Complicated Characters
Flawed people in flawed relationships make for a stimulating screenplay in Andrew Wagner’s adaptation.
Starting Out in the Evening |  Directed by Andrew Wagner
December 13, 2007
By Jonathan Rosenbaum
The two most interesting movies I saw at press screenings last summer had their opening dates postponed, and it’s not hard to imagine why. As Orson Welles experienced time and again, features that are fresh and unconventional are harder to gauge as commercial prospects than stale conventional ones—and thus they’re harder to sell. This explains both the box-office success of Welles’s relatively pedestrian The Stranger (1946) and the delayed and relatively unprofitable U.S. releases of many of his other features, starting with Citizen Kane and continuing through The Lady From Shanghai, Othello, and F for Fake, among others.
Neither Jon Poll’s Charlie Bartlett nor Andrew Wagner’s Starting Out in the Evening is a masterpiece, but both films exemplify a kind of adventurous filmmaking that’s increasingly difficult to envisage in today’s marketplace, where first impressions mean everything—it’s an unpromising climate for any art form. When I saw Charlie Bartlett—an edgy and quirky satirical teen comedy, unusual for both its nervy politics and its class consciousness—in mid-July, it was scheduled to open in early August. Since then it’s been rescheduled for early February and then bumped again to later the same month.
I also saw Starting Out in the Evening—adapted from Brian Morton’s novel by Wagner and cowriter Fred Parnes—in mid-July. It’s finally opening this week. Much of the film’s novelty derives from its characters, the sort one almost never finds in “commercial” films—both flawed and sympathetic—and it keeps them vivid, ambiguous, and three-dimensional throughout. Heather (Lauren Ambrose) is a feisty, impulsive grad student in her mid-20s writing her master’s thesis on Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella), a Jewish New York novelist in his 70s whose four published novels are all out of print. Heather says Schiller’s first two novels helped her to claim her own personal freedom and tries to convince him that she might be able to bring his works back into circulation. Despite enormous differences in age and temperament, the two develop an uncertain but increasingly intimate relationship.
Meanwhile, Schiller’s devoted daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor), a dancer turned aerobics instructor, is pushing 40 and longs to have a child. After she unexpectedly encounters her former boyfriend, Casey (Adrian Lester), they uneasily resume their relationship. Casey, a black academic now helping to launch a new leftist magazine, has a son from a former marriage and is determined not to have any more offspring. Their mutual affection is palpable, but they remain at loggerheads about this issue.
The film induced me to read Morton’s beautifully realized novel, which is so much a literary creation that it hardly seems like movie material. It takes a special kind of writer to get so much mileage out of a lengthy description of someone (Schiller) opening a bottle of seltzer, let alone to make it the subjective observation of another character (Heather), telling us something about her in the process. This couldn’t be re-created in a movie without a great deal of self-consciousness (and Wagner understandably doesn’t attempt it) but Morton manages to keep it all light and functionally integral. Over the course of the story he oscillates gracefully and regularly between the viewpoints of all four characters (Casey, who enters the novel at the halfway point, gets less space than the others), something a movie couldn’t begin to do with the same ease.
Other omissions include the explanation of the title Starting Out in the Evening (it’s the title of an unpublished early novel by Schiller and indicative of his glum conviction that he was born too late), Schiller’s fulfillment of a vow he made with his late wife to visit Paris, his frustrated anticipation of an appreciative essay about his work promised by Edmund Wilson, Heather’s surreptitious reading of his novel in progress, a meeting of Casey with his son, and the detail that Casey’s mother was Jewish. One curious yet defensible alteration: in the book, Casey winds up reading and admiring Schiller’s third novel, Stories of the Lives of My Friends, about the 60s, which he much prefers to the earlier novel Tenderness, about a Paris romance—in contrast to Heather, whose life has been changed by Tenderness but doesn’t much care for the third book. In the film, it’s Schiller’s fourth novel, The Lost City—set in the 20s and dealing with the generation of Schiller’s immigrant parents—that Casey admires. Without quoting a single line from any of the half-dozen Schiller novels he evokes, Morton manages to elevate each to the status of a full-fledged character.
A surprising number of other things from the novel are transposed into the film’s dialogue, or else simply get implied in the remarkably detailed and suggestive performances. Arguably nothing of importance is lost as far as characterization is concerned, and in this sense at least Wagner’s movie is an uncannily faithful adaptation. These are essentially the same people, fully and complexly realized—all the more interesting since Wagner asked the actors not to read the book.
Through his periodic shifts in viewpoint and his refusal to place the reader in any objective or “neutral” space, Morton suspends or at least greatly complicates most of the moral judgments that the novel’s actions seem to demand. Wagner, who can’t draw on the same narrative techniques, still manages to raise many of the same issues, often posing them in a manner that’s even more direct and confrontational and allowing the viewer just as much freedom in coming to terms with them. Is Heather exploiting Schiller’s sexual vulnerability? Is Casey, knowing Ariel’s desire to have a child, exploiting hers? Can Casey’s awareness of his inadequacy as a father be compared in any way to Schiller’s feelings about having been an inadequate parent to Ariel? All four characters are unusually intelligent and self-aware (though Ariel, unlike the other three, isn’t an intellectual), but are we ready to accept their own critical self-estimations, or are we more apt to view them critically through the eyes of the other characters?
Do we deem Schiller and his daughter both failures, as they’re often prone to view themselves, or as successes in certain ways they don’t recognize, corresponding to the ways Heather views Schiller’s first two novels and Casey views Ariel’s lack of inhibition? Does the aggressive manner in which both Heather and Casey pursue their careers and intellectual interests make them more or less self-centered than Schiller and/or his daughter, and more or less likely than them to succeed?
This is a far from exhaustive list of the kind of questions the performances pose, and it’s central to Wagner’s sensitive and attentive direction to keep us asking.
Opens Fri 12/14 at the Music Box and Renaissance Place. Send a letter to the editor.
From the Reader blogs On Film J.R. Jones: Rosenbaum redux.
4/30 at 12:41 pm
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Hoss at 7:12 PM on 12/14/2007
Rosenbaum misses the point when it comes to marketability of art, whether it be film or whatever. True, certain intellectual forms of art are generally not successful, but it has little to do with ‘newness’. For instance, audiences had no problem embracing the new medium of cinema, televsion, new entertainment forms like videogames, etc.
One could argue that these were merely new forms serving the same old same old demands. But, the nature of the medium at least counts for half, and there’s never been a problem with accepting the new; if anything we demand more of it. In the 50s, did any kid have problem accepting Rock n Roll? Hip Hop was new in the late 80s, yet it was an overnight success.
The problem is not newness but difficulty. Intellectual stuff has never been popular because most people are not intellectuals. But, there’s another factor, that of freshness. The problem with all forms of Serious Art is their possibilities have been exhausted for the most part and for quite some time. One can always try new and daring stuff in painting, sculpture, literature, and cinema, but it’s much harder now, especially long after the explosively energetic, destructive, and creative period of modernism. I doubt if anyone can be another Picasso no less than anyone can be another Michelangelo.
Same goes for cinema. After Griffith, Eisenstein, Welles, Hitchcock, Bunuel, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Renoir, Bergman, Fellini, Tati, Antonioni, Bresson, Kubrick, Resnais, French New Wave, New Wave of other nations, Spielberg, 80s Hong Kong cinema, Tarantino, etc, etc, what else is there to be done—except in the technological arena?
Of course, great films are still being made, but how can cinema-as-art regain the kind of fame and glory as during the heyday of Bergman, Fellini, and Antonioni when film was widely gaining acceptance as a serious Modern Art form?
It’s still possible to be great but harder to be ‘new’ when past masters had pretty much mapped out the possibilities of cinema. By the 50s, modernism in most forms had exhausted itself. As film had been mostly a popular entertainment, it still had elbow space for experimentation. But, it too became less and less exciting for more and more people. Also, the great masters of the 50s and 60s had been entertaining and accessible—Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini, early Godard, Truffaut, etc. But, as film-as-art-as-a-school became firmly established, there was less to enjoy, less to hype.(Excuse us if we don’t enjoy Godard since the mid 60s). Many new serious filmmakers of the 70s, 80s, and 90s were plain and simple dreary—and pretentious as hell.
Anyway, excitement about serious, intellectual, or modern art had a lot to do with scandals, hype, promotion, the buzz. There was a time when Picasso could shock, scandalize, excite, and provoke the public imagination. Today, unless some Republican congressman makes noise about some art exhibit, no one cares. How many people would have cared or heard of Mapplethorpe had it not been for Jesse Helms? (How ironic that guys like Helms and Giuliani—as mayor of NY—are the best promoters of modern, post-modern, or post-mortem modern art). For most of us, the idea of newness in art has become standard, passé, conventional. Every art student in every art school is allowed to do his or her thing. There is nothing to rebel against, nothing to make one’s mark with. Teachers say ‘go ahead, draw a monkey penis on the head of Jesus’. There isn’t even the slightest prurient curiosity stirred up by ‘new’ works of art. In the era of porn on every tv or every computer screen in every home, what ‘new’ art can shock us?
Of course, the point of ‘new’ art isn’t necessarily to shock or to cause a sensation, but we’d be dishonest not to deny the importance of buzz in public response and interest in the Serious Arts. Other factor, of course, is desire for respectability and pomposity(reason why many parents feel obligated to take their kids to see the Picasso exhibit at the Art museum. But, is there ‘high culture’ anymore? Problem is not only the dearth of interest in ‘new’ art but in old art, like Classical Music which is attended mostly by grampies who can’t even hear.
Anyway, I suspect Rosenbaum isn’t even being honest about why he likes this movie. Despite claims of its non-conventionalism, a certain narcissism and conventional familiarity with the material are evident in the review. He probably likes it for the same reason why New York intellectuals loved Woody Allen’s ‘serious’ movies. Who are the characters of this movie? An aging Jewish intellectual, someone Rosenbaum can identify with. And, how wonderful to see a BLACK ACADEMIC who starts a LEFTIST magazine; a wet dream idealization of what and how blacks should be according to the likes of Rosenbaum(the dude could well be one of the kids of HALF NELSON grown up under the tutelage of wonderful white progressives!).
All the characters and their little livelihoods are so familiar and appealing to the likes of Rosenbaum. It’s an intellectual narcissist’s delight to see these characters and mutter, ‘yes, aren’t we so quirky, so wonderfully touchingly neurotic, so thoughtful, so searching, so idealistic, so flawed but with great sensitivity, and so on’. This is a episodes of TV sitcom FRIENDS for liberal sophisticate intellectual crowd—yes, the kind of people who generally go to Art Films. So, this movie panders to its audience no less than other movies do; it’s just that the audience happens to be different. This too is a feel-good movie, albeit one for people who flatter themselves as being to smart for feel-good stuff in the conventional Dr. Phil or Spielberg sense. Oh no, none of that bullshit stuff for them. You see, these intellectual types read SERIOUS literature, start up leftist journals no one reads—though always funded by bourgeois institutions(at least today as funding for Soviet front groups have dried up)--, and THINK a lot. They are too knowledgeable to be suckers like the rest of us. Some of them even feel kind of fu____ up. But, it’s because they are so unconventional, different, radical, or something of the sort. But, all said and done, they need their feel-goodies too. And, this is the kind of movie that offers comfort for these folks. If Annie Hall and Manhattan were feel-good movies for mainstream intellectuals, this movie is for a feel good movie for radical intellectuals. Though I haven’t seen this movie, just reading about the synopsis and its characters makes it obvious that Rosenbaum didn’t feel ‘challenged’ for a second throughout the movie. It was everything HE expected and wanted to see—and seen over and over and over in countless European art films with same kind of people(I’ve seen a ton of them too, and after awhile their formula becomes no less tiresome). Really, how does this movie break new ground from what had been achieved previously in Art Cinema? How truly ‘differen’ is it? Or, is Rosenbaum satisfied with the fact that it’s different from MOST mainstream films? But, this is like a Scientologist priding himself in being in the minority because MOST people are Christians—all the while dogmatically clinging to every word of L. Ron Hubbard, of course. This movie doesn’t sound a pioneering work in the history of cinema. It’s just another good indie movie. And, the REAL reason why it isn’t and won’t get widespread publicity is because there have been tons of art films like this. And, the notion that cinema is a serious or modern art is no longer exciting or worth hyping. Besides, I doubt if today’s kids whose main modes of fun are hip-hop, videogames, and youtube can be expected to show much interest in some aging Jewish writer who wrote serious literature in the 1920s. But, Rosenbaum shows interest because this movie is very much about HIS kind of world. So much for unconventionality.
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Bemused at 11:46 PM on 12/14/2007
To Hoss: Hey, I thought you said Rosenbaum hated Jews like the Coens and Woody Allen. Now you're saying he likes a movie because there's at least one Jew in it, plus at least one LEFTIST BLACK. (Horrors!) I guess you're saying that Rosenbaum thinks that this movie is radically unconventional, even though Rosenbaum never says that and the characters don't sound even remotely radical (unless one character being a leftist qualifies as remotely radical). In fact, the novelist sounds downright conservative, rather like Saul Bellow.
Are you saying that Rosenbaum likes this movie because his kind of people are former dancers, grad students, aerobics teachers, aging conservative intellectual Jewish novelists, and black leftists? Of course Rosenbaum isn't a novelist and he isn't a black or a practicing Jew or a conservative or an aerobics teacher or a former dancer and he doesn't live in New York City and he isn't yet in his 70s, but hey, He IS an intellectual, so why not call him a narcissist for liking this movie anyway? And who knows--maybe aerobics teachers ARE his kind of people. Anyway, Rosenbaum likes some European art movies and he likes this movie, so this must mean that this movie is just like a European art movie, even though you haven't seen it--you can just tell because you're so smart. So why not, while you're at it, call yourself a narcissist, for taking so much pride in your penetrating perceptions about art and life, your uncanny grasp of movies you haven't seen, and because you dislike people who either like or dislike movies that are associated in one way or another with Jews?
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Jimmy Jazz at 11:50 PM on 12/14/2007
Jonathan, I've heard that you are going to follow up your '50s series at the film center with one on the '60s. Is this accurate? And if so, will you be screening POINT BLANK, by any chance?
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Jonathan R. at 11:53 PM on 12/14/2007
This is accurate. But I won't be screening POINT BLANK.
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Jimmy Jazz at 8:07 PM on 12/15/2007
Ah, thanks. Just wishful thinking, having known you're a fan of that film. I'd love to see it on the big screen. But looking forward to the series anyway!
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transleytan at 11:08 AM on 12/16/2007
To Hoss: Go see the film first and then make a comment. It would be fair to all concerned.
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Steven Augustine at 4:58 PM on 12/17/2007
To: Hoss:
"And, how wonderful to see a BLACK ACADEMIC who starts a LEFTIST magazine; a wet dream idealization of what and how blacks should be according to the likes of Rosenbaum"...
Clearly, it would be much better if the author, and the film maker, were to portray the kind of blacks that *you* prefer. The "natural" kind, right?
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Grrr at 9:13 PM on 12/17/2007
Hey Mr. Rosenbaum!
I know you've written some angry articles of the way the American studios prevent us from seeing important foreign films. That's why I just wanted to mention one important picture that we haven't been able to see:
Hayao Miyazaki's 1991 film "Only Yesterday". Technically, he didn't direct it, but he wrote and produced it when his studio was still very fledgling.
Disney has been sitting on the license for years, but has no plans nor intentions to export it to us.
Help us get it out.
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Gordon at 3:39 PM on 12/18/2007
Grrr, while I adore Only Yesterday, I'm not really surprised that Disney wouldn't think it commercial enough to distribute in the states; it's a very quiet film that has almost no reason to be animated. You're better off writing Disney, not just some movie critic that Disney could probably care less about (no offense, JR). However, I would suggest not wasting your time and just getting any of the import DVD editions currently available. The translations may suck, but the film is still quite intact.
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Hoss is Boss at 6:23 PM on 12/21/2007
I agree with Hoss, and I'm all for Hossissism.
When Rosenbaum speaks of challenging OUR assumptions and expectations, of course he means us dummies. He doesn't mean HIS assumptions. He loves this movie because it panders to HIS expectations of what a fun movie should be. This movie is an all-too-familiar portrait of the world Rosenbaum lives in. Too bad the black guy wasn't gay as well as radical and as-it-turns-out-Jewish to round it all out. As a kind of Ehrenstein clone, he would have been a super-wet dream of The Ideal Man according to PC.
According to this movie, a black guy is better off with Jewish blood because such leads to proper political consciousness and intellectualism--unlike most 'natural' blacks(notice how liberals favor vanilla Obama over more 'natural' black leaders. Not that Obama is Jewish but he's the intellectual product of U of C and Harvard Law School dominated by guess who?) In the past, some white chauvanists would say certain blacks had superior talent due to having some white genes. This movie is just a liberal twist on the same theme where a black guy is nobler because he has some Jewish blood; I guess it makes him smarter, more radical, and more intellectual--gee, he can even marry my daughter! Of course, the movie is NOT blatant in saying as much, but only a fool would not pick up on this. With black and Jewish blood, he's automatically nobler than us--victim of anti-semtism/holocaust and legacy of slavery. Again, had they made him gay as well, and he's Ehrenstein(who also miraculously has some Irish blood, which as white blood goes, can claim the potato famine and oppression under the Brits; Ehrenstein's luck in this age of victimology is downright indecent. He ought to be generous and sell some of his genes on Ebay to the victimologically less endowed). If such people didn't exist, they would have to be invented--and showcased--, as of course Casey certainly is. What with all the black-Jewish tensions in the REAL WORLD, how cute and comforting for Rosenbaum to see an idealized black guy with radical politics and Jewish blood.
Whenever Rosenbaum talks about cliches and conventions, he fails to take context into account. In HIS 'intellectual' film buff world, this movie--and the other Artsy stuff he likes--do not upset or overturn HIS favored conventions. Notice that most liberal films follow their own tiresome conventions as any stupid Hollywood genre film--or dumb Disney movie--does. They have their own fetishes, mannerisms, and all that crap.
Also, 'the new' is an old idea, so it's lame for Rosenbaum to go on insisting on The New as though this is still the late 19th century when Culture was steeped in traditionalism and stuffy elitism.
This particular movie doesn't sound radical, but of course its themes and territory are pleasing and flattering to Rosenbaum.
Even if there's only one radical person in the movie, it goes without saying that MOST people in such environment are of the Rosenbaum-cultural clan. It would truly challenge Rosenbaum's assumptions if this movie had a sympathetic Conservative Black character. Then, Rosenbaum would have to cling to his biases and call the black dude an 'uncle tom', or consider that the guy may be half-decent. Rosenbaum is pleased when a movie challenges what he assumes are the expectations and biases of the majority--often miscalculated--, but he groans and moans when a movie goes against HIS biases.
And, the issue isn't whether Rosenbaum is a novelist--though it was his first ambition according to past reviews--, political activist, aerobics dancer--though he probably needs some exercise--, or whatever. The main issue is what KIND of world and inhabitants does this movie give us? Besides, what's the difference between urban intellectual life in NY, Chicago, Boston, Washington DC, or etc? They read and watch the same movies, books, and journals, and mull over the same issues, topics, and etc. Especially in this age of the internet, is there really a localized intellectual culture?
As for the old novelist, so what if he resembles Saul Bellow? Bellow wasn't your typical conservative. Also, the presence of an intellectual and literary character obviously flatters people who make a living in similar fashion.
Though, like Hoss my boss, I haven't seen the movie, it seems like the characters are not ideal in the Family Movie sense. They are neurotic. But, how is this different from Woody Allen-ish neurocissism? How many times have we seen urban intellectual neurotics go blah blah about how depressed, confused, and searching they are. These fools take pride in their fashionable depressions, alienation, and the like. It means they THINK and PHILOSOPHIZE about life.
Is this a good movie? Probably. But, what about it is so unconventional or fresh to Rosenbaum who must have seen over 10,000 movies very much like this? France alone cranks out 100 such neurocisstic movies a year.
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Swooning at 7:51 PM on 12/21/2007
(My first post in the comments section.)
Very interesting stuff, Hoss. Really. Except for all the politics. And stop posting as yourself praising yourself. Your stuff stands on its own. (Except for the politics.)
Mr. Rosenbaum. You really are one of the greats. I've read most of your collections, and I thank you for all the great work through the years.
But this Chicago Reader rating system must change! Just look at the past few weeks. "Diving Bell and the Butterfly" -- Masterpiece. "Starting Out in the Evening" -- Masterpiece. "Atonement"(excuse me while I throw up) -- Masterpiece. New "Blade Runner" -- Masterpiece. Etc.
Now I know you CR reviewers love what you do and would rather not design web pages, run a hedge fund, or drive a taxi. So out-of-context(as in 100 years worth of context) adjustments must be made to keep from going insane. But if all this dreck is a series of Masterpieces than where does that leave the "Gertrud"/"Where is the Friend's House?"/"Europa '51"/"Love Streams" etc etc series? Do they each get 72 stars?
I have a new (if somewhat obvious) rating system:
**** - Not Shit
*** - Almost Not Shit
** - Start to wipe
* - Merde
Or maybe just a warning. "THESE RATINGS APPLY ONLY IN THE CONTEXT OF OUR CURRENT DEGRADED MOVIE CULTURE"
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Jonathan R. at 12:44 PM on 12/22/2007
I gave "Starting Out in the Evening"
three stars, and that's the way it appears in the Reader's paper edition. The four stars it receives online isn't my doing.
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Mike Grost at 3:28 PM on 12/22/2007
Thank you, Mr. Rosebaum, for a literate review. It makes me want to check out this picture.
Mr. R's opening point - that characters like this aren't seen very often in fiction films - seems sound. How many movies have been made about Jewish novelists? And even though US black people are overwhelmingly liberal and Democrats, whan was the last time you saw a film about one that was politically active?
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Mike Grost at 3:30 PM on 12/22/2007
Yikes!
That's Rosenbaum.
I just can't type worth a darn.
My apologies.
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Georgios Tsapanos at 11:26 PM on 12/26/2007
Do I get this deabte right? Is Mr. Rosenbaum accused of giving a film that appeals to him a positive review? Well, in my humble oppinion this is the only valuable reason for a positive review. I mean, how good can a film be if it doesn´t reach out to me, if it doesn´t touch me? (Therefore a film that manages to anger me ist a better film than the one I honestly don´t care about any more the moment I left the cinema.)
What? That´s too subjective a stand? What are you talking about? There isn´t any objective judgment of a film or any other form of art. The things you know, you like and dislike, your upbringing and education, your current martial status or well being, your affluence or lack thereof all play into the way you see and judge art. There is no such thing as objectiveness. Objectivenss may occur in absence of an onlooker - and even that I´m not too sure about.
What I´ve always liked about Mr. Rosenbaum´s attitude towards reviewing films is that he never leaves any romm for doubt about whether and why he likes or dislikes a movie. Too many reviewers add paragraph after paragraph of well schooled annotations, show off their perceived or actuall knowledge or loose themselves in philosophical, mostly pseudo-philosophical banter and in the end you don´t know if the movie in question is in their mind any good or not. It´s this school of footnoted reviewism that´s disgusting.
With Jonathan Rosenbaum you always know where he stands. And he never asks you to accept his thinking on face value. You may even blatantly disagree with him. But the unwritten last line of each of his review goes: "Judge for yourself!" (Which, alas, includes having to see the picture.)
Maybe it´s because I was part of the team of translators who contributed to the translation of Mr. Hoberman´s and Mr. Rosenbaum´s classic "Midnight Movies" into German that I too like Mr. Rosenbaum´s earlier reviews better than his latest offerings (I too thought that the "Blade Runner" piece in all its uncomitted descriptiveness is alien to Mr. Rosenbaum´s universe - and I liked "BLade Runner" even in 1982, before it got fashioanble to say so.) But, hey, the question is not whether I like Mr. Rosenbaum´s reviesw or not. The question is whether they give me something to chew on. And that´s something they never fail to do.
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Georgios Tsapanos at 11:30 PM on 12/26/2007
Do I get this deabte right? Is Mr. Rosenbaum accused of giving a film that appeals to him a positive review? Well, in my humble oppinion this is the only valuable reason for a positive review. I mean, how good can a film be if it doesn´t reach out to me, if it doesn´t touch me? (Therefore a film that manages to anger me ist a better film than the one I honestly don´t care about any more the moment I left the cinema.)
What? That´s too subjective a stand? What are you talking about? There isn´t any objective judgment of a film or any other form of art. The things you know, you like and dislike, your upbringing and education, your current martial status or well being, your affluence or lack thereof all play into the way you see and judge art. There is no such thing as objectiveness. Objectivenss may occur in absence of an onlooker - and even that I´m not too sure about.
What I´ve always liked about Mr. Rosenbaum´s attitude towards reviewing films is that he never leaves any room for doubt about whether and why he likes or dislikes a movie. Too many reviewers add paragraph after paragraph of well schooled annotations, show off their perceived or actuall knowledge or loose themselves in philosophical, mostly pseudo-philosophical banter and in the end you don´t know if the movie in question is in their mind any good or not. It´s this school of footnoted reviewism that´s disgusting.
With Jonathan Rosenbaum you always know where he stands. And he never asks you to accept his thinking on face value. You may even blatantly disagree with him. But the unwritten last line of each of his review goes: "Judge for yourself!" (Which, alas, includes having to see the picture.)
Maybe it´s because I was part of the team of translators who contributed to the translation of Mr. Hoberman´s and Mr. Rosenbaum´s classic "Midnight Movies" into German that I too like Mr. Rosenbaum´s earlier reviews better than his latest offerings (I too thought that the "Blade Runner" piece in all its uncomitted descriptiveness is alien to Mr. Rosenbaum´s universe - and I liked "BLade Runner" even in 1982, before it got fashioanble to say so.) But, hey, the question is not whether I like Mr. Rosenbaum´s reviews or not. The question is whether they give me something to chew on. And that´s something they never fail to do.
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TMack at 7:13 PM on 12/27/2007
Hoss blathers and rambles, and then admits he hasn't seen the movie.
He actually thinks he's relevant. What nonsense.
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Peteena at 12:53 PM on 1/8/2008
Poor Hoss, he has so many issues of his own (to which he seems completely oblivious), but slams Rosenbaum for letting Rosenbaum's issues (as somehow gnostically divined by Hoss) color his reviews. Makes my head hurt.
I read Jonathan Rosenbaum religiously, even though I don't live in Chicago anymore and can't see the films, because he is one of the very few actual film critics (as opposed to film reviewers or corporate shills) out there. I don't always agree, but I always find him interesting, eloquent, and passionate about cinema. Don't ever stop, Jonathan!
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