Post Category → FILM CRITICISM

Pauline Kael: one of film’s worst and most ridiculous critics.

Those who follow film will inevitably come across Pauline Kael’s critical writing, since she has — for good or ill — been an influential ‘voice’ (I use this term loosely) in film crit, helping to not only shape abysmal, only-in-it-for-the-controversy poseurs such as Armond White (just check out his fey, insecure manner in this pointless interview), but film-goers, as well, who suddenly had intellectual back-up for their personal like or dislike of now-classic films. She’s trashed Stanley Kubrick, she’s trashed Ingmar Bergman, she’s trashed Federico Fellini, Terrence Malick, John Cassavetes, Michelangelo Antonioni — not out of any real, logical argument, but just ’cause she wanted to, and was able to get away with such. And, predictably, fans of these directors have, not been very happy, but communicated their anger merely by throwing up their hands, or cutting Pauline Kael down a well-placed insult. Sure, she deserves all this (and more!), but just as with the Internet rants directed towards Jonathan Rosenbaum, there’s been few systematic dissections of her work, wherein the reasons for her poorness as a critic are made clear, film by film, and line by line, which is really what her work calls for.

Anger is good, at times, but it needs a real, substantive foundation for it to matter, or else it’ll first be interpreted as having no justification, and then merely dissipate. In the arts, however, things absolutely need a nudge in the right direction, and it is argument (despite what’s commonly thought) that … Continue reading →

Woody Allen’s Top 10 Films, Analyzed And Explained

Today marks the release of Woody Allen: Reel To Real, which is, as of this writing, the most comprehensive book on Woody Allen ever published. Poet and critic Dan Schneider, of Cosmoetica fame, has called it a “seminal” and “revolutionary” book, a book that ought to change the way people talk and think about film. I hope that you’ll agree, if not with some of my interpretations, then at least with the tools Reel To Real provides — tools that can be applied to the art world as a whole, for greatness (as Schneider has argued) is its own company, and what works or fails in one place can be extrapolated into another, from film to film, art-work to art-work, and to the kinds of stories people like to tell.

In short, the book covers every movie that Woody Allen has ever written, directed, or otherwise acted in, with preference given to the material from Annie Hall onward, and especially to neglected masterpieces such as Stardust Memories, Interiors, and Another Woman. Thus, I take a film-first approach, with detailed analyses and 100s of references spread across ~160,000 words on art-centered writing. Yet the book also features a dialogue between the writer and reader, a huge chapter dissecting 6 major critics of Woody Allen (read it here, in full), a fiery exchange between me and Jonathan Rosenbaum, perpetual updates to the e-book via a ‘sync’ system whenever a new Woody film is released, and a … Continue reading →

Review Of Mathieu Kassovitz’s “La Haine” And Stephen Verona’s “Lord’s Of Flatbush”: Which Losers Will Prevail?!

Having just re-watched Stephen Verona’s The Lord’s Of Flatbush, I was shocked by two things. First, it’s simply an excellent little film. I was able to pick up on many details that eluded me when I was younger, which probably means that I’ve grown as a critic and artist. Second, it has garnered pretty average reviews, and although it deals with a similar problem – a few losers trying to grow out of adversity – it is vastly superior to Matthieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (The Hate), which suffers for being precisely what Lord’s isn’t: didactic, heavy-handed, and unable to balance the film’s anomie with good narrative. La Haine simply goes on and on through pointless scenes and dull conversations where Lord’s makes this palatable by giving its characters depth, irony, and poesy – even if they themselves are too dumb and immature to see it. They get in, get out, and linger only to deepen things within their purpose. After all, a good director does not simply drop characters into a fictive world only to record every boring detail, like the endless string of corny jokes in Haine, or the all-alighting prose of a Toni Morrison. There needs to be a filter that guides whatever’s interesting and deep TO the screen, and only then can the viewer’s imagination truly play off of it. Thus, in Lord’s, it’s really a matter of economy, where Verona truly shines. Give the mind a few strong images, seeds, and threads, … Continue reading →

Lee Chang-dong’s “Oasis” (2002) And The Undoing Of A Narrative

I’m often amazed by how little respect the world shows reality, and, by extension, how little respect the people who inhabit this reality end up getting. This is especially true in how kids, the mentally retarded, transgender folks, minorities, the handicapped, and victims (both real and imagined) are treated in the world’s meta-narrative, which is the sum of every bias, policy, opinion, perception, artwork, and the like, available to us. They are at turns fetishized, sobbed over, exaggerated in importance, distorted, and otherwise demeaned by the very same people who claim to be giving them agency and respect. I mean, who wins, here? And how could “winning,” in such an arena, ever be construed as such, anyway, when the gain is so temporary and small?

Thus, in watching Lee Chang-dong’s 2002 film, Oasis, I was struck by how anti-Hollywood it was — that purveyor of the mess, above — in not only how it treats its subject matter, but also how it chooses to present the two main characters: a woman with cerebral palsy (Gong-ju), and a mildly retarded sociopath (Jong-du) who develop a relationship pretty much everyone disapproves of. Jong-du is seen doing all sorts of odd things: eating a block of raw tofu, asking school-girls for spare change, wrecking his boss’s motorcycle, leaving his shoes as “insurance” when he cannot pay for food, walking around in the cold with nothing but a t-shirt, climbing a tree to saw it off, and even attempting to rape his … Continue reading →

Review of Hirokazu Koreeda’s “Like Father, Like Son” (2013)

A still from Koreeda's "Like Father, Like Son", depicting the father looking skeptically at the boy he thought was his biological son.

Having now watched most of Hirokazu Koreeda’s feature films, it seems fair to divide his work into two categories: that of timeless observations on relationships (Still Walking, Nobody Knows), penetrating, and all-relevant, and his far more numerous, yet minor tales that flesh out those greater films’ peripheries (I Wish, Air Doll, Maborosi). The first, while absolutely awash in contemporary Japanese life, transcend such limits by adapting characters to situations that can appear anywhere, while the latter are observations of a far smaller nature, even if quite uniform, and well done. 2013’s Like Father, Like Son is, no doubt, one of these small works, but while its faults might keep it out of better company, they are, ironically, the very elements that keep the film afloat, and even help build up to a few excellent scenes when they are most needed.

The narrative follows a young, seemingly happy couple that, soon after the film’s open, are informed their six year-old child, Keita (Keita Ninomiya), is not theirs, having been switched with that of another married couple in a hospital mix-up. Ryota (Masaharu Fukuyama), Keita’s life-long dad — as opposed to biological father — is the prototypically wealthy but overworked Japanese, demanding but absent from his son’s life, while Keita’s mother, Midori (Machiko Ono), is the dutiful but neglected spouse. The three interact quite well, it seems, but after a while, their jabs are only too visible, even as no one else seems to notice. Meanwhile, … Continue reading →