There's Been an Accident

At least one commenter expressed confusion at my complete hatred of Crash and asked for a little more detail. To detail the film's myriad problems would require more time and energy than I have right now, but thank goodness for Matt Zoller Seitz, who gave the film a proper berating here.

Yes, I admit, the movie’s more primally exciting than, say, “American Beauty” or “A Beautiful Mind” or “The English Patient,” and more superficially “edgy.” But it’s also dumber and meaner and uglier, an Importance Machine that rolls over you like a tank. And it’s lazy and simplistically cynical about its central subject, race, in that it promulgates a false idea of how Americans express racial attitudes in public.

...[D]eep down [Haggis] doesn’t actually want to say something useful about the modern state of race relations. He just wants to be able to play with racially charged material and be acclaimed for his bravery. The up-to-the-minute realities of American racism are too subtle and elusive for Haggis and his cowriter to grasp, and require too much care to dramatize.

It's worth (re)reading the whole thing.

Not Everyone's a Critic, but Everyone Should Have an Opportunity to Try Out for the Job

Sorry, but I just don’t buy Richard Schickel’s notion that “not everybody’s a critic,” and that bloggers will never be able to fill in the gaps of professional critics. He paints the whole thing as a false dichotomy between enthusiastic know-nothing bloggers and elite aesthetes with eyes and minds of steel. And his intimation that, because most reviewing is just hackwork, and therefore the business is too open and democratic already, is either bizarre or nakedly self-serving. He envisions a world in which the only critics are the super-elites, the George Orwells and Edmund Wilsons, and other critics are marginalized or gone entirely. Well, that’s fine, I suppose, if you already have a gig at Time, but what he’s asking for—whether he knows it or not—is for there to be less criticism, less writing and response and discussion about books, movies, and other popular arts. He’s making the classic argument of the entrenched powers—that they and only they deserve to be at the top, and the bottom not only isn’t worthy, it shouldn’t be bothered with—maybe even shouldn’t exist—at all. Now, lord knows I’m all for qualifications and historical knowledge and carefully refined aesthetic judgments, but I don’t see how any honest lover of the popular arts (or of criticism, for that matter) could really want to limit the discussion to a few high-profile gigs held by the entrenched elite. More discussion is better, and out of the masses, voices worth listening to will arise. Schickel thinks the open critical landscape will turn criticism into a standards-less din; what it will really do is open up the application process for our critics, giving more voices a chance to be heard and read, making it even more—not less—likely that the best, the most knowledgeable, the most readable and entertaining, will come out at the top of the heap.

Orr on Apocalypto

About Apocalypto, Chris Orr says, "What remains is Gibson's never-more-evident technical mastery and his remarkable sense of motion, both narrative and cinematic." I think there's a little bit more to it than that, but Orr makes a powerful case for what I still think was the best, boldest, most satisfying cinematic experience of 2006.

This is Unexpected

Not only do the fanboys like 28 Weeks Later, it seems to have been embraced pretty thoroughly by the mainstream critics. For the record, I thought the original was brilliant -- almost certainly the best horror film of the last decade -- and, while I thought that a sequel had a lot of potential, CW was that it was just be low-grade horror shlock, a quick cash-in on the horror craze and the notoriety of the original. But now we've got A.O. Scott writing that not only is it "brutal and almost exhaustingly terrifying," it's "also bracingly smart, both in its ideas and in its techniques." I'm sold.

Opening Lines

This is why I like David Edelstein: because he's not afraid to start a review of Spider-Man with a rambling 67 word sentence that name drops Luigi Pirandello and ends with the word "flabby."

Art House Tolerance

I've been remiss on blogging here. Again. It's probably going to happen a lot. But I couldn't miss the chance to post what is undoubtedly the most amazing sentence -- in all sorts of ways -- to grace the pages of the New York Times in the last few days:

“Art-house devotees may be a tolerant lot, but it’s doubtful they want to look at a stallion’s erect penis stretched across the big screen like a sailboat boom, at least in public.”

Manohla Dargis, I think you may have a point. So to speak.

Disturbing Revelation

After reading David Edelstein, I really think I'm the only person that prefers From Dusk Till Dawn to Grindhouse (although if you cut out Planet Terror, I'd probably put them nearly at a tie, with the caveat that they're totally different types of pictures). Maybe it's because FDTD does a better job of being actually wildly bad rather than awkwardly imitating wildly bad.

Collecting tidbits about your NYT critics

In today's lesson, we learn that A.O. Scott, father, Brooklyn resident, connoisseur of middlebrow taste, and general arbiter of moderate movie criticism everywhere, drives . . . a Volvo.

The verbal and visceral elements [of Death Proof] have no organic connection, and the plot is booby-trapped with surprises. I’m hesitant to risk giving away too much, but I will say that Kurt Russell is awfully good, and that I could listen to Sydney Tamiia Poitier and Tracie Thoms, two of the movie’s motor-mouthed heroines, talk through the whole three hours of “Grindhouse,” read the phone book or recite “The Faerie Queene” on tape in my Volvo in the middle of a traffic jam.

Really, Tony, how domestic.

Orwell on Film and Book Critics

The book reviewer is better off than the film critic, who cannot even do his work at home, but has to attend trade shows at eleven in the morning and, with one or two notable exceptions, is expected to sell his honor for a glass of inferior sherry. -- George Orwell (via Critical Mass)

Nathan Lee Nails Grindhouse

Perhaps its just living in New York, but I'm really starting to enjoy Nathan Lee's Village Voice reviews, and his wild-eyed geek-gush over Grindhouse is a prime example of why. He seems to have gotten everything I wanted (but sadly didn't get) from the movie, and lavishes some proper love on the terrible twosome behind it:

I've got a theory about Grindhouse, and it goes like this: At some point during the brainstorming/beer-bonging process by which Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino developed their multimillion-dollar ersatz-exploitation double feature, the boys finished off the super nachos, sparked up a spliff, and said "Dude, let's just motherfucking bring it." From whence proceeded a checklist of must-haves: zombie hordes and one-legged go-go dancers, hot rods and hot pants, evil doctors and exploding pustules, trash-talking identical-twin babysitters, castration, decapitation, dismemberment, diminutive Mexican badasses, customized motorcycles, Kurt Russell, Osama bin Laden, Fu Manchu, tasty sausage, jive-ass stuntwomen, outrageous car wrecks, buckets of blood, geysers of gore, mountains of weaponry, explosions bigger than God (Tarantino: "How big?" Rodriguez: "Retarded big")—and of course titties, lots and lots of titties.

His prose is both literate and unself-conscious, carefully phrased and enthusiastic, shows a knowledge of cinematic history yet doesn't let it overwhelm his consideration of modern viewing habits or the film in question. He clearly loves movies, all kinds of movies, and is ready to accept and engage with whatever good they deliver--the smart, the dumb, the nasty, the gentle, the devious, the innocent, the obscure, the simple--he doesn't care what a movie does just as long as it does it well.

(One minor complaint: I don't recall the movie actually displaying any nudity. And even if there was some brief flash that I've forgotten, is it really accurate to describe it as having "lots and lots of titties"?)

Thoroughly Deserved

You'll want to read Andrew Stuttaford's review of The Tudors today, which begins with this lovely line: "No television series boasting an opening sequence that includes a brutal assassination, ecstatic adulterous sex, the gorgeously bared breasts of Ruta Gedmintas, and an angry, thoroughly deserved, shout of 'French bastards' will ever get too harsh a review from me." I tried to watch it last week, but my On-Demand pooped out. Maybe it's time to add a new show to the list?

What Film Critics Don't Need to Know

Look, I'm all for film critics being knowledgeable about the art and history of film criticism, but Ronald Bergan's Guardian blog post, "What Every Film Critic Must Know," is a cranky, curmudgeonly example of the Dougherty doctrine--"If it were more like me, the Republican Party would be better off. It’s failing because it’s like you"--except applied to film criticism. He could've just written, "If film critics were more like me, film criticism would be better off," and been done with it.

I don't see, for example, how knowing anything about jidai-geki is going to help anyone "read" the next Michael Bay film, or how having seen every Bunuel film will come much in handy when reviewing next fall's crop of self-important, Oscar-hopeful period pics. The vast majority of movies that a critic, especially a critic outside New York or L.A., must see and review are breezy popular entertainments that have little to do with Bergan's list of must-sees and reads. Now, it doesn't hurt to have seen all those classic films, and anyone reviewing film professionally will hopefully have an interest in seeking out this sort of noteworthy material. But I don't think anyone is going to be terribly worse off for not having seen them while reviewing I, Robot.

No, Bergan's criteria doesn't have much use for most mainstream film critics these days; instead, he's put together a pretty solid list of requirements for what it should take to become a film studies professor--which, surprise surprise, is just what Bergan is. Gosh, imagine that: a professor arguing that more people need to take and value the type of courses he teaches...

Dude-ity

This really is the reason we have Ain't It Cool. (Warning, vulgarity, but I promise, it's completely worth it.) Neill Cumpston is the Joe Bob Briggs of the new millennium.

No, Spengler, I won't admit it

Spengler's column on why you really hate modern art is pretty funny, and probably sort of accurate for a lot of folks, but I can't say that I'm one of them. I actually do like the stuff, just as I actually like atonal experimental music (though I'm not particularly into atonal orchestral music). Of course, neither can I say that I'm exactly "a decent, sensible sort of person without a chip on [my] shoulder against the world." (I'm working on it though. Honest.)

Really, I think the difference for the modern/abstract art and music lover, or at least for me anyway, is that while most people experience art and music in a fairly surface, sensory manner, and therefore gravitate, quite reasonably, toward art that's comfortable and pleasant feeling, I tend to experience art from a far more argumentative, analytical perspective. Most people prefer stuff that calms the senses; I, and a minority of other cantankerous folks (many of whom tend to be critic-types) prefer material that riles the mind. This is often a source of frustration for critic types who feel that everyone should follow their experience, and although I don't propose a solution, it does seem to me that critics and others of similar disposition should generally refrain from castigating general audiences for not getting something. (Other critics, however, are fair game.)

Critical Labyrinth

Why the excess of critical love for Pan’s Labyrinth? The film’s current Metacritic score is a stupendous 98 (higher than almost any film of 2006)), with the majority of critics positively dazzled by the splendor and political allusions of this dark fantasia. And no doubt, Del Toro’s film is a ghoulish visual feast; his eye for the golden-hued worlds of myth and legend is basically unmatched in current filmmaking. The refinement of his visual sense is really rather incredible. In some ways, Del Toro resembles a Mexican Jean-Pierre Jeunet, except he replaces Jeunet’s bleakly comic quirkiness with a more melancholy spirit. Here, though, that spirit tends to drag the movie down, keeping it slow and not entirely engaging, letting its parallel storylines languish in partial disconnection.

More pointedly, at least with regard to the general critical reaction, is that Del Toro’s penchant for simplistic narratives and characters works much better in pulpier genre fare like Mimic and the vastly underrated Hellboy, and comes off especially bad in light of the film’s flirtations with history and politics. As Ross Douthat smartly notes in his review in the latest print edition of National Review (sorry, subscriber only—but subscribe!):

You’d have to be pretty thick not to realize that del Toro intends the fairyland narrative — heavy with arbitrary commands, underground abattoirs, and intimations of blood sacrifice — as a commentary on the politics at work in the real-world storyline, and this realization has sent many critics into raptures over the film’s supposed political sophistication. Hence, for instance, Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern’s announcement that Pan’s Labyrinth “deepens our emotional understanding of fascism, and of rigid ideology’s dire consequences.”

This is, of course, precisely what the movie doesn’t do. López makes what he can of the character of Vidal, turning a cardboard villain into a memorable monster, but the film’s politics are about as deep as a puddle of blood. The fascists are beasts who torture, maim, and kill without compunction, before sitting down to fine dinners with local grandees and corrupt clerics; the Communists in the woods, on the other hand, are a heroic lot, sturdy and kindhearted and ethically pure, like figures out of, well, Communist propaganda. The only thing such caricatures deepen is our understanding of predictable left-wing bias in Western cinema.

I’m glad I saw the movie, and it certainly serves as a potent reminder of Del Toro’s visual panache, but I think he’s better suited to directing films that don’t require such subtlety. I’d love to see him, for example, take on the Greek myths, with their larger-than-life heroes and villains and gods. These stories would be far better fits for his all-or-nothing approach to character and story, and would better match the unrestrained grandiosity of his visuals.

Mean Critics

Rod Dreher on American Idol and "mean" criticism:

I watched some schlub in the tryouts talking about how great she was, and how her husband didn't support her trying out because, in her view, he was jealous of her desire to soar. She talks for a bit about how much of her own self-worth and dignity and dreams and yadda yadda are riding on this tryout.

Sure enough, she stood in front of the panel of judges, and she's horrible. Excruciatingly bad. And boy, did they let her know. I'd heard that this Simon person is especially cruel, but it shocked me how harsh he was with that young woman. She begged for another opportunity to sing, but after the second one, they sent her away with a fusillade of insulting remarks. Offstage, she sobbed, which you knew was coming. She graspingly tried to salvage her dignity by saying that she was "sick," and that that had affected her voice. But she was, of course, completely untalented. She didn't realize that. She does now, most likely.

I did something I never would have done 10 years ago: I turned off the TV. The schlubby young woman was a fool, but it was unbearable watching her torn down like that. To be honest, it reminded me of when I used to be a critic, and would gleefully trash untalented filmmakers, actors and the like. Had a blast doing that. Never once thought about the real people with real hopes and real dreams, however tawdry and delusional, that I was bashing. My reviews could be really funny and entertaining, but if I were ever to return to criticism, I wouldn't write reviews in the same way. I'm not saying that I would pull punches, and overpraise something that didn't deserve it just to be nice. But I would put aside callow cruelty, of which there is too much in the world. I regret having added more than my share back in the day.

I sympathize with this sentiment, but I'm not sure the comparison between an amateur singing competition and Hollywood entirely stacks up. I imagine a lot of critics--no matter what the topic--will, at least once in their life, take a moment to wonder about the targets on the other end of their pens. Many will at least be tempted to feel a little bit of guilt about their harsher words. Does anyone really deserve to be made fun of in a public forum?

The answer is more complicated than Rod seems to make it. I might agree with him that there's little need to lay into someone as deluded as the AI contestant. But when a filmmaker makes a product designed to waste your time, money, and thoughts--when a filmmaker, either by intention or incompetence, makes a sucker of you, the paying audience, then I think there's a good argument that he or she deserves to be the target of scorn, if not ridicule.

I also tend to think a critic has a responsibility to honestly portray their own reactions. Movies (or politicians, or sculptures, or restaurants, or architecture) that make a critic irate should be treated as such. And critics also have a responsibility to engage their readers--which means that they, like movies themselves, need to make use of entertainment, humor, wit, etc. Publications don't pay for pep talks to filmmakers, nor do they pay critics to squelch their own views. As a good employee, a critic has a responsibility to both readers and bosses to write in an honest, engaging manner--which often means being, well, what Rod might call "cruel."

Of course, a good critic will (hopefully) be able to judge the appropriate tone for a piece, will not indulge in gratuitous mud-slinging, and will avoid piling on easy snark at the expense of substantive content. But sharp words are a tool that should not be yanked from of any critic's rhetorical arsenal just to salvage some creator's feelings. And, just as conservative and liberal pundits can often share drinks and make peace even while launching print salvos at each other (well, usually), knowing that it's just part of the trade, I think both the critics and the criticized can have some understanding about the nature of their business and not get too worked up over harsh judgments.

Overstreet's Top 25

Jeffrey Overstreet has an impressively long year-end feature in which he discusses his 25 favorite films of 2006 with other movie critics, writers, and filmmakers. I had the opportunity to go back and forth with him about The Science of Sleep (with some overlap into Marie Antoinette) down at number 15.

Notes on a Critic

I am completely obsessed with critics’ notes. Maybe this is because of how important mine are to me. I tend to remember my general impressions of a movie fairly well, but I’m terrible remember the specifics—the exact order of certain scenes, the particulars of how a shot is set up, visual or auditory cues of particular note, and, most importantly, specific dialog. So my notes, which are about 50% transcriptions of dialog and 50% observations--my brain struggling to process the film in real time--are incredibly important. They're like an incredibly low-level recreation of, if not the film itself, my individual experience of it.

I know there are critics who don’t take notes and still manage to write convincing criticism. I’ve done it, and I used to do it regularly in college, but it’s a scary thing, and I tend toward broad generalizations for fear of getting specifics wrong. I’m too scattered, too busy, too mixed up in too many diverting projects and ancillary thoughts to mentally hold onto the information in a really comprehensive manner.

One of the things, though, that always interests me is when critics refer to their notes in their reviews or other writing. David Edelstein does this sometimes, and I seem to recall Dana Stevens doing it as well. It’s sort of a weird thing to do: Isn’t the job of the professional writer not just to transcribe those notes, but to take them and process them into something slick and professional? Except at the same time, it’s also interesting: It tells you not just about the movie, but about the critic, the person reviewing the film and how they think.

Anyway, it just strikes me that someone ought to do some sort of museum project on critics’ notes: a blown up collection of notes from noted critics or notes that led to famous reviews. Or, even better, some professional critic should scan their notes and publish them online alongside their reviews. How cool would that be?

Addendum: On the other hand, as Terry Teachout implies, notes are a symbol that something is being viewed for work, not just pleasure. Of course it's not quite that simple either. These days, when I go to movies just for fun, or when I watch DVDs at home that aren't related to anything I'm working on, it feels like something of a relief, and yet I also get the urge to start scribbling. How else will I remember? For a regular note-taker, seeing a movie without notes is to be reminded that casual viewing is both more relaxing, and even more involving--yet doesn't lend itself as easily to the thorough consideration that a note-taker might be used to.

Hustle and Moan

Am I the only one who is intensely curious about Steve Sailer's take on this?

Watching TV

With David Edelstein gone, TV-critic Troy Patterson is shaping up to be Slate's most consistently fascinating entertainment writer. TV critics tend to focus on dramas and sitcoms, but Patterson has set himself apart by writing brilliant dissections of guilty pleasure gimmick television--the ephemeral waste of what passes for reality and gamesmanship on television. It would be easy for him to simply run through each show's faults, or line them up and knock them down with obvious punchlines. But Patterson gives the shows, if not respect, then careful consideration, allowing each to suggest something about the shallowest fringes of pop culture. He doesn't make the usual culture crit mistake of railing about the decline of Western civilization either, and is willing to recognize when (and how) a show is effective, even if it's not great. His work is smart, narrowly-focused, to the point, and balanced.

Just look at his two most recent articles, one on the new reality show about wannabe rock journalists competing for a spot on the Rolling Stone roster, the other about two new dating shows. He gives the Stone-show credit where it's due, but doesn't hesitate to examine and poke fun at the show's cast of young wannabes, managing to play the "I'm an actual journalist" card fairly lightly, considering:

A bit later, braying a summer's-long farewell to her hometown from a concert stage, [one contestant] pledges sincerely to represent up in New York City. "We gotta make money, dawg. We gotta make money. That's what I'm talkin' 'bout." What is she talking about? Has the dear thing confused print journalism with one of those lucrative professions—bagging groceries, say?

His piece on dating shows is even better, capturing rather succinctly the distinct awfulness of two new shows that offer their contestants a chance to compete for a hot date, but at the risk of humiliation. And again, even though he is clearly disturbed by what he sees, he's honest about its appeal, saying about one of the shows, "As pure nonsense goes, Gay, Straight or Taken? is briskly paced, invitingly shot, and painfully contemporary—a Love Connection for the conspiracy-minded." This, I think, is what really sets him apart from other TV critics--the ability to both seriously examine the cultural implications of the idiot box and simultaneously not require it to be anything more or other than what it is--shameless, shallow diversion.