Once the province of a few elite voices in the dark, film criticism, in the Internet age, has become an enthusiastic and relentless media cacophony. It is now available everywhere–in newspapers and magazines, on television and blogs, written by professionals, amateurs, and those who walk the line between them–and this multiplicity of voices, while it inarguably democratizes the form, has also raised a defining question: What is film criticism, and what should it be, in an era when so many feel entitled to call themselves critics?

In "The Art and Practice of Film Criticism," Owen Gleiberman, a critic for Entertainment Weekly magazine since 1990, will explore what writing a piece of criticism really is: not just the marshaling of an opinion, but an attempt to connect with and express the experiential mysteries of watching and understanding a movie.

Owen Gleiberman has been Entertainment Weekly's film critic since the magazine's launch in 1990. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor.