Spinoff of my Parody of Filmsite.org's Great Directors.
List of Film Critics I Don't Hate Yet


MICHAEL WILMINGTON 1924-
American Producer/Director/Critic of Films Based in the Urban East/New York

This was the one time Reed, as a director, reached perfection; and he did it as much by assembling and marshalling a brilliantly talented company as by the power of his own vision. Together he and Greene-and Welles, Cotten, Howard, Valli, Karas, Krasker, Korda and all the others-created a portrait of postwar corruption and the death of idealism that has lodged ever since in our collective consciousness. Together, they made a rich, moody masterpiece of guilt, love, and ambivalent redemption.

Understands George Bush like inside of tamale.


DAVID EHRENSTEIN 1932-1995
French-Born, Intelligent Director and Film Conneusseur

The Good: Ordinarily saddling such everyday characters with mythological barnacles would make for dramatic awkwardness. But thanks to the context of Carnival it all works perfectly.

The Bad: Watching this raggle-taggle band of fighters defend the village makes for a climax as stirring as ever seen on a motion picture screen. But it's only one part of an epic movie meal that is every bit as delicious as its filmmaker chef had planned.


Has had several homosexual liaisons with staff at New Yorker.


DANNY PEARY 1957-
Talented, Provocative, African-American Film Critic

As always, his film is strongly acted, strikingly paced for tension and suspense, and exhibits a perverse nastiness of character and environment that is oppressive and unsettling. It is a film where the heroine-the nicest person in the story-plans a cold-blooded murder;

Talented, provocative, knows how to write a review.


PETER COWIE 1934-
Former Manager of Neighborhood Kwiky-mart, now Profilic Producer, Actor and Film Critic.

The phenomenon of old age wherein childhood memories return with ever-increasing clarity while great stretches of the prime of life vanish into obscurity is the nub of Wild Strawberries.

Looks important.


WILLIAM ROTHMAN 1905-1986
Serious Austrian-Born Independent Producer/Director/Critic And All-Around Great Guy

What makes this moment so disquieting is the care Bunuel takes to assure that despite (because of?) the marks of violence on her face, Angela Molina looks breathtakingly beautiful in this carefully composed close-up. Is this violence what Mathieu desires? What Conchita desires? What Bunuel—and we—desire?

Not afraid to tell it like it is. Said to have once beaten Sigmund Freud in arm-wrestling match.


DAVID KEHR 1958 -
Wild, Imaginative, Distinctive, Comic-Strip Visualist/Director and Film Critic

Like the great Ernst Lubitsch (Ninotchka), Anderson has learned to pack a maximum amount of information into a minimum amount of screen time. Entire characters are established by a gesture, an accent, a detail of costume; when the camera, in the climactic sequence, surveys a row of spectators at Max's new play, we have the feeling that we know them all, even though some of them are appearing for the first time.

Wild-eyed boy from freecloud. Sees beyond epithets like ‘The New Sincerity’.


JACK MATHEWS 1928-1999
Enigmatic, Creative, Cinematic Perfectionist, Hollywood Outsider, and Film Critic.

A decade later, Brazil is regarded by many critics, historians, filmmakers, and film buffs as one of the most original and influential movies of the past fifty years. "Brazil is the most potent piece of satiric political cinema since Dr. Strangelove," wrote critic Kenneth Turan in California magazine. Best-selling fantasy author Harlan Ellison, writing in Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, declared Brazil "the finest SF movie ever made." In a Time magazine piece celebrating Gilliam's victory, critic Richard Corliss wrote: "A terrific movie has escaped the asylum without a lobotomy. The good guys, the few directors itching to make films away from the assembly line, won one for a change."

Has made numerous appearances in Terry Gilliam's rear-view mirror.


GEOFFREY NOWELL-SMITH 1901-1966
Visionary and Producer of Major Entertainment Empire, Film Art-Animation and Huge L'Avventura freak.

In other respects, however, Antonioni and Hitchcock can be seen as opposites. In L'Avventura, events just happen; nothing signals them as significant. Anna does not actively disappear, she just is no longer on screen and neither the audience nor the other characters are aware of her not being present. Tension is generally slack and, when it builds, it builds obscurely, brought to life more by a surrounding uncertainty than by careful preparation and accelerating rhythms. Above all, chance is chance and no inexorable train of events is ever generated.

Understands that film-making requires committment. In for 'the long-haul.'


J HOBERMAN
Innovative, Iconoclastic, Free-Spirited, Unconventional, Countercultural Film Critic

On the other hand, the film projects an entire world-or rather the sense that, as predicted by Andre Bazin's "Myth of Total Cinema," the world itself is trying to force its way through the screen. Undirectable creatures animate Tarkovsky's compositions-a cat bounds across a corpse-strewn church, wild geese flutter over a savaged city. The birch woods are alive with water snakes and crawling ants, the forest floor yields a decomposing swan. The soundtrack is filled with bird calls and wordless singing; there's always a fire's crackle or a tolling bell in the background.

Once declined chance to go live in Russia.


ANDREW SARRIS 1935 -
Memorable Musicals Director Who Integrated Song and Dance And Film Critic.

Most of Alphaville is nocturnal or claustrophobically indoors. Yet there is an exhilarating release in many of the images and camera movements because of Godard's uncanny ability to evoke privileged moments from many movies of the past.

Never looks back, once he finishes a review.


JONATHAN ROSENBAUM 1935 -
Witty New York-Based Screenwriter/Director/Film Actor/Comedian/Critic.

RAIDERS somehow contrives to convert the Great Whatsit of KISS ME DEADLY (nuclear death in Pandora's Box) into the 10 Commandments of Cecil B. De Mille, without ever convincing us that either has the moral weight of Cheech & Chong's roach clip, or the 15 Commandments of Mel Brooks in HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART I.

Always searching for the moral weight of things.


PHILIP LOPATE 1898-1959
Legendary Writer/Director of Anarchic Screen Comedies and Witty Satires of the 40s With Larger-Than-Life Characters and Film Essayist

It took me years to figure out that most film directors are not systematic thinkers but artistic opportunists. Maybe thanks to Coppola, Cimino & Company, we have reached a more realistic expectation of directors today; we are more used to the combination of great visual style with intellectual incoherence. But at the time we looked to filmmakers to be our novelists, our sages.

Loves his creme brulee more than he loves me.


MICHAEL ATKINSON 1946-
Acclaimed Writer/Director of Experimental, Avante-Garde, Dark and Disturbing Art House Films and Film Criticism



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