A number of these critiques seem like problems with the work culture rather than code reviews. Yes, nitpicking, cargo culting, gatekeeping, and favoritism are problems, but are they problems with _code reviews_ specifically?

Some of the others are actually desirable features of code reviews in my experience. Yes, we don't want needless explanations or the code reviews only going to a small number of people, but my experience is that code reviews are a good mechanism for encouraging authors to write self-explanatory code and for sharing expertise around the team.

This list just doesn't jibe with my experiences.