Unique Film Writing in 2013

“95% of film writing is shit.” This is what a fellow critic reminded of me during one of my podcasts this year. The more I thought about it, I knew he was right.

But there was good film writing this year, if from a small selection of people. Most of what passes for serious film criticism is hardly serious, more than it seems what passes for good films. So this is a small selection of writing I liked this year. It’s not everything, but when I opened a Word document and remembered what pieces stayed in my mind for whatever reason, these were the ones that popped immediately into my head. There are a number of writers whom I adore not on the list simply because my mind is flawed, and there are some writers I thought of more than one piece, but I thought one should do—my friend Carson Lund has more. There is no order, but the first two are my favorites.

Kent Jones, "Intolerance," Film Comment, May 3, 2013. (Or: We cannot remain outside the sphere of our art)

It’s curious that American culture and history are still so commonly viewed through a New Left prism, by means of which 1964 or thereabouts has become a Year Zero of political enlightenment; as a consequence, the preferred stance remains that of the outsider looking in, or in this case back, at a supposedly gullible and delusional pre-Sixties America. It’s certainly preferable to right-wing orthodoxy, but that’s hardly a compliment. The New Left is now very old but its rhetoric lives on, many times removed from its original context, and that rhetoric seems to have found a welcome home in film criticism.

David Bordwell, "Mixing business with pleasure: Johnnie To’s DRUG WAR," Observations on Film Art, July 8, 2013 (Or: How a movie tells you everything you need to know)

The Milkyway writing team often treats story points in this peremptory way. If the Hollywood rule is “Tell the audience every major point three times,” To and Wai often assume that one mention is enough, and even that can come before we’re in a position to appreciate it.

Digital Static: Returning To The Wonder

          To the Wonder, Terrence Malick’s sixth feature film, is both a reflective look back and a daring leap forward for the director. It very much extends the qualities that have come to define Malick’s work—a didactic editing style based around natural elements, an emphasis on movement and gestures to convey emotions, and a solemn, poetic voiceover. However, while some have seen the film as a minor b-side to The Tree of Life, it is very much a break, a reorganization of principles more than anything else. While his Texan set childhood nostalgia piece searched and celebrated a forgotten Promised Land of Americana, To The Wonder is emotionally bare and claustrophobic film, at times a psychological horror flick. The gestures of Malick’s previous films are repeated but they are closed in, made meaningless as the modern and suburban ennui overtake his protagonist, Marina. I find it to be an devastating work.

            I have already written at length on the film, but I returned to it again, and have even more to say about what I believe will be seen as a transitional piece in Malick’s filmography. I first want to address comments made by my friend Jason Bellamy on my original piece. Jason writes:

I'm especially skeptical of almost all criticism that tries to tie a director's work to his (or her) personal life. Doing so suggests that the narrative we know about the director's life is accurate (as if public figures unselfishly expose their true selves to us), that they don't have secrets, and that they're as two-dimensional as the narratives about them tend to be…I'm even more skeptical about attempts to tie autobiographical motivations to the work of Malick, a director everyone agrees we know very little about.…this review, while possibly accurate, has an uncomfortable number of "clearly" and "certainly" readings within it, as it relates to Malick's motivation. (Most notably: Aren't you going pretty far out on the limb to say that Malick is "clearly in a crisis"?)…Put another way, much of your analysis that this film is a masterpiece seems to hang on the belief that it's vividly revelatory about Malick. But what if it isn't?

As always, I appreciate Jason’s comments, and if you haven’t, you should read his own piece on the film. Having Jason’s comments in mind, I did try and separate myself from the “Authorial Intent Fallacy” while viewing the film a second time. But what I cannot separate myself from is certainly Malick’s other films, and how much this work stands in contrast to his other work. Many critics who have come out negatively against the film have stated that the gestures and twirls feel vague and without emotion—I would say its more the opposite. They no longer carry the magic once felt before, and that’s the central dichotomy at play. In Jason’s review, he writes, “I suspect that many of us who have Malick's movies printed on our heart will find it difficult to watch Kurylenko's Marina raising her hands to salute a storm without thinking about Q'orianka Kilcher's Pocahontas doing the same in The New World…What once felt specific, organic and true now feels random and offhand, which threatens to retroactively suffocate the charms of To the Wonder's predecessors.” I would instead argue is that Malick is searching for meaning to that gesture in this (very) new world, but unable to find the same resonance, and then must deal with the emotional consequences of it.

How to Write A Counter-Intuitive Approach to Art (Or: Labuza's Guide to Contrarianism)

Art and criticism are fundamentally built on the nature of discourse. If criticism was, as Rotten Tomatoes may want to suggest, about consensus, there would be no point to criticism. Someone had to criticize the problematic ugliness to Rembrant's figures before someone could value it as a revolution. The author has to be murdered by Barthes before it can be reclaimed. Cinematic discourse depends on the ever impossible question: frame or window?

The goal of the critic should be a personal statement, and my favorite statements are often ones that in no way reflect my feelings toward the art objects I'm seeing. How did that person see that idea in that thing? This is most remarkable when a critic approaches a work that not only reflects something very different from my own judgment system, but everyone around me. 

While most people call this contrarianism, I call it the counter-intuitive approach. I also think there’s a difference between the two. Contrarianism, as the connotation suggest, goes against the grain: it’s fundamentally seen as a negative. Counter-intuitive suggests a new way of reaching a goal, something that uses a new method to approach the same issue. There’s a positive spin to it: a suggestion that this approach can create a new way of viewing the object at hand.

I wanted to write this for a few reasons, mainly because more often than not, I’m seeing more and more posts that could be labeled as contrarian, including my own. Some of these pieces I think are very good, others I think need work. The desire to write something contrarian often comes from the wrong energy, as well as the clicks and hits that come with it (see: any Slate headline). So this is partially an attempt to reclaim that energy.

I also wanted to stake my own claim and give myself a series of principles to work off from. If you want to write something that suggests a counter-intuitive approach, I would suggest some of these guidelines.

NYFF KidCriticz

Some self-promotion of my own accomplishments I guess is in order, but really more of an explanation of my lack of New York Film Festival coverage so far (I've seen six films but simply haven't had time to write about them, and I've started a piece on Carax's Holy Motors about five times now). In continuing the program they launched in Locarno, Indiewire and Film Society of Lincoln Center teamed up to host their first ever NYFF "Critics Academy" to highlight new talent in film criticism, and yours truly was chosen among the bunch. I'm looking forward to working with the wonderful Eric Kohn and Eugene Hernandez, who have a lot of great panels and discussions planned for us, as well as writing stuff for Criticwire, Film Society's website, and The Playlist. I'll also be doing episodes of The Cinephiliacs every Friday with a different guest, so look forward to those as well. And I may post a few things here regarding other various films if I have the chance. 

Interlude: The Limits of Control?

            My occasional Twitter pal Richard Brody has a nice post up in regards to the Sight & Sound poll, remarking on the fact that many films are by directors with complete control of the camera as opposed to looser filmmakers. He writes:

The prominence of films by of Stanley Kubrick (“2001” at number six), Francis Ford Coppola and Andrei Tarkovsky (three each), and Akira Kurosawa (two); the relative absence of Italian neo-realism (“Bicycle Thieves” at thirty-three, “Voyage to Italy”—if that counts—at forty-one); and, in general, the lack of movies where the strings seem looser (e.g. John Cassavetes, Elaine May) indicates that directorial control freaks have a higher standing among the voters than those whose movies reflect heads-up curiosity, spontaneity, and responsiveness to unexpected discovery.

            Richard is certainly right – Vertigo is dominated by Hitchcock’s precision in every frame, as is The Searchers and Tokyo Story and 2001 – and I too lament the absent of Rio Bravo, or anything by Howard Hawks for that matter. But I think to call these films lacking in unexpected discoveries might be a little too mischievous. Part of this might be due to the fact that Richard is a better critic than I’ll ever be – nothing misses his eyes or ears, while sometimes I need repeat viewings to fully take in some films. That’s what happened when I re-watched Vertigo two weeks ago, and I noticed, on my tenth viewing of the film, that Scottie is not the real name of Jimmy Stewart’s character, but instead it is Johnny (or “Johnny-O” as Midge calls him, which reminded me of Roger O. Thornhill – The O stands for nothing, he tells us – in North by Northwest). 

Announcing The Cinephiliacs!

I've started a new podcast! Check out all the details over at it's new home.

Beasts of the Southern Wild: Beyond the Delta

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Directed By: Benh Zeitlin

Written By: Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin

Starring: Quvenzhane Wallis, Dwight Henry

Director of Photography: Ben Richardson, Editors: Crockett Doob and Affonso Gocalves, Production Designer: Alex DiGerlando, Original Music: Dan Romer and Benh Zeitlin

            After the first ten minutes of the Sundance smash Beasts of the Southern Wild, I was ready to flee from the theater. Set in an area of Southern Louisiana called “the Bathtub,” the film quickly introduces us to our protagonist Hushpuppy, who says lines about how all the universe is connected. Her home is a grassy plain filled with trash and animals and full of characters who speak with pride about an us vs. them mentality. The director Benh Zeitlin fills the palate with intense non-linear shots that confuse the viewer into astonishment, not to mention the overbearing score. Oh God, what have I walked into? Yes, Beasts is not your typical Sundance film—there’s no mumbling, no digital video, and no 20-somethings attempting to figure out what to do with their trust-funded lives—but damn, I thought, is that precociousness and sense of wonder going to feel like my head being slammed against the wall.

            But then, I gave in, and accepted Zeitlin’s film on its own terms: a fairy tale, and an imaginative one at that, set as a coming of age story in a part of Americana rarely explored on film. Beasts never quite won me over—the amount of tears pouring from my fellow audience was quite a contrast to my dry face—but its earnestness and exploration of familial relationship centered itself.

            But wait! How can someone just like this film? Either you must be over the moon, calling it one of the best films to ever play at Sundance, or as Ignatiy Vishnevetsky prefers, “bullshit.” To not love this film is to reveal that you are a callous and cynical critic who can’t accept a film for its given premises and to not hate it is to reveal you are a sucker for fraudulent cinematic techniques. There has been too much digital ink poured over Beasts of the Southern Wild that it almost feels like discussions are no longer about the film. Tim Grierson writes at Deadspin that Beasts is a “model independent film,” which means the problems of Beasts must stand for the entirety of filmmaking outside of Hollywood (and you thought Lena Dunham had it bad!).

Screening Log: Ignorance is Bliss Edition

            It’s a short screening log this week, but I’m excited to see Dan Sallitt’s The Unspeakable Act tonight at BAMcinemaFest (as long as my train back to NYC is on time). I briefly met Sallitt a month ago and I’ve considered him one of the most intelligent critics whenever I read it work. Here’s a piece he wrote on Julia Leigh’s The Sleeping Beauty, which is much more eloquent than mine. And here’s a nice Wall Street Journal profile on Sallitt, which also quotes my Personal Recommendation Machine^TM Bilge Ebiri.

-Blowup, 1966. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. DVD.

-Duck, You Sucker!, 1971. Directed by Sergio Leone. 35mm projection at Film Forum.

-The Ruthless Four, 1968. Directed by Giorgio Capitani. 35mm projection at Film Forum.

-Horrible Bosses, 2010. Directed by Seth Gordon. HBO.  

In Praise of Andrew Sarris

            During my sophomore year of college, I signed up for a class on Howard Hawks. I hadn’t cared for Hawks much before—I liked some of his films, but they didn’t strike me as masterpieces (naivety is the basis of youth). Instead I signed up for the class for another reason: Andrew Sarris. For someone who had only minimal exposure to film criticism at the time, there were only a few names I knew (Pauline Kael wasn’t even one of them). 

            Even before I studied cinema, Sarris (who sadly passed away today) already had influenced my cinephile brain without me even knowing who he was. I was watching films because they were directed by a certain person. I was making connections between the works of John Ford and Orson Welles. The way a kid like me watched films was you’d try and watch three or four by one great director, just so you could have taste. And then you could figure out the grand statement. Ford was about the changing American landscape from individualism to society. Kuorsawa’s films explored the possibility of empathy. And so on and so on.

            But Hawks was tricky. He worked in every genre possible. His films, at least to the untrained eyes, lacked the visual dynamics that the other canonical Hollywood directors showed off (actually to think of it, would there be a canon of Hollywood directors without Sarris?). If I waited a year, Sarris would teach Hitchcock, a director everyone loves. But I wanted a challenge; I wanted to see Hawks the same way Sarris saw him.

Interlude: Zacharek Zingers

You may hear today that Stephanie Zacharek, the chief film critic for Movieline, will be let go from her position July 13th. It's of course the latest in a string of critics losing their positions. I often disagreed with Zacharek, but she was a damn good critic. Her post on The Artist during the Slate Movie Club is easily the most interesting defense of that film I read during the film's inevitable Oscar run. To honor what is an idiotic movie, I dug through some of her work at Movieline and found some of my favorite lines. Editors, take note:

"If the career of Christopher Nolan is any indication, we've entered an era in which movies can no longer be great. They can only be awesome, which isn't nearly the same thing." -Inception (July 14th, 2010)
 

"The picture has a pale, worn-out look, as if the blood is being drained from it even as we watch – like the characters who populate it, it looks ready for some kind of rejuvenation that may never come." -Post Mortem (April 11th, 2012)

"As the end credits of this last dour Swedish snooze-a-thon started rolling, I clapped my notebook shut as if it were the last day of school. Huzzah! Bring on David Fincher. Please." -The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (October 28th, 2010)

"His body is gangly and puppet-like in that preadolescent way, but every movement is resolute: When he chases after the various kids who, repeatedly, try to steal his precious bike, he throws off sparks of grim determination, like a single-minded marathon runner. Maybe, in the end, he outruns the movie." -The Kid With A Bike (May 15th, 2011)

"Reichardt and her cinematographer, Chris Blauvelt, allow the weather, the time of day, and the landscape, as it shifts little by little beneath the settlers' feet, to determine the movie's color palette: One minute we see strata of sky, clouds and scrubby land rendered in dry, parched tones; the next we're transported into an early-evening fever dream of unreal-looking purples and blues right out of a Maxfield Parrish painting." -Meek's Cutoff (April 7th, 2011)

"When Katz shows the four playing a board time, they're clearly having a great time, and not ironically -- Katz gives us the sense that he cares for his characters, as opposed to just using them as mouthpieces for the discontent of his generation." -Cold Weather (February 4th, 2011)

"Not since Antichrist has a man suffered so greatly at the tiny, grabby hands of God's creatures." -Fury Vengeance (April 28th, 2010)

Interlude: Kael Smash Edition

"The audience is alive to it. Our experience as we watch it has some connection with the way we reacted to movies in childhood: with how we came to love them and to feel they were ours—not an art that we learned over the years to appreciate but simply and immediately ours. When an American movie is contemporary in feeling, like this one, it makes a different kind of contact with an American audience from the kind that is made by European films, however contemporary."

-Pauline Kael, "Onward and Upward With the Arts," The New Yorker, October 21st, 1967

"SO AGAIN, HULK GETS ASKED THE QUESTION ALL THE TIME: WHAT MAKES A GOOD HULK? AND THE ANSWER IS ANYTHING IF YOU CAN MAKE IT COMPELLING ENOUGH. BUT THERE’S NO DENYING THAT HULKS SEEM TO BE MOST COMPELLING WHEN YOU GROUND THEM IN CONTRADICTION AND EXPLORE LIFE’S GRAND DUALITY. RUFFALO’S BANNER/HULK IS ONE OF THE MORE DEXTROUS AND ALL-ENCOMPASSING VERSIONS WE’VE EVER HAD AND IT’S NO ACCIDENT THAT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN LOVING THE CRAP OUT OF HIM IN THE FILM."

-"Film Critic" Hulk, "The Hulk On Mark Ruffalo's Hulk," The New Yorker, May 8th, 2012

Between the Pitches: Why Film Critics Love Baseball

            Last night, I attended my first baseball game of the season, which was an excellent night as the Minnesota Twins tore through the New York Yankees for a 7-3 win (as a MN native living in New York, it’s fun to see your team take down a massively overpaid one). The weather was perfect, I had great seats, and the game was well fought by both sides.

            And then I got thinking. Many of my friends hate watching baseball (many of them hate sports in general, but let’s ignore those for now). They prefer football, basketball, and hockey, claiming baseball is slow, boring, and uneventful. Then I was thinking how many film critics I know are also huge baseball fans: Noel Murray (Atlanta Braves), Matt Singer (New York Mets), Louis Godfrey (San Francisco Giants), and Richard Brody (another Mets fan—Richard told me he went to the second game ever at Shea Stadium) to name a few. These guys are also film critics who appreciate what some call “slow cinema.” I’m thinking films out of the Romanian New Wave, or the works of Bela Tarr, or Jeanne Dielman. And to name some of their favorite releases, we’ve loved films like Poetry, The Tree of Life, Meek’s Cutoff, and We Can’t Go Home Again. And this made me realize that many of the pleasures of watching these films are the same to why I love baseball.

Screening Log: Chaos Reign Through Minimalism Edition

         Couple of notes before this week’s screening log. Over at Indiewire’s new blog dedicated to film criticism, I’m participating in Matt Singer’s weekly critic survey. Last week, I waxed on the problems of choosing my most egregious blind spot. Also, some of you may remember my commentary on Grantland’s “Smacketology” tournament regarding The Wire. Following his controversial comments against bloggers this week, Simon did a longer interview with Alan Sepinwall, where he elucidated some of his statements, and the showrunner included a link to my piece as one of the better responses to the Grantland nonsense. Peter Labuza is now David Simon approved folks!

-The Long Day Closes, 1992. Directed by Terrence Davies. 35mm projection at Film Forum.

-Girlfriends, 1978. Directed by Claudia Weill. 16mm projection at Brooklyn Academy of Music.

-Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943. Directed by Maya Deren. 35mm projection at Museum of Modern Art.

-Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, 1975. Directed by Chantal Akerman. 35mm projection at Museum of Modern Art.

-About Elly, 2009. Directed by Asghar Farhadi. DVD projection at Film Society at Lincoln Center.

-Ruggles of Red Cap, 1935. Directed by Leo McCarey. 35mm projection at Film Forum. 

Interlude: RIP Criticism of Film Criticism

Because the Museum of the Modern Art pushed back its screening of Jeanne Dielman from Wednesday to Thursday, I decided to attend a panel called “Film Criticism Today” by the New School (who last brought us Tarkovsky Interrupts(!), and it was also free). Here were the five most interesting things said:

--Phillip Lopate’s first piece ever as a film critic was covering the first New York Film Festival for the Columbia Daily Spectator, which is where I got my start too.

--According to Paul Brunick, Peter Wollen is unreadable. Huh.

--Apparently when Vincent Canby was writing for the Times, he kept a little film called Chan is Missing in theaters much longer than it would’ve been, since he was a fan.

--The moderator, Noah Isenberg, thinks it’s horrible that film critics or scholars may use IMDB to find info. Lopate responded, “There are so many other horrors.”

--Glenn Kenny (who was not on the panel) joked afterwards that he never had interest in becoming a critic, but Premiere scooted him into the job, and thus ruined his entire life.

I think there was also a debate on film criticism, and points were made about the Internet and what not. Video essays came up, which were praised by Dennis Lim (who started Moving Image Source) for bring the discussion of form back into criticism, and then sort of given the “that’s nice” treatment by everyone else. No podcast talk (despite having a podcaster on the panel), a little talk of critical advocacy (no mention of #teammargaret), and Twitter dismissed casually. That's all folks.

Bracket-Idiocy, Part Two

In my first piece for Indiewire's TV section, I go further into The Wire and why I found Grantland's "Smaketology" to be complete insanity. This is following up on my flash-second response last week, though the point remains more or less the same. Check it out here.

Screening Log: Ima Let You Finish Tarkovsky Edition

                This week’s screening log is not only late, but also shorter than ever. It’s been one of those weeks. I was all set to write it yesterday and then I couldn’t get into the headspace cause of some non-film things. I’m not really in the headspace now, but perhaps I can take that as a challenge. Of note, the three repertory films (and two current films) marks the first week in which everything was screening in digital. This is sad. If you haven’t, read my piece on the troubling aspects of the North By Northwest DCP.

-2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968: Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Digital 2K Projection at Film Forum.

-North By Northwest, 1959. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Digital 2K Projection at the Museum of the Moving Image.

-Stalker, 1979. Directed By Andrei Tarkovsky. Projected DVD at the New School.

                This was the third time I had seen Stalker, which was part of an event called Tarkovsky Interrupts, in which the film was intermittently paused for discussion by a series of six panelists, organized around Geoff Dyer, who just wrote a book on the film called Zona. I won’t give a full overview—someone more astute than me already did that much better than I can—but here are a few of the notes I took and my own thoughts on this film, which remains my favorite Tarkovsky. I was actually expecting them to stop the movie a couple more times or at least speak longer, but the screening went over length anyways (four hours were allotted).

Interlude: Bracket-idiocy

"[The Media] have less and less ambition and are demanding less and less of themselves as arbiters of what is actually important, of what our problems are and how we’re addressing them. The Wire was trying to say, at the end, 'Look, if anything in the first four seasons struck a nerve with you, don’t think for a moment that anyone’s going to address themselves to it—least of all the watchdogs of society—because their teeth have been taken out.' They’ve done it to themselves." -David Simon, Interview with Vice, December 2009.

"What if we actually did subject the key players of the Wire-verse to rigorous bracketological inquiry? If we played corner boys against dock workers, murder-polices against hoppers, and craven politicos against enigmatic not-actually-Greek human traffickers, in matchups as arbitrary and occasionally unjust as life and death on the mean streets of West Baltimore, would the king stay the king?" -Alex Pappademas, Grantland post announcing a bracket match featuring characters from The Wire, March 5th, 2012.

Screening Log: Before #TeamMargaret Edition

         Another good week at the movies, cut short by a couple of issues. I must discuss one disappointment, however. On Thursday, I was excited to head down to Anthology Film Archives to see The Candidate, a classic 1970s political film with Robert Redford that has eluded me so far. That was until critic and film programmer C. Mason Welles posted to Twitter that Anthology had scraped the 35mm for a projected DVD. Not caring to pay to watch a projection of bad quality, I skipped out (the same thing happened to Kenji Fujishima in seeing Face to Face at Film Society this week). Next week, I’ll be discussing Film Forum’s “This is DCP” series, which is far different than just a projected DVD, but the increasing scarcity of 35mm is no longer an impending threat for the future. It’s here folks. 

Also worth reading: Andrew Welch, a fellow critic down in Dallas, wrote a small piece on why he doesn't like No Country for Old Men and thinks it's one where Oscar got it "wrong." I responded in the comments; both are worth a read.

If you wondering where any of my Oscar coverage is, I'll be tweeting throughout the night while drowning myself in wine. My one hope is that the dinosaurs from Tree of Life decide to go by the way of nature and smash Uggie's poor head in.

Anyways, onto the log, which includes one theatrical performance as well.

-You Can Count On Me, 2000: Directed By Kenneth Lonergan. Online Streaming Via Netflix Instant.

-Life is Sweet, 1990: Directed By Mike Leigh. 35mm Screening at Film Society of Lincoln Center.

-Track of the Cat, 1954: Directed By William Wellman. 35mm Screening at Film Forum.

-Westward the Women, 1951: Directed By William Wellman. 35mm Screening at Film Forum.

-Richard III, 2012: Directed By Sam Mendes and the Bridge Theater Project. Performed at the Harvey Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

-The Tree of Life, 2011. Directed By Terrence Malick. Blu-Ray on HDTV.

Margaret and the Dragon Tattoo: Or Recent Going-Ons in Film Criticism

            Two big stories relating to film critics are once again bringing up questions about the role of film criticism today. Because the world needs another piece on the state of film criticism, I found this a most dire subject to write on, though I think one story highlights the other, so bear with me. The two stories individually have been getting a lot of notoriety, one for its complete idiocy and the other for its idealistic advocacy. I’ll start with the more banal story first.

            If you picked up a New Yorker yesterday and flipped to the movie section, you may have read David Denby’s review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the highly anticipated adaptation of the Stieg Larson novel from Social Network director David Fincher and produced by Scott Rudin. In publishing the review, however, Denby broke perhaps the one big rule film critics have to follow: don’t publish your reviews until the studio says so, a so-called “embargo.” A series of emails, published by The Playlist, follow the back and forth between Denby and Rudin, which highlight the triviality on both sides. 

            To be frank, the whole thing feels like a schoolyard dick-measuring contest. But Rudin’s point to Denby that the film “has been badly damaged” by the early review is something to really scoff at. When you have a huge blockbuster like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, one knows people are going to go to it, whether or not reviews are good. How many teenage girls decided to skip out on Twilight: Breaking Dawn because David Edelstein gave it a middling review? Embargos on films let studios control the press on their films to give it the most exposure, but when it comes to a film that is going to be plastered on billboards everywhere, Rudin’s anger seems misplaced. 

            However, that doesn’t mean film critics don’t have their place, which brings me to the story of Margaret, Kenneth Lonergan’s ambitious masterpiece that came and went without much notice when released in September. Because of the film’s legal troubles, the distributor, Fox Searchlight more or less dumped the film, while the few major trades that did review somewhat dismissed it. But soon, other critics—Ben Keningsberg, Alison Wilmore, Matt Singer, Richard Brody, and Glenn Kenny, among others—caught up with it during its release and herald it a masterpiece, or at least something of merit worth more than two weeks and little advertizing. I managed to catch up with it during the second-to-last day of its theatrical release and went particularly over the moon as well.

            As Margaret disappeared from existence, however, #teammargaret, a Twitter hashtag to fight for the film’s existence was born. The whole thing played like an inside joke for film critics until last week, on the eve of the film’s UK release. With raves coming from London film critics, including a pair of five star reviews from The Guardian and The Telegraph, Slant film critic Jamie Christley launched a petition to Fox Searchlight to get the film back in discussion by making the film accessible for critics for their end-of-year awards. While that doesn’t necessarily help people who don’t get press invites, the wave of buzz led to staggering numbers in the United Kingdom--The Guardian reports a weekend gross of £4,595 ($7,170). “That number gave Margaret the highest screen average of any film on release, by some margin. This, despite the film only receiving one evening showtime per day (at 8pm), due to its hefty duration of 150 minutes.” Next weekend, Searchlight has decided to expand the film to ten screens in the UK, which rivals the entire number of screens it played in the United States.

Critics on The Tree of Life: Ideas Growing in All Directions

The Tree of Life

This is the second part in my three-part exploration of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. It should be noted that this part does indeed include numerous spoilers. Part I can be read here.

            Since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival,  Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life has garnered unique attention by film critics, who have produced some of their most thought provoking writing on any film in some time. In a way, Malick’s film has reaffirmed the need for criticism, as the film, whether a masterpiece or a disaster, is a film that demands interpretation, philosophical musings, and cinematic theories to be explored.

            Less of a look at whether The Tree of Life should be considered a successful work (though that will be explored slightly), I instead have taken a handful of critics who have written thoughtful on the meaning of the film instead. The goal of this is not to come to any sort of a conclusion, but simply expand on some of the different pillars of thought that seem to be towering over other critics as they debate this intensely personal as well as cosmological film.