Review by Booklist Review
Bad scripts abound in Hollywood. The industry, giving nary a damn about a well-written story, according to literary critic Bawer, chooses to recycle old plots and familiar cliches. Bawer wrote movie reviews for the conservative monthly The American Spectator from 1986 until 1990 in quite a change of pace from the more cerebral pieces on higher-brow culture hehas contributed to The New Criterion and other journals and last collected in Diminishing Fictions [BKL My 1 88]. Putting a serious critic in the role of reviewing popular film, Bawer opines, is a bit like, in the words of John Simon, "Edmund Wilson having to write a critique of Jacqueline Susann." But Bawer does an admirable job. Paying more attention to the script than to direction, he points out incoherence and derivativeness wherever he finds it (just about everywhere). Highly moralistic and with a noticeable anti-liberal bias, he still can find worthwhile qualities in a film like My Beautiful Laundrette, a gay love story set in depressed Thatcherite London, as well as much to criticize in Top Gun, especially its "vapid militarism." ~--Benjamin Segedin
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Best known as a literary critic, Bawer is an engaging, astute, formidable film reviewer as well, as these 84 pieces from the American Spectator prove. Avoiding hype, he blasts Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues for cheap sentiment, faults Steel Magnolias for stereotyping men and deems The Last Temptation of Christ ``deadly boring.'' Politically unpredictable, Bawer knocks Top Gun 's vapid militarism and praises the gay love story in My Beautiful Laundrette. He deflates the arty ( Caravaggio ), the preachy ( Platoon; The Milag ro Beanfield War ) and the kitschy ( The Unbearable Lightness of Being ), but gives thumbs up to The World According to Garp , Raising Arizona , Roxanne , Crossing Delancey and The Mosquito Coast. In the title essay, Bawer argues that the great majority of commercial films are undermined by awful, two-dimensional scripts. One wishes he were a full-time movie critic. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In 1986, literary critic Bawer was asked to review films by the conservative journal American Spectator , which told him he could write what he wished. (He quit four years later in an editorial dispute.) This collection contains 84 reviews of such films as Blue Velvet , Who Framed Roger Rabbit? , Pretty Woman , and sex, lies and videotape , plus essays on Bette Davis, Laurence Olivier, and others. As the title essay suggests, Bawer feels that writing is the foundation of all films; he laments the fact that ``most current movies are written by people who don't know anything about dramatic structure or character development.'' His point of view is neither special nor original enough to warrant purchase by any but the largest libraries.-- Thomas Wiener, formerly with ``American Film'' (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
