Film Criticism: How To Evaluate Editing

How does a film critic evaluate a film's editing?

Editing is a particularly hard thing to evaluate. Editing is often invisible. A great example of editing is 'The Godfather'. The cross-cutting between the big execution style machine-gunning with the birth of Michael Corleone's baby, for example. I think that's what it was. That's a great example of editing: a really good cross-cutting for tension. I think a lot of movies are criticized today for being too edited, too choppy. You can't tell what the hell is going on. Again, the editing should be seamless; it should be an integral part of the movie, and not something too showy.