At The Movies finished 11 years ago. Why haven’t we had anything like it since?

It’s been bittersweet to have my social media feeds awash with clips of At The Movies as Australians pay tribute to its co-host David Stratton, who died age 85 earlier this month.

That’s not merely because we’ve lost a fierce advocate for cinema as an art form, especially Australian film – but because in the 11 years since Stratton and co-host Margaret Pomeranz signed off, we’ve had nothing quite like At The Movies on Australian television.

Between 1986 and 2014, Pomeranz and Stratton guided Australians through blockbusters and esoterica alike almost every week, beginning on SBS’ The Movie Show before moving to the ABC in 2004 for At The Movies. In essence, they were the same show: Australia’s version of Siskel & Ebert, where Margaret and David sat on lounge chairs in slightly daggy studios to debate the films of the week.

Watch any clip – no, really – and you’ll see the two are magic together, proof that opposites attract. Stratton was exactly who you’d cast to play an internationally renowned film critic and former director of the Sydney Film Festival. White-haired, bespectacled, and almost always wearing a suit, he spoke with an authoritative high Australian accent that added extra bite to lines like: “I find Vin Diesel implacably boring.”

Meanwhile, Pomeranz – a TV producer Stratton poached to be his on-air partner – was unpretentious, especially in her love of Vin Diesel, and stylish, fond of a statement earring that would shake vigorously in laughter or exasperation. And her raspy voice routinely cut through Stratton’s pompousness to let out the show’s unofficial catchphrase, “Oh, David!”

But it wasn’t as simple as the snooty cinephile against the popcorn critic, with Pomeranz often more open to challenging, provocative work – be it Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier or the now classic Australian film Romper Stomper, starring Russell Crowe as a neo-Nazi. Stratton refused to rate it, warning that it could glamorise racial violence; Pomeranz found it horrific and essential, giving it five stars.

Leading by example, [Margaret and David] showed how another person’s feelings on a film is a chance to know them better ...

“Agree to disagree” might as well have been At The Movies′ other catchphrase. No matter how flustered or frustrated the two could be with each other, they always remained respectful and open to each other’s opinions. Leading by example, they showed how another person’s feelings about a film are a chance to know them better – and to have deeper conversations about what a film says about the world, whether intentionally or not, and regardless of whether we enjoyed it ourselves.

Perhaps to younger audiences not there for At The Movies’ run, none of this sounds particularly special. After all, the internet is filled with people arguing over film and pop culture, whether on podcasts, Reddit threads or Letterboxd, where more than 20 million users leave their own reviews (including Margaret and David, thanks to a fan transcribing the show).

But for multiple generations, Pomeranz and Stratton were our entryway to cinema, with the duo’s infectious enthusiasm – and impassioned criticism – sparking our own desire to go to the movies.

As a film critic, they certainly sparked mine. While my family was ambivalent about art at best, I – an awkward queer kid in a blokey coastal town – found distant worlds a lifeline, drawn to books and movies without always knowing why.

Watching At The Movies was one of the first times I saw two people really discuss a film in depth. Still, they made it accessible. They felt like my incredibly learned, funny friends – ones who took me along to Cannes or Venice and introduced me to films I had no chance of catching in the local cinema.

Comedian and documentarian Alexei Toliopoulos has a near-identical story, which he tells as part of Refused Classification – a comedy show created with Aunty Donna’s Zachary Ruane, focused on Pomeranz’s activism (and arrest) over the censorship of 2003 film Ken Park. Since debuting last October, it proved a surprise hit (even for its stars), with subsequent sell-out shows at Melbourne and Sydney Comedy Festivals, as well as an encore tour of Australia’s east coast – including a show that Stratton was able to attend, weeks before his death.

“So many people found resonance in my story, of being a lonely kid falling in love with movies through Margaret and David,” Toliopoulos says.

At the same time, neither Stratton nor Pomeranz ever claimed to be the arbiter of taste, readily embracing their own biases and blind spots. So much of the joy of At The Movies was anticipating another one of Stratton’s diatribes against “queasycam”, or that Pomeranz was about to voraciously defend the Fast and the Furious franchise. But their position wasn’t prescriptive – it made you want to decide for yourself, and treated you as part of Australia’s film community.

“Everyone watches movies, but not everyone feels [this kind of] passion,” says Toliopoulos. “Maybe there was one other kid in your school that felt the same way, maybe! But [At The Movies] made you think: ‘Oh, there are enough people out there like me because they’re making this show.’ And these two people are really famous and adored.”

That’s what I miss about At The Movies: it was an invitation into a world of discernment, where film was worth critiquing because even the fluffiest blockbuster could reveal something about our culture and world.

Maybe it’s naive to want a reboot in 2025 – after all, At The Movies’ polite disagreements feel quaint in the age of social media, where no one simply agrees to disagree.

But when Stratton and Pomeranz left At The Movies in 2014, it was to make way for new, younger voices. In a way, that’s come true, though by no help of the ABC, which has wiped its television slate of not just film but almost all traditional arts criticism with the end of The Mix in 2021.

We now have a cacophony of Australian critics. There are a handful of on-staff reviewers at traditional publications, though more work as I do as freelancers. But both are outstripped by the nebulous mix of cinephiles who have created their own audiences across Letterboxd, YouTube, Substack and TikTok, perhaps creating more content than criticism.

And while Melbourne International Film Festival’s Critics Campus program (of which I’m an alum) is almost single-handedly working to foster new critics, these social media creators (not necessarily a dirty word) are largely left to the whims of an algorithm that promotes brash, bold, but not always considered ideas.

These are obvious positives to this diversity of voices and communities, but what culture seems to be missing is a unifying force. It allowed Margaret and David into the living rooms of millions, using their immense wealth of knowledge to provoke and excite audiences, leading debates but never finishing them. Without At The Movies, it sometimes feels like the conversation never starts.

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