The Invisible Counterpoint

Happy Oscar week, you third-class stowaways. Quoth the thespian Bill Paxton, “Are you ready to go back to Titanic?” The point is you’re not. It’s 2011 and we’re still 192 years away from comprehending Titanic’s world-paralyzing success, its Best Picture win, and Jack Dawson’s hack drawing skills. He’s just never going to get into Oberlin at that rate. You won’t find explanation for James Cameron’s sorcery here, but near, far, wherever you are — you will remember and recoil at the royal badness of Titanic. (Louis Virtel, “ Bad Movies We Love, Oscar Week Edition: Titanic,”Movieline, 23 Feb. 2011) - - - - - I have never understood why people liked this movie. James Cameron has never been the greatest at dialog, but this was by far the worst script he's written. You know it's bad when Billy Zane plays a one-dimensional character that would actually have been more complex and nuanced if they had given him a mustache to twirl. And I never understood the concept of a rich wom...

Kutcher and Portman play Adam and Emma, two young people making their way in Los Angeles with varying degrees of success: Emma — an overachiever who admits that she’s not particularly emotional or affectionate — is a doctor; Adam — irrepressibly warm and affable, if a bit goofy — works as an assistant on a weekly teen-musical show, though he really wants to be a writer. Adam and Emma met years earlier, as kids at summer camp — the movie opens with that flashback, in which young Adam (played by Dylan Hayes) fires the first of the movie’s sexually explicit salvos when he asks Emma bluntly, “Can I finger you?” [. . .] Adam agrees, though of course we know that since he’s just a big mushbug, he’ll be the one to cave in first. And sure enough, he shows up at Emma’s apartment while she — along with two of her roommates, played by Greta Gerwig and Mindy Kaling — are all having their periods. Not only has he brought them cupcakes, which they descend upon with hormonally charged voracious...

Happy Oscar nominations , babies. You got what you wanted, though you have to throw those gold-plated, NSFW Andrew Garfield valentines in the trash. It could be worse. You could be living in 1994, when the Academy honored not Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, or my darling Quiz Show with a Best Picture victory, but a staggering sh*t fortress of offensive “whimsicality” called Forrest Gump . You saw it. It’s dumb. Loony. It’s got a lot of nerve. But here’s a secret you and I share: We’re both attracted to bastards, and Forrest Gump’s the slimiest john I know. Let’s love it. Synopsis: Tom Hanks plays Forrest Gump, a man with an IQ of 75 who assures the world that in order to be an inspiring mentally challenged person, you need only to act like Winnie the Pooh . Point to your head and say, “Think, think, think.” Cock your head when others are speaking. Don’t understand when you’re playing a football game. These things. [. . .] Here’s the key to loving Forrest Gump: Our hero...

I thought the review was well written, well argued, and made sense. Still I might go see the movie anyway just to see what all the hoo ha is about. But I have to say the tone of the comments is kind of creepy. The general message seems to be: How dare this reviewer not love a movie I adored or even dumber how dare this reviewer not love a movie other critics really liked--although that remains to be seen I think. Diversity of taste makes life reasonably interesting or so some of us like to think, apparently not too many in this crowd though. As for the tired all refrain that SZ hates all movies other critics love--just to be ornery apparently-- read her review of "The Kids Are All Right." It's a rave, thank heaven, because being independent of mind seems to be the worst of all possible sins. (LAFLEMM, response to post, Stephanie Zacharek, “Review: Is ‘Inception’ this year’s masterpiece? Dream on,” Movieline, 14 July 2010) To fans of this site, independence of mi...