===reviews are increasingly democratic, through blogs, Amazon, Facebook, etc===

Nothing 'democratic' about proper criticism.

A proper review is written by a specialist critic, commissioned by a professional editor of a media outlet, print, visual, online, but properly established, who knows he can rely on the critic's knowledge of the field under consideration and ability to communicate his therefore valid opinions.

This is not the same as expressing unedited opinion on an open forum or chatroom or blog. The person who does that no more becomes a 'critic', in any meaningful sense, than ordering a scalpel online from Swann Morton would make him a surgeon.

~M~