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While it may come as no surprise that film critic James Rocchi utterly despised Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (ergo a legion of fans nearly broke the Internet rebutting his review), what's shocking is the Western alumnus also thinks Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood is overrated as a director.

"Million Dollar Baby drove me crazy with how manipulative it was," offers Rocchi, BA’92 (King’s), of Eastwood's 2004 Oscar winner. "And I thought Gran Torino took a lot of easy outs."

Ouch. Rocchi, who graduated with a joint honors degree in English and history, readily admits he would much rather get behind a film he thinks is amazing and that people should go see than try to talk them out of something they’ve already decided on.

"If somebody has an Optimus Prime tattoo, I'm not going to convince them to not spend $12 or $14 on Transformers 3," Rocchi says. "But if I praise a film like Bellflower, one of the best American films of 2011, and it gets people to go out and see that film, terrific."

Rocchi, who currently writes for MSN Movies and The Toronto Star, has been supporting the arts since his days at Western when he first wrote about movies and music for The Gazette and later served four years as CHRW Radio’s program director.

"I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn’t stuck around London and worked at CHRW and saw a bunch of great shows," recalls Rocchi, who also won public speaking titles at the Canadian National Debating Championship and the World Universities Debating Championship in 1991. "And not coincidentally met the woman who became my wife, who is now my ex-wife, but with whom I moved to America. The whole London and Western thing was incredibly important to all of that."

After his turn at CHRW, Rocchi helped revamp London Music News into a more consumer-friendly, music-oriented publication, which led to him writing about music and movies for money. A move to California was the next logical step.

"When I moved to Santa Cruz, California, my first part-time job was working for a plucky, new startup called Netflix. And that became a full-time job, serving as their sole film critic for five years," Rocchi says.

After Netflix, he wrote reviews for AOL's Cinematical.com before landing at MSN Movies in 2010. And while Rocchi's home box office has changed from time to time over the years, his passion for cinema has never faded.

"A lot of my passion for movies goes back to watching Elwy Yost on TVO's Saturday Night at the Movies and bonding with my dad. That was the most important night for any Canadian film nerd-in-training," Rocchi quips. "My mom and dad really loved storytelling and my older brother studied drama, so a love of movies and acting was always there."

And that's why every film, even the aforementioned Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, gets Rocchi's full attention when he slides into his reviewer's seat at the theatre.

"Even for the worst film in the world, when the lights go down, I am completely in the grip of hope," says Rocchi. "Even if it's me saying to myself, 'Kevin James, have this be an amazing film. Have this be the film that demonstrates to me that you are a decent human being.' I love movies. And I love good movies. And when you find those good ones, they're like diamonds and you have to treasure them."

Rocchi, who never misses a Steven Soderbergh film, says no critic has a magical set of scales sitting on his or her desk and a copy of Citizen Kane to serve as a base measurement for all that is good in cinema.

"The job is to make an entirely subjective opinion make sense to the objective reader," Rocchi explains. "And if you're not writing an honest review, you’re not doing your job. At the same time, a review doesn’t need to be rude to be honest. I know a lot of people, especially in the online era, love to be unkind or vulgar or say uncharitable things about people’s appearances, which is fun but I think it’s more important in a negative review to get under the hood and really talk about why the movie didn’t work.

"I also tell myself anything that I write down in a review I should be able to sit down, opposite the table, from someone responsible and say the same thing politely. It's not, 'this person is a total incompetent,' but rather, 'there were some problems with the script and perhaps if tact could have been taken with the direction, wouldn’t that have been more satisfying?'"

Rocchi says legendary wordsmith George Orwell's description of prose best sums up what he tries to do with each and every review.

"Orwell said, 'Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.' It should be utterly transparent and yet completely direct your point of view. And that's how you try to write. You try to write in a clear way where people understand exactly what it is you are saying and why. And then they can take part in the conversation."

Not unlike the Orwellian beasts of Animal Farm. Or Zookeeper. 

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Click here to read Rocchi's top 10 movies of 2011.

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