The ‘Rules’ according to Kevin
My review of Rules of Attraction is up at Filmcritic.com. I worried after the screening that I was just grouchy and everyone else would love it. At least Roger Ebert agrees with me.
It’s an ok review. It’s been years since I wrote film reviews (thank you, Chris Null, for overlooking that) and I think I’m tentative and prissy with the format. I found myself using the word “artistic” at least four times in the last piece with makes me sound like a third-rate Clement Greenberg instead of, well, me. Hopefully, I’ll grow into it. And forgive myself before then. Hopefully.
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Why compare when you get just be yourself? No, you won’t be a Jonathan Rosenbaum or a James Agee. But you CAN be a Kevin Smokler.
Anthony Lane’s made a career of being a wit, coming across as an incongruous sort in a theatre. Roger Ebert writes in clean, cogent language about movies. The point here is that current film criticism is not about overusing adjectives or channeling Susan Sontag; it’s about introducing a passion for films infectious upon readers looking for alternatives to the next Vin Diesel movie or, at the very least, commuting a personal perspective to a particular film that is honest and inimitable.
Beyond this consideration, successful film criticism is also about making logical associations, which are found within the histories of the crew themselves.
There were two angles I would have taken with Rules of Attraction:
1. Roger Avery is the co-writer of Pulp Fiction and a recurring Tarantino collaborator. Does this film make a case that angsty Tarantino-speak (if there is indeed similar dialogue throughout the film) only goes so far and is poorly applied to a Dawson’s Creek or Bret Easton Ellis setting?
2. American Psycho turned Bret Easton Ellis’s satirical tone into something cartoonish, resembling the family from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Are today’s filmmakers incapable or unwilling to go all the way with Ellis on film? Of course, the adaption angle is a bit of a cheat. But it’s another film-related issue that will never die. And if anything, Kevin “Central Booking” Smokler should know a whit of difference between the two mediums. 🙂
Why compare when you get just be yourself? No, you won’t be a Jonathan Rosenbaum or a James Agee. But you CAN be a Kevin Smokler.
Anthony Lane’s made a career of being a wit, coming across as an incongruous sort in a theatre. Roger Ebert writes in clean, cogent language about movies. The point here is that current film criticism is not about overusing adjectives or channeling Susan Sontag; it’s about introducing a passion for films infectious upon readers looking for alternatives to the next Vin Diesel movie or, at the very least, commuting a personal perspective to a particular film that is honest and inimitable.
Beyond this consideration, successful film criticism is also about making logical associations, which are found within the histories of the crew themselves.
There were two angles I would have taken with Rules of Attraction:
1. Roger Avery is the co-writer of Pulp Fiction and a recurring Tarantino collaborator. Does this film make a case that angsty Tarantino-speak (if there is indeed similar dialogue throughout the film) only goes so far and is poorly applied to a Dawson’s Creek or Bret Easton Ellis setting?
2. American Psycho turned Bret Easton Ellis’s satirical tone into something cartoonish, resembling the family from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Are today’s filmmakers incapable or unwilling to go all the way with Ellis on film? Of course, the adaption angle is a bit of a cheat. But it’s another film-related issue that will never die. And if anything, Kevin “Central Booking” Smokler should know a whit of difference between the two mediums. 🙂