These days discussing the sex life (or twitter chat) of an artist, or discussing the morality of immorality of the work itself — is what passes for informed aesthetics.
I am not the first to notice this.
But now it’s getting personal. I can’t figure out if a movie is good or bad anymore— at least not from reading all the dumb, ham-handed reviews.
Here are three recent movies that have been badly — and misleadingly — reviewed.
I'm setting the record straight.
- LATE NIGHT I haven’t seen anything Mindy Kaling’s done (my bad) since The Office which I loved her in. Well she’s great in this. And she’s written a witty, touching comedy; no small feat. But everyone keeps taking about how great the politics of this film are, when truth be told — they’re lousy. Emma Thompson plays a female late night talk show host, ala Jimmy Kimmel. Right. Lightbulb? I mean, um, look around? There is no such creature. Mindy Kaling, why are you criticising white women for a privilege they haven’t attained yet? Not even Joan Rivers could get white male execs to grace her with a late night talk show. So my review is the reverse of all the other ones — ‘Kaling is a great writer with bad politics.’
2. ROLLING THUNDER REVUE This documentary is being criticised because some of the talking heads are actors not real people. The dumb critics seem to think this is bad, or immoral, or unethical — or some such rot. How stupid can you be? This film lies because a) Scorsese wants us to remember that documentaries don’t always tell the truth, and b) Scorsese is demanding we be skeptical of media these days. Get it? So how dumb are you, critics? And how smart is Martin Scorsese?
3. ANNA In case you’ve missed it (and I’m sure you have) this is a film by Luc Besson. The reviews were all snide, calling it sexist (it isn’t). Then I realized that Luc Besson is ‘Fifth Element’ Luc Besson and a very skilled filmmaker. I go. It’s great -- and I hate movie violence and complicated plots and I’m certainly not turned on by kickboxing women (although I did act in a movie once called FACE THE EVIL starring a kickboxing Shannon Tweed — and she did turn me on by showing me the ring that Gene Simmons gave her). Turns out that Besson has been accused of rape (the charges were dropped) — and the unwanted touching of five women. Oh — I get it, so now his movies are suddenly all bad? But they’re not. However there’s no arguing with people who think that assholes make only lousy art. Hey - how do I tell you that most great artists are assholes?
These are all great movies. But the critics were wrong about them; go see for yourself.
