Sara Benincasa’s List of Great Reviews
Posted on July 14, 2018 at 4:51 pm
Latino Critics on “Sicario: Day of the Soldado”
Posted on July 8, 2018 at 8:00 am
I didn’t like “Sicario: Day of the Soldado.” But I made no pretense of being fit to evaluate its portrayal of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. So I was glad to see this round-up of responses to the film from Latino critics. All are worth reading in full. Here are some highlights.
If you are someone who can actually sit in a theater and watch this film without thinking about its political implications and how it feeds into the Trump narrative (even with its mid-movie glimpses of truth) then this is clearly for you. For the rest of us who believe there should be a certain level of responsibility to what’s put on screen, the mere existence of a work so blatantly obtuse signals the terrifying possibility that those who already dismiss the lives of immigrants and Muslims will find new ammunition for their hatred here.
It’s not that cinema shouldn’t explore the complex relationship between Mexico and the United States in a provocative manner, the problem is that writer Taylor Sheridan has a taste for writing stories where people of color are a central component, yet their perspectives are ignored (see Wind River as another example). He makes it obvious that his gaze is that of a straight white American male who can write a good thriller, but gives little importance to non-white characters aside from making sure stereotypes are perpetuated.
Nearly every Latino in this film is either an unnamed (or unseen) cartel member, is paid off by the cartels, wants to be in the cartel, or is generally associated with drugs….Having just rewatched the first feature, Benicio del Toro’s Alejandro is also problematic. This is a man who had no compunction killing innocent children in the first movie, yet will sacrifice himself for a teenage girl in this one. (Taylor Sheridan is a little too fascinated with foreign teenage girls.) Del Toro is perfectly fine, but this movie doesn’t get a cookie for having one prominent Latino in the cast who supposedly isn’t terrible. In the times we’re currently living in, I don’t need to pay $20 to see Mexicans erroneously portrayed as horrid people.
The latest Sicario, as ham-fistedly written by Taylor Sheridan, has a kind of vacant timeliness, lacking any nuance in its depiction of incendiary issues. Of course, the filmmakers couldn’t have known that this border thriller would be released in the midst of one of the worst immigration crises in the nation’s history. But context is sorely lacking. Why does a quiet middle school kid get mixed up in shepherding refugees for cash? Virtually all the Latino characters in the film are portrayed as clichéd villains – drug dealers, dirty cops, or greedy kids taking advantage of hapless immigrants.
What Was Your All-Time Best Movie-Going Experience?
Posted on July 2, 2018 at 9:00 pm
Scott Derrickson asked people on Twitter to respond with their best movie-going experiences and the results are a lot of fun to read. Some are just the pleasure of discovering a great movie or a movie that feels great because it spoke to them in a personal way or at just the right moment. Many others are about sharing a movie with just the right person. The movies named include “Raising Arizona,” “The Sound of Music,” “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” “Harold and Maude,” “Gravity,” “The Blair Witch Project,” and “Interstellar.”
Here’s mine:
Walking out of the two day bar exam after law school into the bright sunlight and going to a theater a block away to see the first Star Wars movie. Liking it so much we sat through it twice. Also: a night of Laurel & Hardy, WC Fields, Keaton, Lloyd at a time I needed to laugh.
Needless to say, I was not the only one who mentioned Star Wars.
While you’re on Twitter, check out this @TCM thread with people posting their favorite movies set in their home states for TCM’s 50 Movies 50 States series.
Critics Need to be as Diverse as the Audience
Posted on June 23, 2018 at 2:20 pm
Becca Harrison writes in Prospect about “From Ocean’s 8 to #MeToo: why the gender bias in film criticism matters:”
This week, Hollywood stars and reviewers alike have waded into debates about the gender of film critics.
In a promotional interview for Ocean’s 8, its stars—Mindy Kaling, Cate Blanchett, and Sandra Bullock—suggested that they’d like more women to review their film.
Bullock talked about the need to “balance out the pool of critics” so that it “reflects the world we’re in,” while Kaling said that “often I think there is a critic who will damn it in a way because they don’t understand it, because they come at it at a different point of view.”
Responding to the cast’s view that men might be more dismissive of their film than women, Buzzfeed critic Alison Willmore tweeted that this was “the same argument an angry teen boy uses when telling me why I shouldn’t get to weigh in on Suicide Squad.”
“It’s also an argument whose end point is that there should never be bad reviews, because that just means the critic wasn’t the right audience.”
But Willmore’s argument misses the point. The issue of individual films aside, there is a pressing need for publishers and editors to diversify criticism—and to trust that women and people of colour can write critically about films, even when they are “the right audience.”
Rotten Tomatoes: How Digital Media is Changing Movie Criticism
Posted on March 29, 2018 at 8:41 am
Rotten Tomatoes has a fascinating and very insightful essay about online movie critics. Citing the 1990 essay by Richard Corliss decrying the devolution of movie critics due to television, Rosemarie Alejandrino, the inaugural USC Annenberg-Rotten Tomatoes Digital Innovation and Entertainment Criticism fellow, describes the scope of online critics and their connection to their audiences.
Across multimedia platforms — particularly online video and podcasts — a new class of critics has arisen, made up of people who view the world of film and entertainment criticism through a digital lens. Some don’t consider themselves critics at all. This new breed of content creators isn’t looking to compete with traditional print critics; in fact, they exist side-by-side in the same cinesphere, often using written reviews as a jumping off point for their discussions.
Where these video and audio critics are taking us represents an exciting chapter in the evolving narrative of film criticism. The ability to pause and zoom allows a crafty YouTuber to dive into a scene’s shot construction in minute detail. Access to streaming services lets a critic watch a movie over and over as to not miss a detail while dissecting the plot for easter eggs and hidden gems. The rise in podcasts and longform audio platforms connects the critic to the listener in an intimate setting, as if you’re listening in on a conversation between friends who love (or hate) a film as much as you do.
The key culture-shifting component of new media film criticism is the critics’ relationship with their audience.
The critics and video film essayists she interviewed include Alachia Queen, Chris Stuckmann, and Black Man Can’t Jump (in Hollywood).