Film: So Long, Miss American Pie

An occupational hazard of film criticking is coming to hate movies, to sit grim-faced through laff-riots, yawn during thrillers, peek at a newspaper by the light of a 10-watt aisle bulb during pornoflicks, to prefer B-grade Westerns on TV to the latest cinéma vérité or nouvelle vague or sensibilité toodle-loo, to emerge dry-eyed from weepers and aching for a martini after enduring the decade’s major morality flick.

But now, at last, the bloom of cinemaphilia somewhat faded after (good grief!) 15 years of intermittent film reviewing, I’ve resolved: If it shows me nothing, nothing at all, in the first twenty minutes, I walk out, and hang the reviewer’s duty to agonize through tripe just to report on it. Here’s what I found worthless this time around: Sssssss, slither and glumph; I Could Never Have Sex with Any Man Who Has So Little Regard for My Husband, criminy; Lady Kung Fu and Enter the Dragon, ai-eeee!; Happy Mother’s Day . . . Love, George, a mommy monsterflick; and, not awful but very weak, Class of ’44, sequel to Summer of ’42.

DB

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David Brudnoy

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An occupational hazard of film criticking is coming to hate movies, to sit grim-faced through laff-riots, yawn during thrillers, peek at a newspaper by the light of a 10-watt aisle bulb during pornoflicks, to prefer B-grade Westerns on TV to the latest cinéma vérité or nouvelle vague or sensibilité toodle-loo, to emerge dry-eyed from weepers and aching for a martini after enduring the decade’s major morality flick.

But now, at last, the bloom of cinemaphilia somewhat faded after (good grief!) 15 years of intermittent film reviewing, I’ve resolved: If it shows me nothing, nothing at all, in the first twenty minutes, I walk out, and hang the reviewer’s duty to agonize through tripe just to report on it. Here’s what I found worthless this time around: Sssssss, slither and glumph; I Could Never Have Sex with Any Man Who Has So Little Regard for My Husband, criminy; Lady Kung Fu and Enter the Dragon, ai-eeee!; Happy Mother’s Day . . . Love, George, a mommy monsterflick; and, not awful but very weak, Class of ’44, sequel to Summer of ’42.