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I hadn't really looked at The New Yorker since the Tina Brown days, but after hitting the Rotten Tomatoes page for Superman Returns, I wandered over there, only to find that sometime in the last ten years, they'd secretly replaced their movie critic with Folger's Crystals a complete and total asshole.
Seriously, not liking Superman Returns isn't a crime (other than against good taste). Ebert may get it wrong with his complaints about the bleakness of some of the characters, but at least he's coming from a place that makes sense (and doesn't walk into the review with a sense that a comic-book movie is beneath him). Ditto David Edelstein's complaints about the length of the movie itself. But Tony Lane walked into that movie knowing damned well that he hated it, and walked out two hours later to add about ten words his already-written slam against genre flicks. That's not a review, nor is it film criticism. It's a half-assed polemic, and it (like all half-assed polemics) belongs in the blogosphere, not in a magazine associated with historical greatness.
Seriously, not liking Superman Returns isn't a crime (other than against good taste). Ebert may get it wrong with his complaints about the bleakness of some of the characters, but at least he's coming from a place that makes sense (and doesn't walk into the review with a sense that a comic-book movie is beneath him). Ditto David Edelstein's complaints about the length of the movie itself. But Tony Lane walked into that movie knowing damned well that he hated it, and walked out two hours later to add about ten words his already-written slam against genre flicks. That's not a review, nor is it film criticism. It's a half-assed polemic, and it (like all half-assed polemics) belongs in the blogosphere, not in a magazine associated with historical greatness.
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