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Well, so do critics. But my job doesn't end with saying I liked it or not. I have to explore my responses and tie them to scenes from the film, and inevitably that entails recalling other movies that may have done the same thing better. It wouldn't make me a better critic to pretend I know less than I do. Critics who don't fall for big hits are often told that they've seen too much. But if you've seen what movies can be, why settle for less? And by the same token, if you've had a good time at a movie, why be dishonest about it, even if it isn't the highest art?

The flip side of "You can't enjoy anything" is "How could you enjoy that?" Last summer, when I wrote a piece saying I had more fun at "Dance With Me" and "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" than I did at some highly praised indie pictures and box-office hits, I got letters telling me that it was my duty as a critic to uphold high standards. I've gotten the same reaction this year when I've told people that I loved "American Pie" (one of the smartest American comedies about sex in a long time) or that I had a good time at "Lake Placid." When I praised Bruce Willis in my review of "The Sixth Sense," one wit wrote in to advise me against changing crack dealers on the same night I have to review a movie. He doesn't explain why liking Bruce Willis lessens my credibility.

We've all had the experience of reading critics who, like some know-it-all at a party, use their knowledge to browbeat people into accepting their opinion and try to make people feel like idiots for disagreeing with them. Even good critics can strike out in that way when they're frustrated by having to explain the cheap manipulations that to them seem obvious. But too often critics who express their opinions forcefully are accused of being snobbish and superior. Movies feel so close to us that many people take it as a personal insult when a critic disagrees with them, and they respond insultingly. There's a perception of critics as handing down their opinions from on high. Reading those opinions makes people feel helpless, desperate to add their voice to the debate. Paradoxically, the Internet, which offers readers far greater access to writers, provides a way for people to vent that frustration, often without thinking things through first. I've never been threatened with leg-breaking or dismemberment, as colleagues of mine have. But I'm young yet. The e-mails I got after "The Sixth Sense" piece ran called me a snob, a moron, a joke, an egghead, a "fuckin' idiot," a "soulless and mean-spirited man." One reader wrote, "Quite frankly, you are a complete tool with some thing long and sharp stuck up your arse." Marginally wittier was the reader who, after my "Eyes Wide Shut" review, observed, "You write like a turd sweating out a tight asshole." (Since I've never looked, I'll take his word for it.) "YOUR REVIEW SUCKS," someone else wrote, more succinctly, and of course I also got the ever popular "Fuck you!"

Career advice is always a ripe area for discussion. "The Sixth Sense" review prompted one reader, after telling me he'd been a "movie buff" for more than 60 years, to "strongly suggest you try a different occupation. You are so far out of the mainstream that I see no help for you." Another wrote, "I realize now why you are a freelance writer and cannot get a job with a real publication. Freelance stands for 'I suck at writing and can't get a job doing it, so I just try to make myself sound like I'm looking for the next opportunity.'" (Actually, I'm on contract at Salon.)

And inevitably there are the people convinced that every critic is a failed film director: "Before considering your review of 'The Sixth Sense' I would like to see your CV including the list of films you have written, directed, and been a major actor in. Or, are you just another wannabe like most critics?" People who make this argument never stop to consider that if filmmakers are the only ones capable of judging movies, then their opinion is as worthless as they claim the opinions of critics are. And it's always odd to have your knowledge of film history and the way the business of movies affects what we actually see resented on the one hand and discounted on the other because it isn't actual filmmaking experience. I've never wanted to be a filmmaker -- I'm a writer, and writing is what I love. (Or having written something -- like most writers I know, when it comes time to write I'd rather do anything else.) And if you're going to dismiss the critics who never worked in the fields they wrote about, then Ruskin, Shaw and Hazlitt are just some of the names that get tossed out with the bathwater.

Actually, I prefer the fuck-yous and the accusations of sourness and jealousy and the inability to feel to the e-mails that analyze my hidden motives. Sometimes when I go through reader mail, I think the two jobs everybody has are the regular one and psychoanalyst. "The Sixth Sense" prompted one reader to write, "If this movie didn't move you then you either haven't lost a really close family member … or are just too young to understand." (What should I do -- trot out a list of my dead loved ones to defend myself?) Failing to respond to movies on worthy topics -- as I did in my pan of "Beloved" -- provides a field day for the shrink squad. "I am not saying that everyone who does not like the movie hates black people," one Table Talk participant wrote. Then, unable to resist, she said it anyway: "Anyone who finds the 'racial message' of 'Beloved' oppressive ought to think carefully about their own relationships to people of other races."

The most common complaint lodged against any critic who pans a movie is lack of objectivity. Last fall, when I reviewed "Beloved," I was upfront about saying that I thought Toni Morrison is a lousy writer and that I thought Jonathan Demme's recent films showed none of the virtues of his earlier work. A recurrent strain in the Table Talk discussion of the review was that I was therefore unable to judge the movie fairly. One poster even said that, like a judge, I should have "recused" myself from reviewing it. The comparison is revealing because it's so utterly wrongheaded. A judge's job is to be impartial; who goes to movies impartially? You choose certain pictures (and stay away from others) because you're interested in the story or the stars or the director. It would be dishonest of me to pretend that there aren't filmmakers whose work I expect to like more than that of others. What's necessary is the willingness to be surprised; there's no greater pleasure than seeing an actor or director turn in better work than you expected. I don't go to 200 movies a year hoping they'll be bad.

It's simple to see what's at the root of all this hostility: the inability to accept a contrary view. The most disingenuous letters are the ones that begin with something along the lines of "While I believe everyone is entitled to his opinion ..." Wanna bet? They always get around to questioning your right to a different opinion. Instead of writing, "Apparently we had two completely different responses to this film," people write, "Apparently we saw two different movies." Often, I'm told I should go see the movie again, as if a negative response just has to be a mistake. But the final authority is always the numbers, as in these letters: "The box office and I both say you're wrong" and "Doesn't it make you feel a little strange to know that you are the only one to give a BAD review to this movie?"

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