Advise the readers well. This does not involve informing them, “You’ll love this!” If I approached some guy in a restaurant and told him what he would love, I might get a breadbasket in the face. No, we must tell the readers what we ourselves love or hate. If we work for employers who think we should “like more movies like ordinary people like,” we should make a donation in his name to the Anti-Cruelty Society.

Do the math. If one week you state, “‘Mr. Untouchable’ makes ‘American Gangster’ look like a fairy tale,” and the next week you say, “American Gangster” was “Goodfellas” for “the next generation,” then you must conclude that “Mr. Untouchable” is better than “Goodfellas.”

A trailer is not a movie. Thus, when urged to select your “picks of the week,” you must never pick a trailer for an upcoming film. You must actually wait to see the film itself.