| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
Stephen Holden,
The New York Times |
Becoming Jane |
"To literate Anglophiles, Austen and everything she represents looms as a symbolic bulwark against the values of today's babelicious Babylon. The premarital meat market of her era was reassuringly prim. 'Tainted by suspicion' is the nastiest description applied by one woman to another in this film.
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It is a dark day indeed when we look back on Victorian England and find it less vicious, meat-markety and misogynist than the present.
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Nathan Lee,
Village Voice |
The Bourne Ultimatum |
"As a political statement, United 93 was defended as a critique of government failure — a rebuttal to the flawless anti-terror tactics of 24 — but you could claim the same for any number of military yahoo movies. What's troubling is its pretense to objectivity, the claim to being as close as possible to an authoritative (even authorized!) re-creation. It is as it was? United 93 and The Passion of the Christ are basically the same movie for different audiences." |
Mel Gibson does openly what most directors do covertly (hello, Apocalypto!).
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Armond White,
New York Press |
The Simpsons Movie |
"Consider that so far this year, three of the funniest, most humane and politically topical comedies — Norbit, Delta Farce, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry — have all opened to hostile reviews. It seems that after Borat, critics have forgotten what comedy is and settled for seeing their own small-minded ('liberal') prejudices celebrated in cruel, snarky jokes. If a comedy does not flatter one's personal biases or extol the white, heterosexual status quo like Knocked Up, it gets punished for representing subculture virtue." |
Esteemed reader of NY Press, Armond White is on to you and your nefarious organic-soy-latte ways. He thinks — nay — he knows that "the larger audience" is smarter than you think. White also wants to wake you from your "liberal" (read elitist) delusions regarding satire.
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Stephanie Zacharek,
Salon.com |
Becoming Jane |
"I wonder what the Austen acolytes troubled by Joe Wright's 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice (which I loved) will think of this weird effort to remake Austen's life — about which we actually know very little — into a genteel, tasteful Harlequin romance. Was Austen really a smarter, feistier Carrie Bradshaw in more sensible shoes, longing for love even as she failed to hang onto it? Becoming Jane would have been more honest if it had been called No Sex in the Country." |
It's possible that other critics have gone here before, but that doesn't detract from the unassuming brilliance of Zacharek's connection between "the weird contemporary Austin-mania" and Sex and the City"
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Dana Stevens,
Slate.com |
The Bourne Ultimatum |
"It feels odd, during a week in which the film world lost two of its towering artists, to pick up the baton of reviewing summer blockbusters again." |
Oh c'mon! With all due respect to Bergman and Antonioni — may they rest in peace — how many of us thought of them on a daily, or even weekly, basis in the last few years?
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