Meet the Critic: Collin Souter
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 Collin Souter, who has been the curator and programmer of the short film programs for the Chicago Critics Film Festival since its inception in 2013. He currently writes about short films for RogerEbert.com. His current reviews (as well as many of his reviews from his days at eFilmcritic.com, which have been archived) can be on his web site, collinsouter.com. Collin reviewed movies on a weekly basis for The Nick Digilio Show on WGN Radio from 2001-2018. He is the co-host of the podcast Christmas Movies Actuall with his wife, Kerry Finegan, where they have in-depth discussions with guests on the best, worst and most obscure Christmas movies, as well as reviews of new blu-rays.
Read his answers to our inaugural Meet the Critic Q&A below.
How has being based in Chicago informed your criticism?
I like to think I would have discovered Siskel & Ebert even if I was living in Yuma, Arizona throughout the '80s and '90s, but they happened to be Chicagoans and I happened to grow up in Arlington Heights, IL. I think having the two of them as locals made it seem like a tangible possibility to make a living at this sort of thing (though, as it turns out, I have yet to actually quit my day job after 20+ years of this). I did watch the more New York-ish versions of their show that came down the pike years later, with Jeffrey Lyons, Michael Medved, Rex Reed and all that, but never got the sense that I should be following any of their works as closely as I did the originators of the format. Throwing Dann Gire of the Daily Herald into the mix on Friday mornings when I looked at reviews in the paper also influenced me and reminded me no two critics are alike and it's okay to just love what you love. Later in 1999, when I discovered Nick Digilio's show while driving home late at night, I was reminded that being a film critic doesn't mean being a snob. At the same time, after my parents switched newspaper subscriptions from the Sun-Times to the Chicago Tribune (not sure why), I read Dave Kehr and later, Michael Wilmington, who both taught me about auteurism. All of these people helped shape my point of view and I still find myself being influenced by my peers and those coming up who are in their twenties and thirties. Agree or disagree, there's never a shortage of brilliant voices in this city.
What's a title in our line-up that you're excited for people to see?
My Shorts Programs! I work for months curating these, making sure they're in the right order, making sure we have many different genres, voices, styles and forms represented and to make sure they all flow seamlessly into one another in a fully connected 90-minute block. Sometimes it works out perfectly, sometimes not, but the challenge of it is something I look forward to every year. This year's batch was a true challenge, but only because I had so much to work with and I'm very happy with how the Programs came out. I think people who used to make mix tapes or mix CDs back in the day and who would take the sequencing process seriously, particularly when you have a limited time frame that the format allows , can relate to this, but I'm lucky in that I get to share my mix tape with a big audience and hear their reactions. It's nerve wracking sitting in the dark with a bunch of strangers and sharing what I think are great films and hoping they agree. I can tell when they don't agree, but I breathe a sigh of relief every time I hear them laugh at a comedy or applaud enthusiastically at the end of a film. Getting to meet the directors, when that happens, is the icing on the cake. I've lived with these films for so long, watching them over and over again, that these people who made them are already celebrities to me, even though many of them are just starting out.
What's a piece that you've written that you're most proud of and why?
I recently wrote a piece about Joe Dante's Matinee that I love, even if I wasn't quite sure how to end it. I wrote it for my own site and was able to share it with Dante last year. He said it was one of the most incisive reviews he's ever read on the film and that means a lot to me.
Follow Collin at Letterboxd, BlueSky, and Facebook.
