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Favorite film critics?

Who do you read for pleasure and who do you think were some of the more perceptive and incisive film critics?

Pauline Kael? Manny Farber? Roger Ebert? Jackson Murphy??

by Anonymousreply 87July 1, 2019 5:43 PM

Mahnola Dargis. And Ebert, bien sur.

by Anonymousreply 1August 31, 2015 8:15 PM

I love Grace Randolph.

I also love Christie Remire.

by Anonymousreply 2August 31, 2015 8:30 PM

Jay Sherman

by Anonymousreply 3August 31, 2015 8:33 PM

Donald Richie was a great film critic. Recently passed away, sadly. I would love to read his book 'Japan Journals 1947-2004'. A friend of mine has read it and says that it's a fascinating book as Richie knew all kinds of people: great writers and directors from around the world, but also hookers, transvestites, low-ranking yakuza, etc; and he spends part of the time either in sex clubs or cruising in places like Ueno Park.

by Anonymousreply 4August 31, 2015 9:02 PM

Anthony Lane and David Denby.

by Anonymousreply 5August 31, 2015 9:02 PM

Mrs. Norman Maine

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by Anonymousreply 6August 31, 2015 9:07 PM

I like Peter Rainer who writes for the Christian Science Monitor.

by Anonymousreply 7August 31, 2015 9:13 PM

Pauline Kael

by Anonymousreply 8August 31, 2015 9:33 PM

Leslie Halliwell, Pauline Kael, Otis Ferguson-all gone. One modern critic I enjoy is Ken Hanke.

by Anonymousreply 9August 31, 2015 10:28 PM

Ebert became a huge whore shortly after Siskel died and he'd give 4 stars to anyone or anything. He was wholly unreliable after that until the day he died.

by Anonymousreply 10August 31, 2015 10:39 PM

Why are you listing dead critics?

Well if you are, you should read the French film critics. As in french people who wrote criticism. Also read the feminists and the marxists.

But if that's not your cup of tea, yes to Ebert, no no to Kael.

by Anonymousreply 11August 31, 2015 10:47 PM

[quote] Why are you listing dead critics?

Because the question didn't specify those with a pulse.

by Anonymousreply 12August 31, 2015 10:51 PM

Elvis Mitchell.

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by Anonymousreply 13September 1, 2015 12:02 AM

Walter Monheit

by Anonymousreply 14September 1, 2015 3:03 AM

Honest question: How do you pronounce Manohla Dargis? I only read her name, have never heard anyone say it out loud.

by Anonymousreply 15September 1, 2015 11:21 AM

r15 It's pronounced pretty much as it reads, but with a hard "g" (as in Margaret). Ma-nola Dar-gis.

by Anonymousreply 16September 1, 2015 11:49 AM

Slavoj Zizek.

by Anonymousreply 17September 1, 2015 11:51 AM

For his work on The New American Cinema, Andrew Sarris belongs at the pantheon of American film critics. Add to that the love, common sense, and his sublime eloquence in writing about film, and he simply towers over most of his contemporaries. Yet his name is nowhere to be found here. Meanwhile, mean-spirited and nasty poseurs like Mahnola Dargis get repeat mention. It's not enough to write well - having a love for film is also required. A trait Pauline Kael lacked as well.

But Sarris is dead and therefore probably doesn't count anymore. So among the living, A.O. Scott and Todd McCarthy are probably the most astute and worthwhile around these days.

by Anonymousreply 18September 1, 2015 1:56 PM

Thanks, R16. I've been using a soft g like "gelatin."

I wouldn't go so far as to say she's a poseur, R18, but Dargis can get a little too caught up in her own circular internal thoughts sometimes, and has trouble editing that out of her work. Her sentences will all start the same for a while, and it gives the impression that she's repeating herself. Or she'll list a whole bunch of prior movies that inform the one she's reviewing and by the end of the paragraph your eyes have glazed over.

A good example is her recent "Queen of Earth" review. It's a good review but it doesn't stand apart from the work of a lot of gifted online critics.

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by Anonymousreply 19September 1, 2015 3:43 PM

I think people took Pauline way too seriously. Admittedly, she was very funny, trying to poke seriousness into some as trivial as movies.

by Anonymousreply 20September 1, 2015 4:10 PM

I love Pauline Kael because she gives you something to think about, and is clear and concise and adamant. I frequently disagree with her and she did often get facts wrong, but almost all the big names did, so I can't hold her to a higher standard than, say, Roger Ebert.

Lester Bangs didn't talk movies much but when he did he was amazing. Harlan Ellison's reviews are interesting too but are sometimes kind of banal.

Pretty much the only critics I seek out nowadays are Ignatiy Vishnevetsky and Stephanie Zacharek, and sometimes Glenn Kenny. There are a lot of really shitty "big names" like Calum Marsh and Simon Abrams who just suck beyond belief. I mean that literally: they suck the life out of anything they're talking about. In the case of Marsh, he got his stupid selfie-obsessed girlfriend into film criticism and that made me hate him even more.

by Anonymousreply 21September 1, 2015 4:27 PM

Peter Travers!

by Anonymousreply 22September 1, 2015 4:29 PM

Former critics- Graham Greene and Robin Wood. I also loved Quentin Crisp's movie reviews in "How to Go to the Movies"

Currently enjoy David Thomson (his BBC Radio Series "Life at 24 Frames a Second" was recently rerun- totally wonderful)

When deciding on what to watch, I usually check the NYT, Village Voice, Guardian, and Sight and Sound magazine. I also regularly listen to the BBC's The Film Programme (love Francine Stock's short & definitive criticisms) and the Kermode & Mayo Film Review, though I find Mark Kermode a bit on the middlebrow side.

by Anonymousreply 23September 1, 2015 4:46 PM

Quentin Tarantino recently called Pauline Kael "the Kerouac of film critics," which I find intensely annoying.

by Anonymousreply 24September 1, 2015 5:46 PM

Bill Clinton subbed as a film critic with Richard Roeper, I believe 10 or so yrs ago. Maybe it was after Roger Ebert became ill, I was impressed. Clinton was very articulate and knowledgable about film in general, and certain movies specifically. Does anyone remember which show it was.

by Anonymousreply 25September 1, 2015 6:06 PM

I do love Kael's intense engagement, and the fact that she hit her mature stride in the late 60s and 70s, when US film became about as varied and interesting as the best of cinema elsewhere. A happy confluence.

She's in print and has attracted biographers for a reason. Having seen some oldish movie, I enjoy checking PK's take: it gives a flavour of the times, of how she (and doubtless her devotees) responded to screenings afresh.

That's true of all old reviews, but Kael's depth and acuity offer more food for thought, even when the food is unpalatable. These days, I like Denby and A O Scott. Plus of course one can get lost for hours in David Thomson's 'Biographical Dictionary of Film.' His omniscience and unpredictability ensure a great read.

by Anonymousreply 26September 1, 2015 6:23 PM

Pauline Kael was a great critic in so many ways. She was witty, mean, and hard to impress. She put film up against other art forms as well reviewing them. She introduced me to The New Yorker, a thousand books, other art, and helped me get a perfect score on my verbal SAT. I loved her because I could agree or disagree with her, but I never forgot her opinion.

David Thomson is now my favorite and Anthony Lane. But Thomson is that rare breed , like Kael, who demands that film hold something nourishing. Ebert, who was a good man, was never as interested in the art as much as the feeling. That is why he appeals to so many people.

by Anonymousreply 27September 1, 2015 6:41 PM

I like reading A O Scott's casual discussions on social media but something about his criticism rubs me the wrong way. I need to read more of it to identify what it is. Could just be me.

But yes, David Thomson is quite good. Why Acting Matters is in my to-read pile, I think I'll move it to the top.

by Anonymousreply 28September 1, 2015 7:40 PM

Another vote for Pauline Kael. Always entertaining and accessible, but also smart, which I don't see in most reviewers today, at least the ones in the mainstream press.

I used to enjoy Jonathan Rosenbaum quite a bit. He wrote for the Chicago Reader back in the day. Retired now.

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by Anonymousreply 29September 1, 2015 7:41 PM

Rosenbaum is an absolute doll. He hosted an online screening a few years ago that the company (which went defunct pretty quickly) screwed up completely, and when the company saw any of us mention it online, they would go after us personally. Some of us were getting nasty phone calls from these people. Rosenbaum stepped in and got them to stop.

For some reason I haven't read anything of his that wasn't on his website alsolikelife. I'm a fool.

by Anonymousreply 30September 1, 2015 7:57 PM

The major problem with modern movie criticism is that many of the critics are fan boys. They grew up on a diet of TV and Star Wars. They don't have a broad background in arts and literature that many of the old-school critics (Sarris, Kael, Simon, Agee, Dwight MacDonald) had.

by Anonymousreply 31September 1, 2015 9:19 PM

[quote] The major problem with modern movie criticism is that many of the critics are fan boys. They grew up on a diet of TV and Star Wars. They don't have a broad background in arts and literature that many of the old-school critics (Sarris, Kael, Simon, Agee, Dwight MacDonald) had.

I think it goes beyond that. First, publications aren't willing to pay film critics what they did when criticism was an art and actually meant something. So the good ones got squeezed out of jobs in favor of either bloggers or just picking up the AP wire review.

Second, criticism has gone out in favor of reviews. I remember about 10-12 years ago when Manohla Dargis had been picked up to offer grades on Entertainment Weekly's grid of current movies. There were I think five critics. Ebert was one of them. They'd list a handful or current releases and each critic would give a letter grade and the grades were averaged. Dargis went on record as saying she was let go from EW because her grades were bringing the average down. And I honestly think the studios are, to a degree, in reviewers pockets, which may be another reason why good critics have been fired in favor of parrots. Studios don't have to take newspaper ads like they did in the old days. If their films aren't getting good reviews, why should they spend their money there? I'm sure it's not as blatant as that, but I'm also sure that a version of that is happening.

by Anonymousreply 32September 1, 2015 9:26 PM

There are a handful of critics who are in the pockets of studios, but more often than not, critics suck up to studio product because they want the perks. And if they keep sucking up and eventually get a job in print media, they'll have a modicum of job security.

You have to understand that the business is an absolute shithole right now, because lots of online websites don't even pay their writers, and the few that do pay only pay a pittance. There is a constant stream of 25-year-old white hetero Christian males who just got their MFA in Film Studies looking for a job and because they live with their parents, they'll take that ten bucks a review twice a week job. After a couple years they realize they can't make a living and move on to something administrative in a bank.

Those critics whose work is valuable are simply not being hired anymore. Just look at The Dissolve, where some of the top online critics were poached for a website that didn't even last two years. They'll never get jobs again, not as film critics who get paid.

And much of the problem is that the general public are idiots. I had the job of surveying 500 film critic websites recently and easily 50% of the work I read made no sense, as in it read as though it was written by someone who didn't speak English, or was perhaps generated by a bot. Much of it was plagiarized. Lots were factually wrong; I saw a "Ricki and the Flash" review that was actually a review for "Diary of a Teenaged Girl" and no one in the comments realized it.

I have strong opinions about this as you can tell, but the bottom line: most of the shill film reviewers are just people who want to keep their jobs.

by Anonymousreply 33September 2, 2015 12:11 PM

I never based my film selection on Roger Ebert reviews, but I was always interested in his own analysis: approaching films from analytic angles I never would have come up myself.

by Anonymousreply 34September 2, 2015 12:28 PM

Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine is one of the few modern critics who can come close to rivaling the likes of Kael and Sarris.

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by Anonymousreply 35September 2, 2015 12:50 PM

Enjoy reading Stephanie Zacharek, A.O. Scott and David Thomson. Sorely miss Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Stanley Kauffmann and J. Hoberman.

by Anonymousreply 36September 2, 2015 2:23 PM

I agree that the entire concept of film criticism has changed. They mean nothing so they attract nobodies who write a paragraph with a grade, star(s), popcorn box, etc. They're meant to be scanned and not analyzed.

Kael's approval was something performers would often point to with great satisfaction, especially when other critics hated them. Two performers she championed were Ann Margret and Cybill Shepherd. Two performers she loathed were Ali McGraw and Candice Bergen.

by Anonymousreply 37September 2, 2015 2:54 PM

R37, don't forget how she hated Meryl Streep. Did she dislike any other actor as much?

by Anonymousreply 38September 2, 2015 2:55 PM

And she loved Blythe Danner. She once said three of her favorite younger actresses were Danner, Annie Potts (pre-Designing Women) and Vonetta McGee. She said she liked Streep but she was always all weepy and she was too good an actress to fall into that trap that she felt was pandering and manipulating.

by Anonymousreply 39September 2, 2015 3:08 PM

R39, almost all of her Streep reviews outside of the Deer Hunter are incredibly negative. I don't know if I can believe that Kael liked Streep.

by Anonymousreply 40September 2, 2015 3:15 PM

[quote]Cybill Shepherd...Candice Bergen.

For the longest time, I thought they were the same person.

by Anonymousreply 41September 2, 2015 3:18 PM

Vonetta McGee was great. She should have had a bigger career.

If I recall, Kael also liked Diana Sands in "The Landlord" and "Raisin in the Sun." She wasn't even 40 when she died of cancer so she's almost unknown now.

by Anonymousreply 42September 2, 2015 4:34 PM

[quote] And much of the problem is that the general public are idiots. I had the job of surveying 500 film critic websites recently and easily 50% of the work I read made no sense, as in it read as though it was written by someone who didn't speak English, or was perhaps generated by a bot. Much of it was plagiarized. Lots were factually wrong; I saw a "Ricki and the Flash" review that was actually a review for "Diary of a Teenaged Girl" and no one in the comments realized it.

I'm a filmmaker who's had a recent release and the $5 bloggers who consider themselves "reviewers" frustrated me to no end. I don't care if someone gives my film a bad review, meaning there's no way I can control what people think, and nothing is going to be liked by everyone. Of course you hope for the best and you try to make the best film you can. You have to have confidence in your abilities, and hopefully learn from your mistakes. If you can't handle that, then you should change careers.

Anyway, the most recent film got really good reviews across the board, starting with film festivals and into its limited release and then beyond to DVD, probably 90-95% favorable. But some film festivals, in order to get coverage for their events, would make copies of the films and hand them off to bloggers posing as film critics. First, if you want to know where a large number of pirated films come from, look no further. This is a horrible practice of which I was not aware until it was too late.

Second, it was abundantly clear that these bloggers watch films with one eye on their twitter and instagram feeds at all time. I got bad reviews from the majority of them (which, again, not anything I can control), but in reading the reviews it was clear they were barely paying attention to the film and got a number of things wrong in their reviews, things that never even happened, material that was in the film that they said was not, names, times, events, etc. all incorrect. And I wonder why they're bothering. They clearly don't care about cinema if they aren't going to actually pay attention, none of them can write well, there's zero passion in what they do. I can't figure it out. And the next time I'm on the festival circuit, I'd like to see if I can not have my work covered by bloggers, though I doubt I'll be able to pull that one off without coming off like a prima donna asshole and being told to fuck off.

I would agree with the poster above that Slant (and the A/V Club) are really carrying forward the craft of film criticism. I many times don't share their opinion of a film but I read Kael's old reviews and vigorously disagree with many of them, but can see the thought process, the passion, the craft and commitment behind the writing. Slant or A/V, I forget which now, gave my film one of the few bad reviews it got, and though I was disappointed because I respect them, it was clear they watched the film, paid attention, thought about it, and decided it wasn't worthy of praise. As a filmmaker, you can't really want for much more than that

by Anonymousreply 43September 2, 2015 5:17 PM

Ol' Pauline tried to foist the immortal Shelley Duvall on the movie going public, with no success, fortunately. "You go to her in delight, saying I'm yours" should be in Bartlett's. Pauline was indeed quote silly.

by Anonymousreply 44September 3, 2015 12:49 AM

[quote]Slant or A/V, I forget which now, gave my film one of the few bad reviews it got, and though I was disappointed because I respect them, it was clear they watched the film, paid attention, thought about it, and decided it wasn't worthy of praise. As a filmmaker, you can't really want for much more than that

Thanks for your perspective as a filmmaker, R43.

by Anonymousreply 45September 3, 2015 2:19 AM

R44, that was from "Popeye", where she was perfectly cast. She said that looking at Madeline Kahn was seeing a waterbed at the perfect temperature.

by Anonymousreply 46September 3, 2015 3:15 AM

No votes for Rex Reed??

by Anonymousreply 47September 3, 2015 3:31 AM

Janet Maslin.

by Anonymousreply 48September 3, 2015 4:40 AM

No, because Rex Reed is a nasty racist bitch.

by Anonymousreply 49September 3, 2015 5:27 AM

R34, that's what I loved about Ebert. He approached his reviews from interesting angles, and was confident enough in his writing to abandon the "This is what it's about, this is what's good, this is what's bad" beats that even some respected professional critics use. He was particularly good in his Great Movies series. His review of "Saturday Night Fever," which served as a tribute to Gene Siskel after he died, was my favorite. He talked about the film, he talked about Siskel, and he imparted truisms about life. It's the type of review that someone who has never seen the film or knew much about Gene Siskel could still appreciate.

by Anonymousreply 50September 3, 2015 5:59 AM

None of them. I'm secure enough to trust my own judgement in films.

by Anonymousreply 51September 3, 2015 6:04 AM

Jebidiah Atkinson

by Anonymousreply 52September 3, 2015 6:31 AM

Hmmm. I only saw one mention of Hoberman, and he's probably the only one I'd think worth mentioning.

by Anonymousreply 53September 3, 2015 7:09 AM

Saw the many things you will about Reed, but a racist isn't one of them.

by Anonymousreply 54September 3, 2015 2:52 PM

I second Reed's racist rants

by Anonymousreply 55September 3, 2015 3:25 PM

[quote]But some film festivals, in order to get coverage for their events, would make copies of the films and hand them off to bloggers posing as film critics. First, if you want to know where a large number of pirated films come from, look no further. This is a horrible practice of which I was not aware until it was too late.

Interesting you should say that R43, because I just ran into that myself. Our website covers a ton of subjects but we get offers for screeners from various PR people, and this one guy who I'd never really liked offered some for a film festival. To bolster our coverage, I said sure, but he sent DVDs he'd obviously ripped himself and written on with marker. I don't deal with him any more, obviously, and we didn't run any festival coverage from him.

I also know of a handful of film websites that literally do not watch the films they review. They steal stuff from other websites that did watch certain movies, and fill their own site with 5-10 reviews a day pasted together from other sources. That might be how so many errors about your film propagated.

I'm really sorry you had that experience. For what it's worth, a LOT of people on the side of websites and writers are as frustrated as you are, but it's clearly worse for you, because the movie is your own creation, we're just writing about it.

by Anonymousreply 56September 3, 2015 3:26 PM

[quote] Interesting you should say that [R43], because I just ran into that myself. Our website covers a ton of subjects but we get offers for screeners from various PR people, and this one guy who I'd never really liked offered some for a film festival. To bolster our coverage, I said sure, but he sent DVDs he'd obviously ripped himself and written on with marker. I don't deal with him any more, obviously, and we didn't run any festival coverage from him. I also know of a handful of film websites that literally do not watch the films they review. They steal stuff from other websites that did watch certain movies, and fill their own site with 5-10 reviews a day pasted together from other sources. That might be how so many errors about your film propagated. I'm really sorry you had that experience. For what it's worth, a LOT of people on the side of websites and writers are as frustrated as you are, but it's clearly worse for you, because the movie is your own creation, we're just writing about it.

Thank you for chiming in. I appreciate hearing that. The even more frustrating thing is I had two private, password=protected links of the film on vimeo, one for my festival agent to send to fests if they didn't want a disc, and the other for PR purposes where the password would change every week or so. There's no reason to burn copies of movies and hand them out like party favors.

I recently ran into a review of the film someone just did on their blog (why it's still being reviewed, I have no idea, since it's done, it's out there, and gasping for air), and they clearly hated the film, but got almost every single thing wrong about it. Even the title of the review he was using on twitter to trumpet it had incorrect information. And it wasn't a malicious review. I didn't feel like he had an axe to grind, and there was nothing personal in it (and the guy probably has five readers from the twitter follower numbers, so I'm not losing sleep), but I just wonder- why are you writing these reviews? You're not getting paid, you're not paying attention to the film, you don't have an affinity for the subject, or for film in general. Surely there's something else that would be a better use of your time.

I have run into a few sites that have good film writing on them (though if The Dissolve can't make it, who can?). Keyframe Daily and This is Infamous are both great. Talkhouse is decent, though uneven, Filmwax Radio has some interesting podcasts. But unfortunately, the art of film criticism seems to be on its last leg.

by Anonymousreply 57September 3, 2015 5:26 PM

Shelley Duvall was a wonderfully eccentric actress. Check out her work in Altman's "Thieves LIke Us." and "Three Women." Apparently, Duvall had a big had in creating the character of MIllie Lamoureaux in the latter film.

by Anonymousreply 58September 3, 2015 5:51 PM

Rex Reed hates all music made in the last 60 years. Did you READ his review of the movie of [italic]Jersey Boys[/italic]? He said right off the bat that he hated that type of music and praised Eastwood for minimizing it in his film adaptation.

by Anonymousreply 59September 3, 2015 6:09 PM

Back in the day, Kael could have me running to see a film on opening day if she raved. Today no one has that power, but I most enjoy reading Anthony Lane.

by Anonymousreply 60September 3, 2015 6:18 PM

Kael was a homophobic cunt and the gays who worship her are quislings.

by Anonymousreply 61September 3, 2015 6:22 PM

Yes. But gays who tell other gays what to think and who to support are saints directly from heaven.

by Anonymousreply 62September 3, 2015 6:27 PM

R58, Three Women is a great, bewildering movie. Truly an ancestor to movies like Mulholland Drive.

by Anonymousreply 63September 3, 2015 6:59 PM

[quote]Former critics- Graham Greene and Robin Wood.

Thanks to your post, r23, I just bought 'The Pleasure Dome - Graham Greene: the collected film criticism 1935-40' and can't wait to read it. Robin Wood is someone I don't know as much about as I'd like. I want to read his book on 'Rio Bravo'; but one thing of his I did read was his piece about 'Thunderbolt and Lightfoot' and its gay subtext. I'll quote it here. It's a little long, but worth reading:

[quote]The film moves toward the climactic robbery sequence throughout which Lightfoot is disguised as a woman. The narrative pretext for this is fairly flimsy, its logical necessity seeming to lie rather in the development of the relationship. Lightfoot’s masquerade interestingly avoids the obvious twin temptations of female impersonation in the Hollywood cinema—on the one hand, the caricature of femininity, on the other, the playing up of masculine clumsiness and awkwardness in the interests of comedy: without being particularly graceful or ungainly, he makes an attractive and appealing young woman. Significantly, from the point where the disguise is adopted, the film keeps the two men apart for as long as possible, and the sexual overtones are restricted again to the implications of the editing. Lightfoot walking the street in drag is intercut with Thunderbolt removing his clothes in preparation for the robbery; Lightfoot’s masquerade is then juxtaposed with the “erection” of Thunderbolt’s enormous cannon. This culminates in the film’s most outrageous moment: in a washroom Lightfoot, back to camera, bends over the watchman he has knocked out, his skirt raised to expose his ass clad only in the briefest of briefs, from which he extracts a revolver; the film immediately cuts to Thunderbolt, fixing his cannon in its fully erect position. In its recent overt treatments of male homosexuality, the Hollywood cinema has never dared give us anything comparable to that.

[quote]The ending, with the bad couple destroyed, initially celebrates the union of the heroes with the abrupt discovery of the relocated schoolhouse and the recovery of the hidden money, a celebration clinched by Thunderbolt’s gift to his buddy of the possession he has always coveted, a white Cadillac. Lightfoot’s declaration that they are “heroes” crystallizes much of the spirit of the ??s interlocking road-movie, buddy-movie, gangster-movie cycles: the heroes of American culture can now exist and operate only outside the confines and norms of the American establishment, the schoolhouse a historical relic of an obsolete socialization. The definition of the heroism is not merely in terms of criminality, but in terms of escaping the constraints of normality. The two men drive off together, not to but away from home: there is no sense of a specific destination, rather of an extended honeymoon after what amounts to a wedding celebration complete with extravagant gift. Of course, Lightfoot is already dying (a delayed reaction to his brutal beating by Red): given the cultural constraints, it is one of the most necessary deaths in the Hollywood cinema. It is important that he be the one to die, rather than the stoical, resolutely and unambiguously masculine Thunderbolt, whose sexuality is, on the level of overt signification, of gender stereotyping, never in question (after all, he is played by Clint Eastwood). It is the essentially gentle Lightfoot, with his indeterminate sexuality, his freedom from the constraints of normality’s gender roles, and his air of pre-socialized child, who constitutes the real threat to the culture.

And in an addendum to the piece above Wood quotes Peter Biskind referring in an article in Jump Cut (Nov/Dec 1974) charmingly titled “Tightass and Cocksucker: Sexual Politics in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” to the film’s “frank and undisguised contempt for heterosexuality” - (“without at any point acknowledging the 'frank and undisguised’ contempt for homosexuality that pervades our entire culture.” - Robin Wood).

by Anonymousreply 64September 3, 2015 7:52 PM

Thanks R64- I hadn't read that one by Robin Wood- he was definitely an out and proud gay liberationist. If you are interested, he also wrote extensively on Hitchcock's films; I really enjaloyed his thoughts on "Vertigo". My favorite of Wood's work is a book he wrote on Bergman's "Persona" that detailed the entire film almost shot by shot, making interpretations of all the spliced imagery, found footages and the connection between the inner and outer forces in battle between the actress who refuses to speak and the idealistic nurse on the solitary island to take care of her.

by Anonymousreply 65September 4, 2015 1:02 AM

Love Kael, Ebert, Molly Haskell and Slant Magazine. I read some for fun, some for illumination and some for the pleasure of the writing. Too much is too much for me. I usually only read critics now after seeing a film. Lately a cigar is just a cigar.

by Anonymousreply 66September 4, 2015 1:12 AM

My favorite critic was Andrew Sarris, hands down. I used to read the Village Voice just for his column. Even when he disliked something, he wrote about films in such a way that I could get a really clear picture of whether I wanted to see a particular film anyway despite his pan. He also had a way of mixing personal observations with political and aesthetic ones.

It's no surprise Sarris was a big fan of Robin Wood. I first became aware of Wood's writings when I was a subscriber to Film Comment magazine when I was in college during the second half of the 1970s. I purchased some back issues of the magazine just to read his articles, including one that was an excerpt from his book Personal Views in which he discussed the relationship of sex & politics. His director books are good (especially the last edition of his Hitchcock book), but by all means read Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan, Sexual Politics and Narrative Film, and the aforementioned Personal Views. (I believe they all were later revised to include new material.)

by Anonymousreply 67September 4, 2015 3:08 AM

Glad r23 mentioned Crisp, whom I love. I also like Italo Calvino on film and film going, but that's not criticism per se.

by Anonymousreply 68September 4, 2015 3:30 AM

R57, was your film a horror film, by chance? My experience with horror bloggers is that they have an impenetrable set of rules about what is good and what isn't in a horror film, and often those rules have nothing to do with the films themselves.

And I suspect that guy who blogged about your film found it on a torrent site. There's always one jackass who gets a screener and uploads it online.

by Anonymousreply 69September 4, 2015 10:05 AM

All this talk about Graham Greene reminds me that I have an ebook of his somewhere on my phone, bought on the spur of the moment about a year ago.

I've also been reading Andre Bazin's What is Cinema recently and it's not bad, though sometimes his writing is a little impenetrable.

by Anonymousreply 70September 4, 2015 10:07 AM

[quote] was your film a horror film, by chance? My experience with horror bloggers is that they have an impenetrable set of rules about what is good and what isn't in a horror film, and often those rules have nothing to do with the films themselves. And I suspect that guy who blogged about your film found it on a torrent site. There's always one jackass who gets a screener and uploads it online.

No, it was a documentary, actually, but I have definitely experienced that horror issue just as a reader/viewer. I'm sure the film is on some torrent sites, but as a doc, it's much lower in the bootleg pecking order. The one difference is we've been rolling out very slowly internationally, so the "demand" (and I use that word loosely) for those who've wanted to see it outside of North America might have triggered a torrent of it.

But festivals are definitely making copies of their films and handing them off to bloggers, and I really feel that should be specified before anyone enters into an agreement with a festival to show their film. Again, I had a sales and festival agent who brokered nearly all of my festival appearances and negotiated the fees and the print trafficking, etc. but who knows what happens to all those screeners that are submitted. I'm sure the large majority of them have no allure on a torrent, specially if they aren't getting programmed, but if a film is firmly on the fest circuit, that's certainly creating a higher demand, especially if it's a genre film (horror for sure, as you mentioned). I think festival directors need to obtain permission from filmmakers before they copy their films. i would have never agreed it to it, and going forward, I will be certain to let it be known I do not want my work to be copied and given to anyone without my permission.

by Anonymousreply 71September 4, 2015 5:11 PM

John Kenneth Muir.

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by Anonymousreply 72September 4, 2015 5:25 PM

I didn't know that The Dissolve had folded two months ago. I guess I wasn't the supporter and avid reader that I'd imagined myself to be.

I love reading about movies, not box office grosses, and I wish we had a Pauline Kael (or I'd even take a Roger Ebert, who never terribly impressed me) in our midst.

I do really enjoy Elvis Mitchell, however, and Jonathan Rosenbaum was a great source of film knowledge.

by Anonymousreply 73September 4, 2015 9:26 PM

I don't care much for critic's opinions. Some of the praise and criticism certain movies get is baffling to me. I am sure Ebert was shill in his later years. His opinion that a women who got pregnant by her rapist shouldn't be allowed to get an abortion was disgusting.

by Anonymousreply 74September 4, 2015 9:37 PM

Ebert's positive and very insightful reviews of Brokeback Mountain, Boogie Nights and Magnolia are what changed my mind about him. He was an excellent writer if not at all fanciful. His reviews are a nice counterbalance to the critics too in love with the "sound" of their own words. Ebert dissects ideas and themes and character very well and keeps his love of film technique brief or for longer essays. If you are looking for 2.000 words gushing about a particular actress or actor, best to look elsewhere.

by Anonymousreply 75September 4, 2015 9:59 PM

I used to look forward to Andrew O'Hehir's reviews when I was in college.

by Anonymousreply 76September 4, 2015 10:04 PM

One might ask why Ebert's reviews have been revised on the website. I see several 4 star films bumped down to 3 star and vice versa.

by Anonymousreply 77September 4, 2015 10:06 PM

[quote]His reviews are a nice counterbalance to the critics too in love with the "sound" of their own words

I think that's Ebert in a nutshell, the guy was just good with using fancy words. He had a bad taste for comedies and didn't know good acting from bad acting. He was an arch conservative catholic, whose values I found very questionable.

by Anonymousreply 78September 5, 2015 12:04 AM

Ebert's professed liberalism was a cover for the fact that he was little more than a moralizing scold, which is rich coming from the co-screenwriter of [italic]Beyond the Valley of the Dolls[/italic].

by Anonymousreply 79September 5, 2015 12:18 AM

I like Armond White. Is he gay?

by Anonymousreply 80November 23, 2017 8:31 PM

James Agee (Library of America) is among the Immortals.

by Anonymousreply 81November 23, 2017 9:17 PM

This is a great thread, and I'm enjoying everyone's remarks.

I encourage you guys to read Richard Lawson at Vanity Fair dot com. Openly gay and hilarious, as well as very smart but a true movie lover. He's also one of four voices on Little Gold Men, which is Vanity Fair's movie podcast. It's very good.

Also I like Justin Chang, who is now with the LA Times. When he was at Variety, he was a never-miss for me. I respect him greatly.

by Anonymousreply 82November 23, 2017 10:44 PM

I have to add that Richard Lawson's Twitter feed is truly hilarious. Follow him if you haven't already.

by Anonymousreply 83November 23, 2017 10:45 PM

Much intelligent discussion but far too little attention given to James Agee and Dwight Macdonald. Macdonald was too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals so his intelligent and informed reviews often created controversy.

by Anonymousreply 84November 24, 2017 5:06 AM

I like Roger Ebert. He was overly harsh on occasional, but for the most part he was pretty fair. In the 2000s, though, he was recommending practically everything.

by Anonymousreply 85July 1, 2019 5:36 PM

[quote]Leslie Halliwell, Pauline Kael, Otis Ferguson-all gone. One modern critic I enjoy is Ken Hanke.

R9 killed Ken :(

by Anonymousreply 86July 1, 2019 5:42 PM

[quote]One might ask why Ebert's reviews have been revised on the website. I see several 4 star films bumped down to 3 star and vice versa.

I pointed out an error of fact he made in a review and he blocked me on Facebook, then quietly corrected the review. I even pointed it out to him in a direct message, not publicly, the fucker.

by Anonymousreply 87July 1, 2019 5:43 PM
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