It's literally his job. He's a specialist and he wouldn't have had a following if people didn't come to him to seek his educated opinion. Roger Ebert loved film. He just didn't like to be treated like an idiot and thus was critical, only wanting modern film to be better.
Also you can't read into whether they want to hate the film, you can't tell that from a review. Jared Leto (I assume he mean him) has been obnoxious and critics have to factor in PR and advertising too. Don't blame them.
About the subjective/objective part you mentioned. You're correct- film is subjective. Everybody is allowed their opinions and critics are the ones putting themselves out there for abuse for giving theirs. Film when put through the ideas of award ceremonies, reviews or group discussion though? Suddenly it's not so subjective. There are expectations and a right/wrong board of marking.
I never understood the point of forcing opinions onto others. If you like a generally disregarded movie then what's the point in trying to convince everybody else they're wrong? More power to ya.
I wasn't talking about Leto or SS specifically just a more in general, I especially noticed it with a lot of the new turtles movies where people were reacting on such an emotional level they were incorrectly blaming Michael Bay for stuff he had nothing to do with. Now it's fine to mention Michael Bay in a turtle review(if it's done accurately to his contributions) but to focus an entire review of a movie on your dislike for a producer or an actor or a director is not how a responsible critic should critique and there's way too many of those types running around that actual subjective and qualified people's reviews and assessments often get over looked.
I don't think Ebert has a "following" by any definition of the word. He has a job that steady publishes his work but I don't think there's any quantifiable sector of the world's pop. that listens to his movie advice as doctrine. Ebert is one of the most mocked critics I can think of precisely for his inflexibility, he likes what he likes and it gets good reviews, if it's a movie in a genre he doesn't like it gets bad reviews even if executed properly(many raunchy comedies get this treatment from him). It's as if he doesn't appreciate the final result he overlooks all the effort it took to get there.
Your opinions are allowed to be subjectively based but whether a film was good or not is an objective measure. Did it use good lighting, did it have a good score, were the angles good, were transitions done well or even needed. It's the things that build a movie that need to be judged when a movie is called good or bad, talk about your feelings and what you liked/disliked when explaining if you liked the movie or not, but not when you're determining if a movie is good or bad.
