Film Criticism, Indeed

I don’t have time to comment sufficiently, but go read James Parker’s Boston Globe piece on the last days of the old school film critics and the rise of the Harry Knowles-style reactionary blurbfests. It’s quite similar, in many respects, to the criticisms leveled by old media at the political blog world, where “heh” and “indeed” have allegedly replaced the elaborate, carefully worded considerations of old.

The populist style or nonstyle of film writing so deplored by [critic Dave] Kehr owes much to Knowles. Here he is, for example, on the above-mentioned ``M:I:3": ``Keri Russell is yummy. Michelle Monaghan is the one to marry. And Maggie Q? There's this red dress she wears that is easily drool inducing."

Well...it has energy. And that many people prefer it to the suites of burbling middlebrow that fill many broadsheet film sections is not entirely surprising. Knowles is an enthusiast: He loves to rave about blockbuster action pics, to which he doesn't so much respond as acquiesce in a fever of delighted passivity.

[snip]

In the Ain't It Cool world, the fact of a movie, just its presence on the screen, almost automatically annuls criticism-to quote Steve Martin in ``Dirty Rotten Scoundrels": ``Wow! Wow! All I can say is Wow!" The pulling-down of the critical ego and its pronouncements from on high is an attractive prospect, no doubt. But as the blurby, slangy, barely-considered Ain't It Cool style becomes the lingua franca of film criticism, we should cherish the last of our old-school film writers. The curmudgeon confronting the screen, perched hawkishly in his seat, his pen over his notepad like a cocked talon, represents a high principle: He expresses the vigilance of civilization against inanity.

Parker is right, of course, that lots of movie writing has changed its emphasis from literate critical consideration to blithering movie-geek sputter. But I suspect that Knowles is as much an outgrowth of this trend than a cause of it.

More important, I think, is that Parker paints the dichotomy between the old and new critics far too strongly. It is possible, I believe (I hope), to be both a giddy fan of film and a practitioner of serious criticism. There is no reason that one cannot entertain both the joyous, sensual delights of popular filmmaking and the more refined, intellectual approach of our revered critics. As I have tried to point out both here and elsewhere, the best of the newer critics (you know who I'm talking about) don’t make that distinction. One needn’t turn off their brain to be overwhelmed by the dizzy delirium of the big screen, nor should thoughtful responses automatically be incongruous with those that are passionate.