Celebrating Cinematic Anniversaries in 2015

New Year's has always been my favorite holiday. I was born on October 9 but due on October 1, and if you dial that back nine months, you see I'm not kidding about "always." Even before I gleaned this tidbit, and before the ritualized annual viewing of When Harry Met Sally..., I always liked this holiday's equal soliciting of introspection, retrospection, and speculation, plus its hospitality to the greatest activity of all time, which is list-making. (I'm more of a stay-home-and-think New Year's celebrant than a crash-the-hotel, let's-get-drunk-on-the-minibar type. And despite what we pretend on New Year's, people don't change.) For many years, starting in high school, I would make a list on New Year's Eve of 24 movies I wanted to see and 24 books and 24 plays I wanted to read in the coming year. Though I never finished them, I made great discoveries that way. I also found these to be more motivating resolutions and easier ones to keep than "exercise more," "learn Spanish," or "chug less Mountain Dew."

This year, I'm reviving that habit. Each month I will write short reviews of at least two films celebrating an anniversary in 2015, starting in January in 1895 (often cited, however debatably, as the birth-year of "the movies") and ending in December in 2005. One will be a film I've never seen but clearly should have. Another will be a title I'm eager to revisit—not necessarily a "best" or a personal favorite, but the kind of artistic or cultural landmark that scores high on my recently-reinstituted VOR scale. Beyond filling out some viewing holes and clarifying my takes on challenging milestones, I'm hoping this cycle will re-habituate me to at least publish capsules about films I watch, will further clarify what I mean by "VOR," and might approximate the phantom film-history survey I rarely get to teach in my day job but would happily offer for free. And it'll keep me on track for other major changes to the entire site I'll be unfolding over the year.

Am I aware that I never finish website projects? Yes. But New Year's Day is the global day of optimism! And it's just two movies per month—more when time permits, and/or when being a Libra impedes my ability to choose. Best of all, I've already gotten a head start in the waning weeks of December. So I hope you'll keep me going through this marathon with your comments and clicks, and I hope you'll enjoy following along!

For our first installment, we begin in 1895, as crucial a year in the history of sexuality as in the history of movies, which brings us quickly to Thomas Edison's laboratory and the Dickson Experimental Sound Film...

A Necessary Hiatus

I have been forced away from this blog for so long that Blogger has changed its interface completely since last I used it. I feel like I've walked in the door from a long, out-of-town work assignment and come home to find all of my furniture rearranged!

 Thanks to everyone who has written to ask if everything was okay, or if anything was okay. Short version: I'm gearing up for the year-long process of having my tenure case considered at Northwestern, which means that for the past six months I've been working even harder than normal on academic writing, document preparation, manuscript revisions, conference presentations, and all the other ducks that need to be in line on my end so that multiple sets of undisclosed reviewers can consider my case and make a determination that will only become final around this time next year. A sufficient number of fellow academics are regular readers that I'm guessing a few of you know how much work this process entails; others are welcome to ask offsite, and I'll peel back the mysterious curtain of assistant-professorhood without scaring you all away. Anyway, that's the explanation for the radio silence since that pre-historical era when sentient life was still congealing in the primordial ooze, when dinosaurs were stepping on each other's heads at creekside, and when we all still thought Viola Davis might get the Oscar.

Dispatches will remain irregular through the summer, I'm sorry to say, but the glass-half-full version of that statement is that you'll start seeing some movement around here.  For example, Daniel Stamm—the director of 2010's The Last Exorcism, a spidery, effective horror film that's really stayed with me—has recently premiered his first film, A Necessary Death, on iTunes and DVD and has sent me a review copy. I had as great a teaching experience as I did a viewing experience with The Last Exorcism, so I'm eager to screen its predecessor... and since the premise of the film makes it virtually impossible to discuss without inviting spoilers, I absolutely urge you to rent it and save up your responses for a discussion in the Comments.

I have also been shipped some Blu-Rays from Warner Bros. that they have asked me to review—a range that includes some of your favorites and mine, some of your favorites that I sort of hate, and some movies movies you hated that I found sort of interesting. I won't be reporting about every disc that makes its way here (sorry, folks, but under no circumstances whatsoever), but I'm enjoying the chance to revisit films I haven't seen in a while, or wanted to say something about recently but didn't, or am hoping to find a fresh angle on... especially since the Warners folks have been absolutely wonderful to deal with and have made very clear that they don't expect me to adore everything that's coming my way. (Though sometimes adoration is the only sane response).

And yes: more actresses, more birthdays, some redesigns, and even a Top Ten list for 2011. Because until hell freezes over, there's always time. Stay tuned, and thanks for hanging in there with me!

Best Actress Birthday Party, Week 7

After last week, thank God this one's so easy... especially since real work has forced me to postpone the Suzman, Dern, and Stanley pieces for a few days. Janet famously sympathizes with the plight of the worker, Laura is totally enlightened, and Kim is already dead, so if they don't mind the delay, why should I? Further easing the load is a clerical error I discovered that had Maggie McNamara originally listed in February, though she actually belongs in June. I'm not that excited about Three Coins in the Fountain anyway, so hurrah for that! Meanwhile:

Born February 12–February 18:
Click here for the full list of entries

Feb 13: Stockard Channing (68)
New Review: ???
Stockard's Best Work: Obviously, as the one-in-a-dozen Broadway actress permitted to reprise her stage triumph in Six Degrees of Separation, where she's funny, sharp, deluded, believably frayed, and patently to the borough born.
I've Also Seen: Strutting her way through Grease, making a bigger impression on everyone, seemingly, than she did on me; as Meryl's upper-middle-class best friend who's around for a lot of ups and downs in Heartburn; as an abused wife with an eagle-eye for Adam's apples in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar; only half-trying and still more intense than the movie can really accommodate as the suicide in The First Wives Club; as the occasional ally of her husband, the President of the United States, on The West Wing, or maybe I just saw a disproportionate number of episodes where she was peeved at him; working through a complex script that asks and gets a lot from her but hasn't fully articulated itself in The Business of Strangers (my review); one of many Cadillac performers who surely thought Le Divorce would be at least a quarter as good as the amazing novel; and disappointingly glum in Woody Allen's Anything Else, although that movie would make anyone glum.

Best Actress Birthday Party, Week 6

This is gonna be tough, people...



Born February 5–February 11:
Click here for the full list of entries

Feb 5: Laura Linney (48)
New Review: The Laramie Project (2002)
Laura's Best Work: At the unambiguous center of a sprawling story and ensemble in Jindabyne, negotiating an entire cutlery set of conflicts, internal and external, tacit and confessed.
I've Also Seen: Cornering the market on Wholesome But Concerned in Lorenzo's Oil; still apple-cheeked as the president's mistress in Dave; the freshest-faced of all urban arrivées in Tales of the City; dressed down by Joe Mantegna as his son's schoolteacher in the unbeatable Searching for Bobby Fischer; in danger of seeming uninteresting in Primal Fear; still shaking some stiffness out of her limbs in The Truman Show (my review); a revelation, note-perfect in dramatic and comedic registers we hadn't seen yet, in the glorious You Can Count on Me (my review), though the Julliard polish comes back a bit in The House of Mirth; winning an Emmy for one of her few performances I just didn't buy, as a hard-to-love mother in Wild Iris; surely asking her agent to dream bigger after The Mothman Prophecies; swanning onto Frasier like a Platonic distillation of its demographic, and winning another Emmy; listing sharply the other way as a gal without mercy in Mystic River, without much time to pull that off; sweet and sad in Love, Actually; well cast but along for a very bumpy second-feature ride in P.S.; having hit a stride where she's interesting even in under-written roles, like the wife in Kinsey; better than that, even, in The Squid and the Whale, though perhaps assigned too many of these recovery missions; taking the check but not without showing us a character in The Exorcism of Emily Rose (my review); gutsy, funny, and functional in a smallish role in Breach; gloriously disheveled, tugged between impulses toward honesty and knee-jerk prevarication, in The Savages. Nothing since, but she's mostly been doing Broadway work and cable TV.
Where To Go Next: Among the features I haven't seen, I'm most compelled by the undisguised oddity of Mark Ruffalo's debut feature Sympathy for Delicious, though before I track that down, I'll want to put in the time on Linney's Emmy-winning performance in the TV miniseries John Adams and her subsequent awards-magnet role in Showtime's The Big C.

Feb 8: Edith Evans (124; died 1976)
New Review: The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)
Edith's Best Work: Her nomination for The Whisperers (performance review) is easily one of the category's high-water marks for its decade, and a haunting rendering of poverty, madness, and old-age loneliness.
I've Also Seen: Skeptical of Hepburn's resolve in The Nun's Story; fruity and rather generously nominated in Tom Jones; crusty and even more generously nominated in The Chalk Garden.
Where To Go Next: Almost certainly Look Back in Anger, which got boxed out this time by domestic you-said-you'd-wait-for-me issues that I was happy to honor. The Queen of Spades could also be a great, atmospheric divertissement, especially having just checked out Dickinson's and Walbrook's collaboration on Gaslight.

Feb 8: Lana Turner (91; died 1995)
New Review: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Lana's Best Work: The Hunter/Sirk remake of Imitation of Life makes equally good use of her gifts and her limitations as an actress. Being unforgettable can be just as rewarding as being brilliant, I should think.
I've Also Seen: Practically a distillation of whiteness as one of the three leads in Ziegfeld Girl, as a sympathetic girl who makes all the wrong choices; surprisingly appealing in the 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with its thematically resonant switcheroo of making Turner the society lady and Ingrid Bergman the randy girl; doing her best but perhaps a bit over-awed by unworthy material and schematic revelations in Peyton Place.
Where To Go Next: Unquestionably Vincente Minnelli's Hollywood melodrama The Bad and the Beautiful. Whether Turner's good in it or not, and I hear she is, Gloria Grahame is lighting up the supporting cast, so at least one blinding-white blonde will be worth writing home about.

Feb 9: Janet Suzman (72)
New Review: ???
Janet's Best Work: She has an interesting, remote quality in Nicholas and Alexandra, but I'm not sure the performance fully pans out, mostly because the film doesn't.
I've Also Seen: Though she's been a leading figure in South African theater and an esteemed interpreter of Shakespeare for years, the only other effort I've seen is her off-camera coaxing of John Kani's moving performance as the director of Othello. Technically I saw her as Cusack's mother in Max, but few films have made less of a lasting impression on me.

Feb 10: Laura Dern (45)
New Review: ???
Laura's Best Work: As the shape-shifting imago at the wormhole center of David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE, naïve and uncertain and scared and debased
I've Also Seen: Gobbling ice cream cones in the background of the climax of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, prompting famous advice from director Martin Scorsese; as Rocky's blind and beautifully sympathetic girlfriend in Mask (Favorite Films entry); an archetype of small-town innocence, but not uncurious, in Blue Velvet; screaming "SAILOR!!!" with a notable itch in her crotch in Wild at Heart (my review); taking her memorable spin on the confused, buoyant carnality of the titular figure in Rambling Rose; mouth agape and up to her elbows in dino-shit in Jurassic Park; knocking around the background of Eastwood's A Perfect World, not at all concerned that that interesting movie isn't about her; boldly sour, comically refusing of anyone's sympathy in Citizen Ruth; inspiring the coming-out heard 'round the airport terminal, and 'round the world, on Ellen; an absolute joy as the encouraging, perpetually tipsy aunt in Dr. T & the Women (my review); whisked on as a sop to "old" times in Jurassic Park III (my review); having a lot to say about "finding your bliss" in a barely-lit sequence of Searching for Debra Winger, possibly shot on Rosanna's phone; perfectly plausible as the U.S. poet laureate with ideas of her own on one episode of The West Wing; briefly giving a bored audience something to be happy about in I Am Sam and The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio; blowing the roof off of spousal bitterness in We Don't Live Here Anymore; a compressed pleasure as half of a lesbian couple trying to have children in Don Roos' dishy Happy Endings; meeting current collaborator Mike White on his awkward directorial outing Year of the Dog; and really doing a favor to Friend Courteney Cox on the latter's short-film directorial debut, The Monday Before Thanksgiving.

Feb 11: Kim Stanley (87; died 2001)
New Review: ???
Kim's Best Work: Spindly, scary, and less overtly hysterical than I had expected in Séance on a Wet Afternoon and all the more unnerving for that, especially as the piece winds toward its discomfiting ending.
I've Also Seen: Irreducibly strange in her first film The Goddess, as though she's puzzled by the camera and it's intimidated by her; lending spare but effective voice-over to To Kill a Mockingbird; unforgettably proud of her non-conforming daughter but then instrumental in her destruction in Frances (my review); as odd and as powerful as ever with Jessica Lange (again), Tommy Lee Jones, and Rip Torn in a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that was made for Showtime, I think, but easily trumps the Taylor-Newman-Ives version, particularly in the acting department.

January Birthday Girls

It's been real, ladies of January! And thanks to all the readers and commenters who turned out for these 14 reviews. If all keeps hewing to plan, we'll get another set of 14 in February, and hopefully a lot of them will be valentines.

For the record, the best of the movies I watched for this project in January was William Wellman's Heroes for Sale (1933, with Loretta Young), which would also qualify as my favorite of the reviews if I hadn't taken such saucy, thunderstruck pleasure in writing about Tim (1979, with Piper Laurie). Runners-up for the best movie were The Fountainhead (1949, with Patricia Neal), Rumble Fish (1983, with Diane Lane), and, for all my misgivings, Gaslight (1940, with Diana Wynyard). I'm proud of the pieces on The Emperor's Candlesticks (1937, with Luise Rainer) and on The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996, with Geena Davis), even if the State of the Union at the end of the latter one made me sad. Putting The Actress (1950, with Jean Simmons) to rights came easily, but thinking my way through my mixed reactions to The Little Drummer Girl (1984, with Diane Keaton), Barfly (1987, with Faye Dunaway), and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004, with Emily Watson) was gratifyingly tough. Along with Gaslight, The Glass Menagerie (1950, with Jane Wyman), Twelfth Night (1996, with Imelda Staunton), and The Sea Gull (1968, with Vanessa Redgrave) offered auspicious occasions to ponder the relations between a superlative play and a strained film.

I hope you'll all be back in February, where profile subjects will include the lovely Laura Linney, the grand dame Edith Evans, the intimidating Kim Stanley, the amazingly eclectic Laura Dern, the tough cookie Stockard Channing, the under-valued Joanne Woodward, and the most recently deceased of all the Best Actress nominees, two-time winner Elizabeth Taylor.

Best Actress Birthday Party, Week 5

Another light week like last week, although this pace won't persist. I'll be dancing as fast as I can come mid-February. For now...



Born January 29–February 4:
Click here for the full list of entries

Jan 30: Vanessa Redgrave (75)
New Review: The Sea Gull (1968)
Vanessa's Best Work: Obviously, even Vanessa's second and third tiers of work would be a lot of actress's best efforts. If forced to single out her peaks, I always go back to her astonishing ingenuity in small roles in Julia (my review) and Howards End (my review, Favorite Films). Both times, she showed us the idea inside the woman and the woman inside the idea, in no time at all. I remember every beat of both performances. Her best lead performance, I think, was as Fania Fenelon, the increasingly dissipated, furious, and ambivalent concentration-camp prisoner in Playing for Time.
I've Also Seen: I've written academically on Redgrave's career, so I've seen a lot: getting her feet wet in Morgan! (Oscar ballot); opaque in Blowup (Favorite Films); so white-hot that miscasting was inevitable for a while, but especially in Camelot; taking risks, grand and garish, in Isadora; tremendous in a seemingly impossible role as a sex-crazed, hunchbacked Medieval nun in The Devils (my review); beautiful, uninhibited, but going down with the ship a bit in The Trojan Women; totally outwitted by Glenda Jackson in Mary, Queen of Scots; coasting on glamour, which is not a bad option, in Murder on the Orient Express; doing her best with odd scripts in Agatha and Yanks; saving Olive Chancellor from Henry James and from a stiff film in The Bostonians, without the easy route of making the character any comfier; very interesting as one of those impossible ciphers of David Hare's in Wetherby; very sly, if a bit overrated, in Prick Up Your Ears; a shrill, sexy, bold-stroke take on American South Gothic in Orpheus Descending (my review), and back on adjacent geography as the towering androgyne in The Ballad of the Sad Café; the raison d'être for Little Odessa, without even being in it very much; having fun in Mission: Impossible; extremely moving and unafraid of the icon in Mrs. Dalloway (my review); improbably stirring in Deep Impact; hitting another career peak, so devastating and candid is she in If These Walls Could Talk 2; soft but stalwart as Churchill's wife in The Gathering Storm; underseen, monologuing with theatrical stamina all through The Fever, directed by her son; trying her best to make Venus more than a wan Oscar play for O'Toole; doing her thing where she rides in to save a struggling film in Atonement; happy to co-sign the cause in The Whistleblower; and not as exciting to me as she was to many others, but still terrifically good, in Coriolanus
      She's also had blink-and-you-miss-her parts in A Man for All Seasons (my review); the rather moving Charge of the Light Brigade; the arch but hard-to-remember Oh! What a Lovely War; the turgid House of the Spirits, which she exits in high style; haunted in Smilla's Sense of Snow; a gaping jaw in Wilde, and again in Cradle Will Rock; institutional wisdom in Girl, Interrupted; haunted again in The Pledge; in The White Countess, nobody's favorite movie but surely a cherished memory for her; and fading away with everyone else in Evening, though her mates look appropriately awed by her.
Where To Go Next: I'm really intrigued by Laika's suggestion of Steaming and have it coming in the mail. Now that The Sea Gull has finally become available, though, I'm hoping some industrious outfit will distribute Red and Blue and especially The Sailor from Gibraltar, the two films Redgrave made early on with her then-husband Tony Richardson.

Jan 31: Jean Simmons (83; died 2010)
New Review: The Actress (1953)
Jean's Best Work: A controlled performance of a woman going in and out of control in Elmer Gantry, a film that intriguingly rides that line in every way, and allows this complicated woman a full-ish run of her dark, energetic, starchy, and ornery sides
I've Also Seen: A vague memory in Black Narcissus, but only because so much else is so overwhelmingly vivid; fine as Ophelia, a close-to-thankless part, and not well served by that track backward on the staircase in Olivier's Hamlet; fun once she's let loose in Guys and Dolls, though you can tell it's not her usual mode; not adding a lot in Spartacus; trying a bit hard at the start of The Happy Ending, but gradually quite affecting (performance review); hanging with the other ladies in How To Make an American Quilt, well after she'd virtually retired; lending a key voice to Howl's Moving Castle, well after having retired again
Where To Go Next: I'll eventually get to her Oscar-bait movies like The Robe and The Big Country, but first up will be her well-reviewed turn in Otto Preminger's acidic-sounding Angel Face. Still harboring hope I'll respond to this gal.

Best Actress Birthday Party, Week 3

Born January 15–January 21:
Click here for the full list of entries

Jan 16: Diana Wynyard (106; died 1964)
New Review: Gaslight (1940)
Diana's Best Work: Unquestionably, out of my very small sample, her take on the famously terrorized wife in the movie I just saw.
I've Also Seen: Her stiff, shaky, but nominated performance in Cavalcade (Best Pictures from the Outside In), which is not a great moment in Oscar history, especially since the transition from an Aug 1–Jul 31 eligibility calendar to the much more sensible Jan 1–Dec 31 window resulted in the 1932-33 ceremony inviting candidates from 17 months of top-flight movies. Best not to think about whom Wynyard bested on the way to her citation. Anyway, Wynyard was one of those actresses who made no bones about valuing the stage in every way above the screen, and only made 16 films in 25 years before her abrupt death at 56.
Where To Go Next: Diana has a tough task trying to elbow into a three-way Barrymore Act-a-Thon in Rasputin and the Empress. Speaking, though, of crowded rings, I gather from commenters that she makes a vivid impression as part of the large ensemble in her last film, the four-stranded Island in the Sun. (She's got the Blanchett part in the 1947 version of An Ideal Husband, but after my first two run-ins with Diana, I'm not convinced she'd import the subliminal slyness into that role that Cate so dexterously brought to it.)

Jan 20: Patricia Neal (86; died 2010)
New Review: The Fountainhead (1949)
Patricia's Best Work: Neal is one of those happy cases of a performer gleaning her Oscar for what is surely her best performance, as the aroused but worldly-wise Alma in Hud (my Favorite Films entry).
I've Also Seen: Extremely savvy and emotionally layered in A Face in the Crowd; sensual and moneyed in Breakfast at Tiffany's, like Nina Foch in An American in Paris; nominated for bearing up with a querulous husband, a war-scarred son, and whatever weighs on her own soul in The Subject Was Roses; and a miniature, late-in-life delight in Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune
Where To Go Next: I'm most curious to beat a path to the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. Otherwise, beyond her two Reagan vehicles from the same year as The Fountainhead, especially the Oscar-nominated The Hasty Heart, I've heard some good things—including from you guys—about The Breaking Point, Bright Leaf, Three Secrets, and the immediately pre-stroke Psyche 59. How Glenda Jackson ever found her way into starring in The Patricia Neal Story is fathomless to me but a mystery for another time.

Jan 21: Geena Davis (56)
New Review: The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
Geena's Best Work: If all she'd ever shown us was dizzy, irked, fun-chasing, assaulted, recklessly emancipated Thelma in Thelma & Louise, she'd belong in the pantheon.
I've Also Seen: From a surprisingly not-enormous filmography, a goofy-sexy cameo in Tootsie, formidably intelligent and emotionally rich in The Fly; a good fit for Burton's whimsy in Beetlejuice; winning her Oscar as Anne Tyler's warmly offbeat dog-walker in The Accidental Tourist (my review), where she memorably puts paid to William Hurt's fickleness and unwitting condescension; and trying to resuscitate Irene Dunne in Speechless. Also, the episode of The Geena Davis Show where she teaches the kids The Hustle, and the one of Commander in Chief where she gets the gig.
Where To Go Next: As several commenters rightly pointed out, there is no excuse for me to have not seen A League of Their Own by now. Earth Girls Are Easy will probably come after that, but I can usually watch Davis in anything.

As always, propose your own favorites in the Comments, and respond to the reviews as they appear!

Cannes 1986: Some Rough Patches

So far Nagisa Ôshima's Max, mon amour is my least favorite film in the Palme competition, and Ruy Guerra's Ópera do Malandro is my least favorite sidebar selection. You can see the reviews by clicking those links and gauge my progress with the festival so far. But even after hitting these two rough patches, I can promise there are better films looming on the review horizon. And besides, I wouldn't leave the 1986 Cannes Film Festival for anything. It's the only place I can find where no one is talking about Harry Potter.

Cannes 1986: More Big Guns

I'm posting this entry as a place to leave comments about The Sacrifice, a film I suspect many of you have seen. My review is posted here, as is another review of Ménage (Tenue de soirée), a polyamorous French farce with lots of nasty edges. Michel Blanc scooped up half of the Best Actor gong for Ménage, and The Sacrifice made off with prizes from the Ecumenical Jury and the International Critics, a special citation for Sven Nykvist's majestic cinematography, and the Grand Jury Prize that is colloquially known as the runner-up prize for the Palme. These are key films for this year's festival, and whether or not you've seen the films recently, or even at all, I hope you'll enjoy the pieces and/or track down the movies. I'd love to hear what you think.

Enjoy the weekend, and with any luck, Tarkovsky aside, the world won't end yet! Though the ads for Zookeeper do make you wonder...

The Film Critics of Tomorrow, Today

As a near-closing activity for my Winter 2011 course English 386: The Film Review as Genre, I am reprising an activity from the last time I taught the class, and I encourage (implore?) your participation. Most recently, my students have been rooting around politically and sociologically engaged reviews composed by full-time and part-time critics like James Baldwin, Molly Haskell, Robin Wood, bell hooks, Zadie Smith, and Paul Rudnick, aka Libby Gelman-Waxner. We've also discussed the increasing pressures in today's media to draw readers into your review by isolating a sentence or "hook" that distills your critical sensibility and builds instant curiosity around your piece.

So, the assignment: I invited students to write a short review attuned in some way to ideological issues or identity politics. They could devote their piece either to one of our recent course screeings (Lady Sings the Blues, Dances with Wolves, Edward Scissorhands, Pulp Fiction, Brokeback Mountain, or The Social Network) or to a 2010 release from a list I circulated. As an additional wrinkle of this assignment, I asked the students to isolate one sentence or two that they would select to advertise the rest of the piece, as happens on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic&#151suggesting that this sentence should exhibit verbal dexterity in addition to its other strategies for luring a reader.

So, I ask you, as I did two years ago (and to some unexpected acclaim!): which two or three of the following sentences most whet your appetite to read the rest of the review? I'd be especially appreciative if you could quickly suggest why you selected the sentences you did: tone, eloquence, humor, distinctiveness, the thought expressed, etc. The reviews with the most votes will get an extra bump upward when I grade them.

Please limit your comments to expressions of enthusiasm!! The point is to encourage good writing and to reward interesting effort. Many of these students never wrote critically about cinema until this term. We all know how easily the Web can breed snark and vitriol, but in the interest of pedagogy and encouragement, I really ask that this not be a venue for that sort of response!

Thank you so much for participating, and for forwarding this link to anyone else whom you think might take the time to select and respond to their favorites. The more feedback the better! (You do not need to be a registered user of Blogger in order to vote; simply choose the Anonymous option from the Comments page, below the text window, and register your opinions that way.)



BJ "Though perhaps not purposely, Dances with Wolves has succeeded in using Native American hardship as the context in which another 'White Problem' can be resolved—this time around, it's the main character's struggle with Western society's suffocation of fluid sexuality among its own members."





KF "During perhaps the most poignant scene in the film, in which Edward trims just enough hair from a dog's eyes to enable its sight, we get The Point."





CG "But the film's power actually lies in its absurdity: underneath the comic book violence and razor-sharp dialogue is a message that encourages compassion, which is exactly what our generation needs."

BH "To be American, then, is to be 'totally fucking cool.' I could try to adapt to Pulp Fiction's depiction of America by making a pilgrimage to L.A., honing up on my cultural trivia, and enhancing my xenophobia, but somehow it doesn't appeal to me; if this is what Americanism is, I'm happy to stay out of it."





AG "The film is fundamentally satisfying for the mere reason that it follows a female character who exists outside the confines of love and subservience to which so many other movies would have restricted her." (Note: This blurb was incorrectly affiliated at first with Pulp Fiction—wrong Mia!)





KD1 "With the exception of a couple, brief scenes where Ennis (Ledger) seems to need to hit something (at one point, subtly, back-lit by Fourth of July fireworks) and Jack's (Gyllenhaal's) very brief rides on bucking bulls, there is none of the hallmark action of a genre Western in Brokeback. This is a dressed-up woman's film, except they've replaced the long-suffering woman with two long-suffering cowboys."

KD2 "I am calling you out, Mr. Ang Lee, director of Brokeback Mountain: you are a homophobe!"

CG "If I pay to see a gay cowboy movie, then you'd better believe that I want to see a gay cowboy movie."

LH "Brokeback Mountain is reminiscent of the popular kid in high school who sacrifices his personality and beliefs for the sake of widespread acceptance."





CE "Some people would call it a metaphor—all I know is, I saw that metaphor's penis."

SH "Dogtooth succeeds nevertheless, exploring the complexities of gender in a world where gender does not have to be complex."

JK "The overall concept starts simply, and as the film progresses, layers of the protagonists' surreal, detached world are added that are both maniacal and brilliant screenwriting touches."





MH "Guadagnino creates leisurely, sensuous moments of microscopic camera close-ups of aesthetically interesting images that call attention to the innate beauty found in the pursuit of his characters' deviations from exclusive or heterosexual relationships."





BB "The Social Network, like Facebook itself, has important ramifications completely unintended by its creators: the film provides an opportunity to address America's continuing social problem of black marginalization."

AC "The Social Network is supposed to be the movie of our generation, but I don't know a lot of kids my age who create billion-dollar companies based on computer programming and spend their days fighting lawsuits, so I guess it must be these parallels between the guys and the girls in the film that make it so relevant."

KD "Women of Harvard, I hope you are finding The Social Network as instructional as I am."

AF "As made apparent by the film's treatment of females, The Social Network is a 'Men's Only' club."

NF "For a movie in which almost the entire plot is motivated by a woman, it's disappointing that the makers of The Social Network know as much about portraying women as James Franco and Anne Hathaway know about entertaining an audience: absolutely nothing."

AJ "However extraordinary Mark might be in terms of his programming and entrepreneurial abilities, however, his sexism is far from unusual in the world that he inhabits; misogynistic in its very structure, this film depicts men as chauvinistic and women, denied any complex characterization, as almost without exception belonging to three stereotypical categories."

EK "In truth, it doesn't matter whether Aaron Sorkin's script is historically accurate and it makes no difference that Jesse Eisenberg's Mark can fully represent only a small subset of the young population; sometimes the best fiction tells the most truth, and ultimately this is the very real story of the depersonalized new world."

RK "Sorkin satirizes the culture of the rich white male—the ritzy nightclubs, the flashy parties, and the Winklevosses' contention to their college president that 'we never asked for special treatment'—but who is doing the satirizing? A rich white male."

RL "While depicting the Facebook obsession and Zuckerberg's computer genius, The Social Network also glorifies a gender stereotype that depicts men as the innovators, the leaders, and the thinkers of the world and women as sexual objects."

SMB "The universe of The Social Network is a boys' club, plain and simple."

BM "The Social Network's shortcomings are disappointing and annoying, but are unforgivable when one considers how they distracted from the egregious generational dismissal of women—that is, if we are to understand the cast of the 'film of a generation' to be representative of that generation."

AP "The Social Network is not a film for the generation brought up on Facebook. It is a film for the generation that does not understand Facebook."

CPJ "At the end of the day, using the logic of Fincher and Sorkin's own faux-Zuckerberg, if they've made a sexist movie, they've made a sexist movie."

AS "The valuable moments in the movie resonate not because they reveal something about the movie's focal figure Mark Zuckerberg or because they reflect a generation's feelings. Rather, the most telling moments of the film give brief glimpses into a synonymous thought or emotion shared among white people."

JS "Every interaction we undertake, every pursuit, and even the dreams we have are more easily available to us. The Social Network captures that essence: the possibilities of this world of interconnectivity that, while so sleekly efficient, has departed from a quaint time of yesteryear."

KV "I've had a Facebook account for years. I don't need someone to waste a precious morsel of Aaron Sorkin wit explaining to me what a wall-to-wall is."

MW "In the process of defining Zuckerberg as the biggest asshole/genius of his generation—an intriguing paradox, certainly —Fincher inadvertently posits the status of Gen Y women as sexually superfluous objects, intellectually useless beings yet, like the audience, patently in awe of Zuckerberg's legendary and controversial stature."

SW "But most of all, what a wonderful message for our times: women don't have to do anything!"