"It is not enough to like a film. One must like it for the right reasons." -- Pierre Rissient This is entirely coincidental, so consider it a fortuitous double-bill. Just as I posted the item below ("The sins of the…
A critic at a performance is like a eunuch at a harem. He sees it done nightly, but is unable to perform it himself. --Brendan Behan A lot of people don't know what "critic" means. They think it means, "a…
Critic Kathleen Murphy takes a prickly, sarcastic inventory of common complaints against, well, critics at MSN Movies and finds them... not so sharp. I have this uneasy feeling some readers looker-atters won't see the irony, but -- what can I…
Can Tina Fey get an Emmy just for this? I know, it's almost too easy. But she's flawless. I knew she was a terrific writer and comedian (er, "comedienne"?), especially from "30 Rock," but I don't think I ever fully…
Test: Can you find something -- a shot or a cut or a line -- in this trailer for "Crash" -- The Dramatic New Original Series Only On Starz -- that isn't a howler of a cliché? Ready? Let's see,…
The apparent suicide of David Foster Wallace, shockingly sad and disturbing as the sudden death of Heath Ledger earlier this year, has me revisiting my memories of his writing. I know him from his short stories and nonfiction -- never…
TORONTO -- How did the 33rd Toronto International Film Festival stack up against previous years? I've been to 31 of them, and as usual I had a great time. I saw about 30 movies, interviewed some fascinating people, met a…
Neil Labute made three tightly-wound films about Gender Wars, and now he's made a fourth, "Lakeview Terrace," with race added to the battlefield. Like his other films, it involves close scrutiny of the behavior of men in conflict and women in…
That's what some people tell me. Maybe I do. I look myself up in Metacritic, which compiles statistics comparing critics, and I find: "On average, this critic grades 8.9 points higher than other critics (0-100 point scale)." Wow. What a…
From a commencement address by the late David Foster Wallace at Kenyon University, May 21, 2005: There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is…
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