Should Critics Really Have An Opinion About Everything They See?

In this post from Criticwire called “The Pros and Cons of the Critic of Everything,” Matt Singer raises the question, “Do critics need to have an opinion about everything?” In the post, he writes:

Publications that employ large fleets of freelancers…might be able to keep specialists on hand, but for the most part, any working critic today is pretty much expected to be a critic of everything.

As a young critic myself, it’s been my goal to see everything I can and comment on it. But what I’ve found lately is that I just don’t always have anything to say.

Case in point: Last week I posted a short review for Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s World on a Wire. I enjoyed World a lot, and I’d like to explore it again at some point, but what could I really say about it? I had an opinion—I liked it, a lot—but aside from comparing it to a few other films I also love—North by Northwest, The Fugitive, and Minority Report—there just wasn’t much else for me to say.

Which brings me back to the Singer post. This week I’ve been asking myself whether I really should have an opinion on everything, at least at this point in my life. Does the Internet need another review of World on a Wire if all I’m going to do is spend 400 words saying nothing more than, “I liked it”?

That’s why, in the weeks since reading the post, I’ve cast my vote for no. A snap judgment doesn’t add much to the conversation, and very often, when you’ve only seen a movie once (as I have with World on a Wire), a snap judgment is the only kind you have. There are always exceptions, of course, and if reviewing is your job then you’d better have something to offer. But for critics like me, who are hobbyists more than anything else, it can be actually be a relief to not have an opinion at all.

What’s your own feeling on this question? Should a critic—professional or self-described—always have an opinion, or can this sometimes hurt the discussion? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

The Denton Film Society

I first fell in love with Denton in 2005, when I transferred to UNT to finish my bachelor's degree. I'm still in love with it, but sometimes I'm frustrated by its lack of diversity when it comes to film. It has a Cinemark, a Movie Tavern, and a discount theater in the mall, but it's missing an outlet for people who want to enjoy classic, independent, or foreign films. That's why I've decided to start the Denton Film Society. Right now, it's no more than a Facebook page and a dream, but it has the potential to become more than that. If you're a committed cinephile living in Denton, please help me by "Liking" us on Facebook and spreading the word to your friends. With your help, we can bring great films to Denton.

World on a Wire REVIEW

World on a Wire is a 1973 German miniseries from director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It stars Klaus Löwitsch as Fred Stiller, the new technical director for a company developing a virtual reality program. His predecessor at the company, an unstable Professor Vollmer (Adrian Hoven) has recently died, possibly because he knew something he shouldn't have.

Stiller, for his part, is a stable man. He's confident and collected. Or is he? When a colleague vanishes right in front of him at a party, no one but Stiller has any memory of him the next day. Is Stiller seeing things? Maybe. But at the same time, there are things about Stiller's world that don't seem right. Something about it feels staged. There are blank stares from strangers. A recurring high-pitched droning triggers dizzy spells. Then one night, while out for a drive, the world goes dark for a second, as if someone "up there" has just turned off the lights. Is it the world that's coming apart at the seams, or is it Stiller?

For a three hour-plus movie, World on a Wire moves briskly. It's divided in two parts and each feels distinctly different. The first half has the kind of mind-bending quality you find in Philip K. Dick's novels and short stories. The second looks like the kind of man-on-the-run story you'll be familiar with if you've seen North by Northwest, The Fugitive, or Minority Report. World even looks a little like Minority Report, with its grainy, overexposed cinematography. Obviously, World on a Wire predates Spielberg's film by a couple of decades, but the visual similarity helps it feel more contemporary than it might otherwise.

I'll leave it to better critics than me to dive into the movie's philosophical ideas, just like I'll leave to the Fassbinder experts to say where it ranks among the director's other films. For me, it all worked. I cared for Stiller, wanted him to succeed, and in the days since watching it, have mulled over its images in my mind. It's hard for a film to be more successful than that.

My Tarkovsky Year, Part Two: Slow And Steady Wins The Race, But What About Just Slow?

In my first post on Tarkovsky, I raved about his talent for taking simple yet mysterious images and imbuing them with a profound sense of meaning. In this post, I’m afraid I may have to backtrack a bit.

I blame myself more than I blame Tarkovsky, though. Several of his earlier works hit me so hard I expected nothing but perfection from him going forward. Yet perfection, as we all know, is an impossible ideal and a terrible thing to force onto someone else.

Still, I know I’m not alone when I look at the Russian filmmakers final two works, Nostalghia and The Sacrifice, and feel a sense of disappointment. In his new book, Zona, which I’m nearly halfway through by now, Geoff Dyer says: 

By the time of his final films...[Tarkovsky] is reliant both conceptually and incrementally on Tarkovskyan cliché. Bergman said that, towards the end, Tarkovsky ‘began making films that copied Tarkovsky.’ Wim Wenders felt exactly the same way about Nostalghia, that Tarkovsky was ‘using some of his typical narrative devices and shots as if they were between quotation marks.’ The guru became his own most devoted disciple (49).

I can’t put my finger on specifically what Dyer, Bergman, and Wenders are objecting to, but for me it’s Tarkovsky’s obsession with the long-take aesthetic--a technique which, I should add, I’m not opposed to. When used in the right way, it can be one of the most compelling tools in the filmmaker’s toolbox (4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days jumps to mind as an example). There are times, though, when that kind of approach just doesn’t work, and for me, The Sacrifice is a prime example.

WINGS OF DESIRE Screening

If you live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, mark your calendar. On April 2nd at 8:00 pm, Tugg and I will be screening Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire at the Cinemark 14 in Denton.

But there's a catch--THE SCREENING WILL ONLY HAPPEN IF I CAN PRE-SELL 50 TICKETS BY MARCH 28th. If you want to make this screening a reality, head on over to my event page here where you can buy your tickets.

Tickets will NOT be sold at the door--you MUST buy them ONLINE by the March 28th deadline.

Twenty-Five Movies That Have Made Me Who I Am

Lately, my urge to blog hasn't been very strong, partly because I've been busy with school, but also because I haven't been sure of what to write about. That's why I decided to put this little list together. 

These twenty-five movies have essentially made me the person I am now, at twenty-seven. If you want to understand my tastes, my sense of humor, and what I look for in a movie, this list will tell you a lot about me. 

That doesn't mean all of these are my favorites--although many of them are, and some were at one point--nor would I say these are THE BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME. They are merely the ones that have left the deepest, most noticeable impression on me. 

Over the next year, I'd like to dedicate a post to each one. A couple of these I've written about elsewhere, but oh well. My view is, there's always room for improvement, always the possibility of discovering something new.

Tiny Furniture REVIEW

Recently, I watched Tiny Furniture, which The Criterion Collection just released on DVD and Blu-Ray. Written and directed by Lena Dunham, Tiny Furniture is about a young college graduate named Aura (Dunham) who’s going through that “What do I want to do with my life” phase many young people experience after college. Dunham’s real-life mother and sister (Laurie Simmons and Grace Dunham) appear as Aura’s mother and sister, inflecting the movie with a sense of authenticity and earnestness it might have lacked otherwise. Then there are the two men she divides her time with--Jed (Alex Karpovsky), a young YouTube “star” hoping to get his own show with Comedy Central, and Keith (David Call), an attractive but slightly slimy sous-chef she meets at the restaurant where she briefly works.

Tiny Furniture reminds me a lot of Noah Baumbach’s solo work, except that Dunham never pushes her movie's tone as far as Baumbach does. In other words, her characters never feel as quirky or snarky as Baumbach’s sometimes do, which I consider a good thing. Baumbach’s characters typically make me squirm, and not in a good way. Instead of leaning in to learn more about them, I typically want to get as far away from them as possible. (If I like anything Baumbach’s had his hands on, it’s because Wes Anderson’s been there to bring a lighter, more earnest touch, as in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Fantastic Mr. Fox.)

Dunham’s characters, by comparison, feel authentic and relatable, even if they’re privileged in a way I’m not. Aura wants to form an identity separate from her family’s, something we all have to do eventually, regardless of wealth. If she complains about her first world problems, they are at least first world problems that go beyond the borders of class, which puts Tiny Furniture leaps and bounds ahead of a trivial movie like Baumbach’s Greenberg.

Feel differently about Tiny Furniture or Noah Baumbach? By all means, share your comments below.