A spirited, frequently tendentious, collection of essays and
reviews dissecting some of the more notable films of the last 20
years. While most film critics tend to hide their ideological
biases behind the Oz curtain of objectivity, Rosenbaum (Moving
Places, 1980, etc.), a film critic at the Chicago Reader, freely
confesses his numerous ideological inclinations. This can lead to a
distracting emphasis on autobiography, but it also allows us to see
how and why Rosenbaum arrived at some of his more iconoclastic
opinions: Movies today "are designed to splinter and isolate us
from one another, not draw us together. Apparently someone figured
out that more money could be made that way." He has a real talent
for deconstructing movies, elucidating their subtler meanings,
exposing the xenophobic impulses behind Star Wars, for example, or
the radical, democratizing impulse behind the compositions in
Jacques Tati's Playtime. Yet Rosenbaum rarely falls into the traps
of shrill polemicizing or academic esotericism awaiting those who
snub the mainstream. He has a buff's genuine love of movies and
seems to have seen almost everything (his analysis of the seven
versions of Orson Welles's Mr. Arkadin is particularly revealing).
But his relentless resistance to "pure," nonpolitical aesthetic
values, particularly in Hollywood films, seems unnecessarily
limiting. His left-leaning politique des auteurs stance anchors his
criticism, it also means his aesthetics tend to echo the old
Marxian preoccupation with social utility - a work of art's real
worth resides in its political attitudes. Typically, he writes of
forcing himself to resist his gut-level enjoyment of Forrest Gump
in order to focus on its political failings. The slippery-slope
danger here, of course, is that art becomes valued only as
propaganda. First-rate film criticism labored by second-rate social
analysis. (Kirkus Reviews)
"I think there is a very good film critic in the United States
today, a successor of James Agee, and that is Jonathan Rosenbaum.
He's one of the best; we don't have writers like him in France
today. He's like Andre Bazin."--Jean-Luc Godard
"Rosenbaum is unusually at home in the worlds of both academic
film study and weekly film reviewing. There is great sophisticated
intelligence without impenetrable high theory, and there is
wonderful accessibility without cheerleading. This voice belongs to
a true cosmopolitan, who makes movies matter on aesthetic and
political grounds, who attends to major non-American films
neglected in this country, and whose growing impatience with the
contemporary Hollywood product retains a sense of humor."--Michael
Rogin, author of "Blackface, White Noise
"Rosenbaum is one of the few film reviewers with a deep
understanding of film form, its sources in film history and theory,
and even more its place as a twentieth-century art form. He refuses
to embrace high-art intellectualism or pop-art fun exclusively and
likewise refuses to forgo either. The unique quality of his reviews
is their immediacy. He engages and argues with film audiences,
filmmakers, and distributors, demanding a response to the standards
he sets. It is in this sense that this collection is profoundly
political."--Tom Gunning, author of "D. W. Griffith and the Origins
of American Narrative Film
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