Hey Sars —

Dear You’re Right, They Were Pretty Cool,

Thanks for the suggestion — I didn’t get many other responses on this, and none were duplicated, but here they are:

Allegro Non Troppo
Clash of the Titans
Wizards

I’ve always found your TV, film and theatre reviews
incredibly thoughtful and helpful in my quest for entertainment.
That’s why I (and, I suspect, others) enjoy reading Cherry so much.
You break down the elements of a work and are specific (sometimes in
technical terms) about what you think went wrong or right with a
movie. You obviously know a lot about pop culture (and you run a TV
website), but some reviews I read are much more general. What’s your
approach to these reviews? Do you have an intense background in film
and theatre or is it something you’ve picked up over the years? Are
there any books you’d recommend about the process?

Dear English,

I don’t have a conscious “approach,” exactly; I guess there’s something to the saying that, if you try to write the universal, it doesn’t hit anyone personally, but if you try to write about the personal, it becomes universal. Or something like that…the point being that I focus on what struck me about these books and films in a very subjective way because it’s my feeling that trying to write too broadly or generally, trying to cover every aspect of the work, saps the writing.

But that’s just me, and the purpose of Tomato Nation isn’t really generalism. There’s a place for it, absolutely; a more general review will give the most people the best idea of whether it’s something they’d like to see or read, which is the point. But it does seem to me like the reviewers we’ve heard of take, or took, a much more subjective, personalized approach, and that can be useful too. Pauline Kael is a good example: I frequently disagree with her assessments, and she drove a lot of readers nuts because she had strong opinions (or, if you’re one of her detractors, focused too narrowly), and she neither broadened them to make them more accessible nor nodded to convention by acknowledging popular opinion. If she wanted to use a single scene from a movie to talk about why she hated it, that’s what she did — and if you know her writing well enough, you can sort of extrapolate from what you know about How Kael Is whether you’ll hate the movie too, or like it in spite of her. Does that make sense? Roger Ebert is another example, but he does a great job (or did; his recent reviews are often puzzling to me, like, what kind of stiff hates Zoolander?) (don’t email me; it’s fine if you hated it too, I just didn’t agree with his reasons) with blending the two functions so that it’s readable and useful for a wide audience, but also very much about his tastes and his personal knowledge and memory of film. (I’d recommend browsing his “great movies” archives on the Sun-Times site if you’re interested in film crit qua crit.)

I wouldn’t go so far as to cite her as an influence, although I respect her work a great deal and think she’s an outstanding, uncompromising writer even when she’s dismissing a movie I adore. But I think I do take a similar approach; it’s the difference, in a way, between telling you about the movie and telling you what I thought about the movie. Or, I guess, between reading the review and reading the reviewer; you could put it that way too.

My “background” is an interest in good stories and how they get told, and dating film geeks. That’s it. As far as reading goes, I’d recommend identifying reviewers you like, reading their collections if they have any out — Kael, Anthony Lane, Agee if you want to go back that far — and seeing what other writers Amazon thinks you’d like based on those.

You know, what the hell. I’m so late today, it’s practically Friday, so let’s ask the readers what they think. Readers: we’re looking for cultural crit. Not culture-wars stuff; criticism of books, movies, theater, what have you. Two books per email, please — but if one of those books is a book you super-hated and want to warn English away from, please feel free to include it. Email subject line: “crit.”

Dear Miss Sarah,

Dear Chuck,

Tell her exactly what you’ve said to me in your third paragraph. “Alice, this makes me and Peter uncomfortable. You’re a good friend, and I know you mean well, but I don’t think you realize that it creates awkwardness, and I have to ask you to stop.”

If she continues trying to force you into pairings that don’t work for you, end the conversation whenever she starts, and if that doesn’t work, leave — go home, hang up the phone, whatever it takes. You need to set some limits for her, and enforce them. Alice should understand that throwing you together with a man your best friend already dated is a bad idea, but she doesn’t, and unfortunately you will have to tell her so directly.

Share!