| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
Stephanie Zacharek,
Solon.com |
Fur |
"[T]he movie's fairy-tale glow -- even tinged, as it is, with a kind of morbid sensuality -- is worlds apart from the pictures taken by the real Diane Arbus. The movie Diane Arbus looks on warmly as a parade of Lionel's friends -- dwarves, giants, transvestites, people with various physical deformities -- troop into her flat for a party. But the portraits taken by the real Diane Arbus have a distinct sense of otherness: She doesn't commune with her subjects -- she displays them. There's rarely any evidence that she actually likes them, or has even thought about them as human beings." |
Does this count as a backhanded compliment? She likes the movie but hates Diane Arbus. |
|
| David Denby, The New Yorker |
A Good Year |
"A Good Year is not a good vehicle for Crowe to relax in. Stocky and bullish, he looks great on the bridge of a ship or holding off barbarians with a lance but exceptionally unhappy in a bespoke suit. Insouciance and suavely devastating remarks are not his style. The designer beard he grew for the movie, always exactly an eighth of an inch long, emphasizes the smallness of his mouth and the furrows in his brow. Crowe must feel the constraint, because when he heads south he becomes all goosey and floppy-limbed, like Mel Gibson on a lark." |
Does he rail against Jews, too? Also, is Denby suggesting people with small mouths can't relax? We can't all be Sandra Bernhardt. |
|
Dana Stevens,
Slate
|
Stranger Than Fiction |
"Stranger Than Fiction is a maddening contraption, a high-concept story so overwrought and overthought that you want to thwack at it like a pi–ata to get at the sweet romantic comedy inside. This Will Ferrell/Maggie Gyllenhaal love story, narrated by Emma Thompson in a hyperself-conscious framing device, is the latest entry in what has become a comedy subgenre: ersatz Charlie Kaufman....[O]nly Charlie Kaufman can really succeed at something as weird as being Charlie Kaufman...Why can't this movie see that it doesn't need a hulking meta-narrative apparatus to make us care about its story? It had us at hello-or would have, if not for the excess of high-concept trickery." |
At last someone is bringing the whupass to our generation's flock of Charlie Kaufman imitators. Maybe this will lead to some legislation before this shit gets out of control. |
|
Armond White ,
New York Press
|
A Good Year |
"A cinema hick might look at this vacation-movie formula as a respite-a Three Coins in the Fountain-type celebration of widescreen color in tourist locales, a tired-businessman's animistic version of A New World-but only a fool would give Scott or Crowe credit for it...It's easier to picture Scott and Crowe sharing a long spa weekend, rather than working through the complications of creating a movie with a plain narrative and basic emotions. All that are harvested in this vineyard folly are yawns. You could reasonably expect something more daring from this celebrated pair, Maximus and Extravagansus." |
A week after claiming critics who praised Borat just wanted to be divisive, Armond coins the term "cinema hick." That said, we do like his referring to Ridley Scott as Extravagansus. Good one there, Hypocritus. |
|
Kyle Smith,
New York Post |
Iraq in Fragments |
"All three segments [of the film] are heavy on blame-America speeches, which may be a fair snapshot of Iraqi opinion, but it's strange how fond [director James] Longley seems to be of Saddam Hussein. He includes several pro-Saddam remarks while revealing only in passing that the 11-year-old's father, a police officer, was imprisoned, or perhaps murdered, by Saddam for political reasons." |
This is what happens to New York Post writers when they're confronted with anything resembling complex thought. We can smell the smoke from their short-circuiting brains all the way from here. |
|