Blog Review: The Critical Critics
Mike Izaks requested a Free Blog Review of the blog, The Critical Critics and here it is…
What is The Critical Critics?
The Critical Critics is a movie review site. The about blurb, while not offering much in the way of authorship information, says they offer, “Movie reviews are straight-forward and brutally honest. If a movie is terrible, we’ll scold it; if a movie is great, we’ll praise it. Direct and impartial – the way movie reviews are meant to be.” The give 1 to 5 ‘piles’ for a movie, 5 being bad and 1 being worth seeing. Using their scale, I’ll have to give the blog 1 pile, worth visiting.
Site Design/Theme
This site features one of the best magazine feel themes I’ve seen and why I’ve given this review a feature position. The credits say it’s a combination of the Vertigo Electrified and Suhweet 1.0 WordPress themes with additional work by Craig Catena. It is quite attractive while being very readable. I’m quite impressed with it.
Navigation is good but could be a little better. Recent posts and categories are shoved to the footer section. Search is also down there. I’d prefer to see these more up front. Going to the archives page reveals a good sitemap and search facility that makes up for any weaknesses on the front and single post page navigation options.
Monetization is provided by Google Adsense and Kontera. As I’ve mentioned it other reviews, I don’t care much for Kontera’s effect on the user experience. The Adsense placement is OK, blending well into the site as a whole.
Content
The reviews I read were good. Opinionated, but well done. Here are some I particularly enjoyed reading:
Movie Review: Beowulf (2007) - I’ll have to catch this one when it’s on Pay-Per-View
Movie Review: Bee Movie (2007) - Glad I took a pass on that one over the Thanksgiving holiday.
In addition to reviews, the site has Top 10 List features like these:
Feature: Top 10 Hottest Bald-Headed Actresses
Feature: Top 10 Movies with Male Crossdressers
The content is excellent throughout. I read about 15 reviews and other articles and there wasn’t a weak one in the bunch.
Overall
This site is a great example of building an excellent niche blog. Well done Mike.
Get Your Site Reviewed
If you would like your site reviewed by me for free, just like Mike Izaks did, use my Free Blog Review page to request one. Since I’ve gotten quite a back log I’m going to be doing two at a time spaced out about every 4-5 posts until I get caught up.
Thanks for the kind words. Visit often!
I agree with your take on Kontera — I’m waiting to hit the minimum payout so I can cash out and remove the ads.
Thanks for allowing me to review your blog Mike.