It wasn’t my intention to do any such thing: I don’t think a reviewer should spend most of his time self-consciously commenting on camera angles at the expense of his own emotional responses to a film. In any case, even the most analytical critics are es

Why do we watch films? There are many answers to this question, but I would imagine the most common response is because they are therapeutic: Tragedies allow us to release emotion; comedies distract us from the harsher aspects of life. Cinema also transp

For a little movie without special effects, dramatic reveals, or cutting-edge sex scenes—a movie about nothing at all, really—Barry Levinson’s 1982 comedy, Diner, caused a tectonic shift in popular culture. It paved the way for Seinfeld, Pulp Fiction, Th

They don't make movie critics likes this anymore. If Pauline Kael had ever reviewed her life, she might have labeled it "a mess," her favorite rebuke for a film that had failed to measure up. Yet Kael often reveled in movies she thought were a mess, just

Compared with James Wolcott, most literary journalists write like Amish farmers, their sentences plain as bib overalls. Not so this longtime columnist for Vanity Fair. Wolcott’s prose is high-maintenance, bangled with astonishing similes and metaphors, o

"Diner," written and directed by Barry Levinson, is a wonderful movie. That simple sentence began a lengthy, thoughtful review by Pauline Kael in the April 5, 1982, New Yorker, a review that saved a cinematic gem from quick extinction -- and, as it turne