Any hack can declare a movie bad. Only the great critics can dissect one, showing how utterly bad it is (and Battlefield Earth really is) while still saying "Goddamnit, movies matter, and we deserve so much better than this."
Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica. It's a rebuke to the faith that the building represents. Cannes touchingly adheres to a belief that film can be intelligent, moving and grand. Godzilla is a big, ugly, ungainly device to give teenagers the impression they are seeing a movie. It was the festival's closing film, coming at the end like the horses in a parade, perhaps for the same reason.
And that's without getting into what he had to say about movies he loved... I'm going to have to buy one of his essay collections and re-read, I think. RIP.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2013-04-04 11:05 pm (UTC)Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica. It's a rebuke to the faith that the building represents. Cannes touchingly adheres to a belief that film can be intelligent, moving and grand. Godzilla is a big, ugly, ungainly device to give teenagers the impression they are seeing a movie. It was the festival's closing film, coming at the end like the horses in a parade, perhaps for the same reason.
And that's without getting into what he had to say about movies he loved... I'm going to have to buy one of his essay collections and re-read, I think. RIP.