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.
Rating: 
Summary: The best of the Champagne Moderates
Review: There are many reasons one should be critical of The New Yorker. For a start, there's the aura that leads unwitting subscribers to believe that there is nothing better to be had. Then there's the gratuitious and unprovoked way that they inflicted Joe Klein on an unsuspecting country. And why, oh why, must John Updike be the exemplar of the best of American fiction? But no one can deny that it can be very funny. There's the cartoons, the covers, the back pages and of course, Anthony Lane, the film critic. Reasons why Anthony Lane gets four stars: 1) He is very funny. On "Forrest Gump": "The movie is so insistently heartwarming that it chilled me to the marrow." On Janet Jackson in "Poetic Justice," making a whole range of expressions in a mirror: "Now, it's possible for an actress to get away with this, but she has to be Liv Ullmann and the movie has to be `Persona'" On the score of "The Fugitive": "It appears to be based on the principle that nothing is as scary as hitting a drum apart from hitting it harder." On scenes in "The Bridges of Madison County": "During their visit, the weather went from grey to bright very quickly, and the continuity person was sent to bed without any supper." On Kurtz's kingdom in the revised version of "Apocalypse Now": [There is] "the perennial uneasy suspicion that Kurtz's kingdom is in fact nothing more than a T.S. Eliot Study Group gone terribly wrong." (2) He likes bad puns: "Faster Pussycat! Kilt! Kilt!" on "Braveheart." (3) He's very perceptive (see most of the comments above, and also his comments in the introduction about how Ridley Scott is becoming less mature in his movies). (4) He is not only brave enough to prefer "The English Patient" to "Fargo," but is quite willing not even to mention the second movie in his book. (5) He likes "The Usual Suspects," and "Time Regained." (6) He is very good at eviscerating such movies as "Godzilla," "Meet Joe Black," "The Scarlet Letter," "Indecent Proposal," and "Pearl Harbour." (7) He writes a wide variety of interesting topics. Not only does he review movies, not only does he review such masters of the screen as Bunuel, Hitchcock, Buster Keaton, Tati and Bresson, but he also talks about the Sound of Music revival, the weird aura of Lego blocks, and Edward Lear. You learn all sorts of interesting facts, such as the one that Isadora Duncan's fatal scarf was given to her by Preston Sturges' mother. (8) Not once but twice, he provides a review of the ten bestsellers of the day, once for 1994, another for 1995, based on Gore Vidal's classic 1973 essay. (9) He is aware that movies are in trouble, inflected with mediocrity and a lack of basic competence. Reasons why Anthony Lane doesn't get a fifth star: (1) As you can guess from above, he is better at showing why movies are bad, then at describing why they are good. (2) There is a certain lack of moral passion. Pointing out the hollowness of "Priest" is one thing. But where's the disgust one sees in Pauline Kael's review of "A Clockwork Orange," or the caustic observation one sees in J. Hoberman's criticisms of "Pleasantville" or "Life is Beautiful"? Nothing seems to move Lane very much in the way J. Hoberman was moved to write in his reviews of "Shoah" or "Schindler's List." There is little that is really enthusiastic or eccentric, such as Stuart Klawans' praise for "Matilda," or Jonathan Rosenbaum's discovery of unseen virtues in "Showgirls." In this, Lane is not unlike The New Yorker's prose as a whole. (3) Some of the literary essays show a certain laziness and a lack of fibre. The one on John Ruskin says more about his sexual problems than about those features that made him the most influential art critic of his time. A similar problem can be seen in the essay on Gide. There is a certain bland centrism that infects the essays on Matthew Arnold and Luis Bunuel, the first suggesting that he couldn't be captured by left and right (as if that was enough) the second suggesting that Bunuel shouldn't be seen as a Red (since after all we don't any of those around). (4) Not enough systematic examination of what's wrong with movies, and not enough curiosity about what one should look out for. (5) Too soft on "Titanic"; you got to lose marks there.
Rating:
Summary: The best of the Champagne Moderates
Review: There are many reasons one should be critical of The New Yorker. For a start, there's the aura that leads unwitting subscribers to believe that there is nothing better to be had. Then there's the gratuitious and unprovoked way that they inflicted Joe Klein on an unsuspecting country. And why, oh why, must John Updike be the exemplar of the best of American fiction? But no one can deny that it can be very funny. There's the cartoons, the covers, the back pages and of course, Anthony Lane, the film critic. Reasons why Anthony Lane gets four stars: 1) He is very funny. On "Forrest Gump": "The movie is so insistently heartwarming that it chilled me to the marrow." On Janet Jackson in "Poetic Justice," making a whole range of expressions in a mirror: "Now, it's possible for an actress to get away with this, but she has to be Liv Ullmann and the movie has to be `Persona'" On the score of "The Fugitive": "It appears to be based on the principle that nothing is as scary as hitting a drum apart from hitting it harder." On scenes in "The Bridges of Madison County": "During their visit, the weather went from grey to bright very quickly, and the continuity person was sent to bed without any supper." On Kurtz's kingdom in the revised version of "Apocalypse Now": [There is] "the perennial uneasy suspicion that Kurtz's kingdom is in fact nothing more than a T.S. Eliot Study Group gone terribly wrong." (2) He likes bad puns: "Faster Pussycat! Kilt! Kilt!" on "Braveheart." (3) He's very perceptive (see most of the comments above, and also his comments in the introduction about how Ridley Scott is becoming less mature in his movies). (4) He is not only brave enough to prefer "The English Patient" to "Fargo," but is quite willing not even to mention the second movie in his book. (5) He likes "The Usual Suspects," and "Time Regained." (6) He is very good at eviscerating such movies as "Godzilla," "Meet Joe Black," "The Scarlet Letter," "Indecent Proposal," and "Pearl Harbour." (7) He writes a wide variety of interesting topics. Not only does he review movies, not only does he review such masters of the screen as Bunuel, Hitchcock, Buster Keaton, Tati and Bresson, but he also talks about the Sound of Music revival, the weird aura of Lego blocks, and Edward Lear. You learn all sorts of interesting facts, such as the one that Isadora Duncan's fatal scarf was given to her by Preston Sturges' mother. (8) Not once but twice, he provides a review of the ten bestsellers of the day, once for 1994, another for 1995, based on Gore Vidal's classic 1973 essay. (9) He is aware that movies are in trouble, inflected with mediocrity and a lack of basic competence. Reasons why Anthony Lane doesn't get a fifth star: (1) As you can guess from above, he is better at showing why movies are bad, then at describing why they are good. (2) There is a certain lack of moral passion. Pointing out the hollowness of "Priest" is one thing. But where's the disgust one sees in Pauline Kael's review of "A Clockwork Orange," or the caustic observation one sees in J. Hoberman's criticisms of "Pleasantville" or "Life is Beautiful"? Nothing seems to move Lane very much in the way J. Hoberman was moved to write in his reviews of "Shoah" or "Schindler's List." There is little that is really enthusiastic or eccentric, such as Stuart Klawans' praise for "Matilda," or Jonathan Rosenbaum's discovery of unseen virtues in "Showgirls." In this, Lane is not unlike The New Yorker's prose as a whole. (3) Some of the literary essays show a certain laziness and a lack of fibre. The one on John Ruskin says more about his sexual problems than about those features that made him the most influential art critic of his time. A similar problem can be seen in the essay on Gide. There is a certain bland centrism that infects the essays on Matthew Arnold and Luis Bunuel, the first suggesting that he couldn't be captured by left and right (as if that was enough) the second suggesting that Bunuel shouldn't be seen as a Red (since after all we don't any of those around). (4) Not enough systematic examination of what's wrong with movies, and not enough curiosity about what one should look out for. (5) Too soft on "Titanic"; you got to lose marks there.
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