broad-shoulders scrappiness to our work that feels of a piece with the rest of the city. We're often underestimated, but some of the best film critics working work here, and I'm blessed to learn from, and work alongside, them.
What’s a title from our line-up that you’re excited for people to see? (or a title that the festival has programmed in the past that you’ve loved)
Last year's screening of Sing Sing is one of my most cherished memories, a beautiful ripped-from-real-life drama that allowed me to bask in the collective emotion of an entire theater fighting back tears. (Same goes for They Came Together, still one of my very favorite comedies, it's just that those were tears of laughter.) But this year, I adored Albert Birney's OBEX, an inventive lo-fi-sci-fi tone poem on what it means to be alone, and to find solace through the games we play. Figuring out how to distill the essence of old school adventure games like King's Quest and The Legend of Zelda must have been no small feat, and you can see every stitch of resourcefulness that came into building such a unique visual language on a shoestring budget. (Twinless and Friendship are also delightfully fucked-up tales of male bonding that resonate with my pitch-black sense of humor.)
What’s a piece that you’ve written that you’re most proud of and why?
There are a lot of pieces I'm proud of of recent vintage; I got to opine on the effectiveness of Adolescence's one-take nature for RogerEbert.com, for instance. But I'm especially proud that I got to explore the intersection of film history and video games with a piece for Ebert on Sam Barlow's FMV experiment Immortality, a mystery game that takes you through raw footage of three different films centered around a starlet whose disappearance still plagues the game's world. I found it a fascinating reckoning with Hollywood misogyny (and a delicate tightrope act through the game's own flirtations with it), as well as a neat time capsule of three different eras of filmmaking I saw captured with remarkable alacrity. And yet, lying underneath the surface, a mournful meditation on the agony of artistic creation, of the almost spiritual toll it takes on the artist and the hidden anguish that can lie beneath every frame. I did my best to explore those ideas in this piece, and I'm still so happy I got the chance to stress-test my writing in this way.
Follow Clint at Letterboxd, X, and BlueSky.
