Rating: 
Summary: best in bite sized reads
Review: A big, bloated and immensely enjoyable volume of Lane's collected writings; mostly movie reviews and essays on pop culture. Eminently quotable - though not exactly the easiest volume to tote along to the beach. I especially enjoyed the essay on "The Sound of Music," and the two on the bestsellers of today and yesteryear (I admire him for slogging through all those books that did not age gracefully and even more for admitting that he just could not get through several.) Unlike Ebert - who is a potato chip kind of movie critic easily absorbed but with no lasting nourishment - Lane's reviews often sound a deeper truth about how absurd the movie business - and society - is. It is especially fun to watch him taking aim at sacred cows and cherished pop icons alike. Ayn Rand, James Michener, Robin Williams, The Bridges of Madison County, and many more - watch out.
Rating: 
Summary: Laugh out loud hilarious
Review: Anthony Lane is a witty man. He's also an engaging writer of great intelligence and panache, whose prose is precise, informative, ironic in all the right places, and contains turns of phrase that will either bring a satisfied smirk to your face or make you gasp at their brilliance.This collection mostly consists of film criticism and profiles of people connected with the film business written for the New Yorker over a decade - there's a lovely, affectionate portrait of Hitchcock and a demolition of Julia Roberts here. But Lane also writes engagingly on other topics - there's an article on Lego bricks which is funny, sweet, and clever. Lane's gifts are so great that even when you don't agree with his take on a movie, his writing is compelling and - unusually for a film critic - warm. The book's title - from the last line of "Some Like It Hot" - is well considered. Lane is an honest enough critic to admit he doesn't always agree with his own reviews. He's perfectly prepared to take another look at a film and revise his opinion.
He claims in the introduction that the best way to evaluate a movie is either as soon as it comes out, or fifty years later - anything in between he says is hedging your bets. Perhaps, he concedes (with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek) filmgoers in half a century's time will look back on his review of "Pearl Harbor" and wonder how he could have missed its charms. Lane is never particularly horrible about a movie or an actor. He doesn't go in for the kill, knowing that this would appear unseemly, although opening a review of of a Demi Moore movie with the question "What is Demi Moore for?" is fairly brutal. He's a clever enough writer to allow the reader to join the dots. And, also to his credit, he's a man who enjoys a good action film as much as he enjoys a good arthouse movie. His review of "Speed" in particular is glowing, because he sees the quality in the craftsmanship. He doesn't sneer at "lower genres", only low quality. Indeed, to be fair to the man, he rarely sneers at all - he's too fresh and inventive himself to fall into the trap of sneering too often. He simply points out the flaws in his own inimitable manner. He's as likely to take an art film to task as he is a Summer blockbuster. Above all, he's funny. He's laugh-out-loud hilarious at times and - whether you agree with him or not - he will give you food for thought.
Rating: 
Summary: a good writer; a lousy critic
Review: Anthony Lane is an exceptionally fine writer; some of his sentences make you gasp, they're so evocative. The problem is he's a lousy film critic. His taste is dubious: he liked "Saving Private Ryan" among other overblown rot. (For a much better consideration of 'Ryan,' see Tom Carson's piece, "And the Leni Riefenstahl Award for Rabid Nationalism Goes to. . ." It's probably the best take on the film.) Lane has no aesthetic, and he's really the "pop critic" that Pauline Kael was accused of being. Frankly, I can't read him now. While I often (in fact, mostly) disagree with John Simon and Stanley Kauffman, their appreciation of film is exemplary, their intelligence formidable. Lane just sounds smart and it's probably the biggest con-job perpetrated in film criticism. (You can bet that the people who praise him haven't read Simon or Kauffmann.) It's hard to work out why Lane is a film critic; there's bound to be an art to which he's better suited - not just one he knows more about (his film knowledge is pretty thin), but one he has more passion for. You always got the feeling Kael was born to write about film; Lane is just doing a job in a smart aleck-y way. Hiring him was a significant mistake on the part of The New Yorker - it brought them more readers while it dumbed the magazine down. He's a fine stylist (he describes the opening segment of 'Ryan' as "speeded-up Bosch"), but there are a number of critics with much better taste. It must gall them that someone who pretty much came to film criticism by accident (and probably won't stay there) got the plum job in film criticism. It's also worth pointing out that Lane forgets appreciating art requires humility as well as intelligence. If you seek the best, read Kael's books, and if you want someone contemporary with better taste try Stephanie Zacharek, Michael Sragow, David Edelstein, Charles Taylor, or Terrence Rafferty.
Rating:
Summary: The best way to spend your weekend is with Anthony Lane.
Review: Anthony Lane is the reason I subscribe to the New Yorker, and I regularly tell anyone who'll listen that he's a god, but until this book, I didn't even realize the breadth of his talent and knowledge. The amount of entertainment minutiae he can store, and his ability to choose that perfect tidbit every time, is both endearing and awe-inspiring. His one-liners (often self-deprecating) stay with me like delicious little gifts. A couple of people in these Amazon reviews have called him sneaky, smart-alecky, and the like, and I must say how strongly I disagree with these statements. Anthony Lane gives us his close to flawless taste with generosity and warmth, without regard to whether a movie is "supposed" to be good, or important, or arty, or whatever it is we're supposed to like. To people who feel he won't review blockbuster movies, I'd like to point out that two reviews caused me to begin following Anthony Lane: an approving, positive review of "Halloween" and a pan of a French art film.
Rating:
Summary: .
Review: Anthony Lane's reviews' reviews alone probably wouldn't tell you much. Opinion on him is so divided-- I know a ton of people who hate him, but to me he's the most reliably clever reviewer at the New Yorker. If I had read all these love-hate reviews, I wouldn't have gotten the book. I did though, and it put a spring in my step, it was so good. Don't be overly put off by the bad reviews. Or by the abundance of good ones either, it's really not hype, his writing is really very charming.
Rating:
Summary: America's Most Entertaining Film Critic
Review: BOOK REVIEW: "NOBODY'S PERFECT," by Anthony Lane, New
York: A. Knopf, 2002, 752pp. Reviewed by Harvey Karten 9/6/02. Anthony Lane has a prose style that makes us want to read what he has to say even if we go to the movies but once a year. His writing is so witty, so entertaining, that given the quality of so many films these days, Lane can easily provide us with more laughs than an Adam Sandler comedy and perhaps even more tears than can be evoked by Mike Leigh. He'd better be good: he's had the unenviable task at The New Yorker magazine of filling the shoes of Pauline Kael, arguably the most influential American critic of the latter part of the Twentieth Century. Like most of us critics, he may hate to sit through bad movies but loves to go to town pointing out what's disastrous about "Showgirls" and "Battlefield Earth," yet his satire is more the gentle type preferred by Sir Arthur Gilbert than the scathing sort of a Jonathan Swift or a John Simon.. Whether or not you're a regular reader of The New Yorker?where he shares the film critics' pages with David Denby?you can catch up on the wit and wisdom of this Londoner who spends a considerable amount of time in New York by reading his new book, "Nobody's Perfect." (The title comes from Osgood Fielding III's statement in "Some Like It Hot" when, having been discovered that under that dress lies a man, gleefully responds, "Nobody's Perfect." As self-deprecatory as Woody Allen, Lane employs a style all his own, though his prose can be compared to that of Atlantic Monthly's hilarious P.J. O'Rourke. For example, when he received a phone call from Tina Brown, New Yorker editor at the time, he tells us that when Brown phoned him, "I was sitting in London...I think I actually stood up to receive it much as I would if a letter had come from the Vatican." Answering a question posed during an interview, he states, "I did not decide to become a film critic, any more than one decides to be a refugee or a drunk. To be honest, I cannot remember how this unfortunate state of affairs came about. My family continues to ask whether I might consider getting a proper job." Here is Lane's take on varied elements of the film critics' industry... On Writers: "Writers should be treated like rubber plants?lightly pruned, occasionally watered, but basically left to do their own thing in a corner, away from direct sunlight." On the Job of the Critic: "The primary task of the critic is the re-creation of texture?not telling moviegoers what they should see, which is entirely their prerogative, but filing a sensory report on the kind of experience into which they will be wading." On Corruptible Critics: "However hellish that Adam Sandler fiasco you just saw, don't worry; there'll be somebody in Delaware who is prepared to tell the world, 'Hands up for the flat-out funniest comedy since Father of the Bride! Adam Sandler is a laugh riot, hands down!" By coincidence, that quotester will be the guy whom the studio flew from Delaware to a junket in Atlantic City and then inquired gently for his assessment of Mr. Sandler as the new Jim Carrey." On Press Junkets: "I once went to a junket and heard the assembled hacks complaining to each other about the water pressure in their hotel jacuzzis. I am as corrupt as the next man, but I must admit, the notion that you could trim your critical opinions to accord with the fizzy water in which you recently dipped your butt had, until then, never occurred to me." On Publicity Materials: Never read it. Much is taken up with unconvincing claims of the expertise acquired by the stars in the building up to the shoot. 'Not content with a ringside seat, he actually spent ten months preparing for the role by acting as sparring partner to seven professional boxers, and is now hoping to contend for the welterweight title of the world.'" On Screening Rooms: "My spirits sag whenever a screening is laid on in one of the specialist rooms off Times Square, which I always think of as peep shows for movie buffs. Can one honestly promise a nimble response when the screen is the size of a parking space?" On Woody Harrelson: "Woody, trying to emote, looks like anyone else trying to go to sleep." You'd be hard-pressed to find a single page without at least one bon mot in this 754-page compilation of New Yorker magazine reviews, which also includes profiles of people from Buster Keaton to Julia Roberts and authors from T.S. Eliot to Thomas Pynchon. Among the films covered, Lane discusses "Speed" (which he likes), "Indecent Proposal" (wherein he discusses some indecent acting), and "The Remains of the Day" (which should have shown Anthony Hopkins' character tanking on highballs and ripping the back of a lady's gown rather than measuring the distance from the fork to the edge of the table). Lane did not care much for "Pulp Fiction," but then, nobody's perfect.
Rating:
Summary: Smart-aleck humor, but no real vision
Review: Even though he literally replaced Terrence rafferty as the film critic of THE NEW YORKER in the early 90s, Anthony Lane actually had much bigger shoes to fill: Pauline Kael's. The lesson learned from this collection of his writings: he's not Pauline Kael. Lane can be very funny when he's savaging a bad summer popcorn movie, but ripping things to shreds is about all he can do (and moreover he sets up his own jokes too easily--you can always see the punchline coming). And, unlike Kael, he doesn't really seem to stand for anything: you get no sense of his governing aesthetic in these reviews and pieces. When he likes a film (like "The English Patient") he goes too far overboard and his gushing seems embarrassing. Other transplanted Brits, I've noticed, tend to like Lane's snarky humor very much, and there's no question he can write well. But you just don't leave this collection feeling that movies (or for that matter, culture) deeply matter, as you do when you read the best film critics (like Kael or James Agee).
Rating:
Summary: Almost Perfect
Review: I can't remember when I have read such a delightful fun book. Anthony Lane writes with such wit, insight and playfulness I had a hard time putting it down. His range of subject matter is extensive and well researched. From Movies to authors and profiles his observation are wonderfuly writen. Mr. Lane understands the importance of real helicopters in Apocalypse Now, that Nabokov and W.G. Sebald are remarkable writers, that cookbooks are full of great things besides cooking, That Best-sellers and their list are full of bad writing, that we should know about John Ruskin, Evelyn Waugh,Andre Gide,and Matthew Arnold. He also understands what an incredible Movie The English Patient is. My favorite book of the year.
Rating:
Summary: Worth the trouble
Review: I thought that Anthony Lane was our finest critic - until I read this book. Though I find myself often in agreement with him, I cannot forgive his shortcomings, i.e. a refusal to actually REVIEW certain blockbusters (Titanic), a backhanded dismissal of a director's work (Guy Ritchie), or obsequious pandering to other directors (Anthony Minghella). Lane's prose, enjoyable in short spurts from the New Yorker, comes off cutesy and punny in a collection, which at ..., is horribly overpriced.
Rating:
Summary: Do You Love Movies?
Review: If you love movies, you will love this book. Simply put, Lane shares his love of movies with open eyes, well-trained, observant, and critical eyes. He looks at mostly American movies but throws in some foreign ones too. When a particular aspect of a film is achingly bad, he lets you know. When another aspect is delicious, he cooks up the casserole, and celebrates its smell, appearance, and taste. There are also some essays on people and places, but the positive emotions I feel when reading are the right ones, the ones we all feel because we are human, and fortunate to be living in the right place at the right time. I intend to get myself to my nearby Hollywood Video and rent the ones that Mr. Lane blesses with his incredible insight. And, oh, yeah, I'm getting over to the "alternative" video store to find those gems that the "Young Adult Male, 18-25" would never appreciate, because those are the gems that make life worth living. Thank you Mr. Lane.
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