As an aside, I saw “Yes” a film both written (in imabic pentameter) and directed by Sally Potter. I wonder if this film is one you or your readers saw or liked. It’s very much to my taste, anyway.

So many films. So little time. Especially lately, with such great offerings as: “The Squid and The Whale”, “Thumbsucker”, and “You, Me, and Everybody We Know”, or am I comparatively out of date, or out of step?

By the way, I couldn’t be bothered seeing “30 yr Old Virgin”. No way. Somewhere the line has to be drawn. Sorry you don’t seem to dig “South Park” though – the best, darn, most reassuringly disrespectful poke-em-in-the-eye material – not forgetting or disrespecting “The Simpsons” – (but then, I like to see religion and the military made fun of. It gives me hope). “Charley and the Chocolate Factory”, “Capote” and “Brokeback Mountain” were all good, but then, everything Ang Lee has done, excepting “The Hulk” of course, has been worth seeing. Hell, even “The Hulk” was OK at the drive-in in Enderby, B.C..

I’d watch Philip Seymore Hoffman buy his groceries: the man is amazing, (as in “Magnolia” and “Happiness”). “The Aristocrats”?; A mere light snack, but I’d been warned by reviewers in advance of the fact, so I didn’t feel cheated. I think “Crash” was a pretty mediocre film, also. The original “Crash” by David Cronenberg had just about the best opening credits ever. After that, the film lost me, so I bought the book. Thought it would explain the connection in some heads between severe bodily injury and sexual arrousal, but naw. I’m still in the dark. Anyway, I digress and digress. – Jennifer Lynch, where ever you are? – thanks for “Boxing Helena”!

PS. About the “cop out” of J. Lynch’s film being a dream in the end; I think I accepted and even delighted in it as an underlining of the pschological basis for the film’s action. It was so much a work of the mind, a reverie, an indulgance. It was an exploration of the limits of human will, when exercised in fantasy, without the encumbrances of reality to step in and halt the action, and without any person involved refusing to react, and thereby spoiling the fun. Even when events seem to conspire against the perpetrator, these accidents felt “fixed” as if the same mind were the author of his or her own opposition, which, in dreams and fiction, must always be the case. That’s what makes fantasy romance so unsatisfying however great your imagination: you, the dreamer, must supply as well as answer any objections for the object of your fantasy. Without road blocks, it wouldn’t feel real. But every close call fails to spoil the dreamer’s daring adventure! You can’t lose! Strange as it may seem, I found perfect, this revelation in the end that we have been party to the workings of an uninhibited imagination, …and no harm done. No blood spilt. She will dance the watusee again.

[LYT response: I can tell a difference between GNGL soundtrack and Miles Davis, or the Metropolis soundtrack, or the sax stuff belted out by Bill Pullman in Lost Highway, not that I'm a massive fan of any of it. Perhaps the wording I used is wrong -- looking at the Amazon reviews, I see that "smoky" is apparently the accepted one -- but you can't tell me it's all qualitatively the same. How'd you like the movie overall -- agree with most critics that it's the year's best, or agree with me that it's overrated?

Note: I respond within comments on the older entries because it's easier]

I did claim it was poorly made. I found the main character unbelievable, a collection of jokes that aren’t consistent. I don’t buy him at all. I thought the muscial number was lame, and that musical numbers in general are more and more of a comedy crutch nowadays. I found the constant cross-promotion of other Universal products annoying. I had other issues, personal and not. But we’ve gone over all of this, and all you ever do is pick out the one thing you think you can beat me over the head over, while ignoring everything else I say, possibly willfully.

How has that critical studies degree served you since graduation? Show me an actual, employed critic with whom you never disagree or who you consider to be completely objective in every analysis, and we’ll talk. Better yet, start a website with your own “objective” reviews just so you can show the rest of us how it’s done.

The only critic I know to claim to have absolute objective standards is Rev. Thomas Carder at CAPalert.

My point is that you’re not claiming this film wasn’t funny or that it was poorly made. You’re saying you disagree with it morally, so therefore it’s not a good movie. That makes you as full of shit at Ted Baehr.

They hammered in striving for objectively when viewing movies in critical studies classes at usc. I guess no so much in production.

As for the specific, dunno. Never saw it. We have pretty different perspectives on the issue as well, due to my having a daughter and a few things with Julie. Der shrug.

“This is sort of like my previous beef with your use of “best films” instead of “my favorite films.”

That’s a beef, then, that you must have with every working professional reviewer out there. It’s how the game is played. We sign our names to these things so as not to have to write “in my opinion” after every sentence — because reviews are editorials rather than news, it’s a freakin’ GIVEN that they’re not objective. Note that the Oscars are not given for “Favorite Picture of a couple hundred industry people who might not even have seen the other ones,” but for “Best Picture.”

The only way to objectively rate a movie that I can see would be on technical merits, in which case George Lucas and Steven Spielberg would alwyas win, and RUSSIAN ARK would have topped every list a couple of years ago for its epic tracking shot, despite being boring as all hell. The point, as I mentioned before, is not that you agree with everything a critic says, because you never will. It’s that you can assess how valid their points are to you based on what you know of them, and surely that is the case here.

“I don’t see how you don’t notice this is in south park.”

I do, and I said so, but it doesn’t come across the same way. Saying “The rainforest sucks!”, for example, strikes me as something they’re saying mainly because it’s the exact opposite of what you might expect them to say. Same thing with making Christopher Reeve a vampire. It plays about as “agenda-based” as Sarah Silverman’s “racism.” It’s also pretty above-board and conspicuous, plus they go after EVERYTHING.