By my lights, the world’s best movie critic is Janet Maslin, hands down. She has a simple formula: she lets you know if the movie sucks or not, she doesn’t give away the ending, and she is funny.
Take her review of The Bridges of Madison County. The second ‘graph begins like this: “Arguably the world’s longest greeting card … ” Beautiful. Someday I hope to be able to slide a metaphoric shiv with such economy.
Anyway, the NYT has Maslin off movies and on the book-review beat, so we are on our own when it comes to reviewing the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s venture into celluloid.
Raves: Some of the clips are very funny. And on clip #4, Sarah Silverman takes the cringe factor to 11. If cringing were a renewable resource, that clip alone would solve our energy problems.
Pans: I’m a little underwhelmed by the call to action for “flex fuels.” I get it — it’s a better tagline than say, CAFE standards. But still. Flex fuels … really? The revolution will not be on TV, and it will not be on flex fuels.
If you had access to that kind of talent, what would you do?
