As I begin, I should explain a bit more about the kind of movie blog this will be. While the tag line may refer to “all matters cinematic,” I acknowledge some cinema-related matters are more interesting to me than others.
Broadly speaking, this is a blog for movie reviews, including retrospectives on older movies as well as reviews of newer releases. Occasionally I may cover a topic that cuts across multiple movies: an analysis of some genre, studio, writer, or director, say. If an overarching concern unites these different movie-related posts, I suppose it would be the questions: “What makes a movie work for me? And what makes a movie not work for me?”
When I watch a movie, I have an immediate reaction of some kind. I might be variously entertained, moved, scared, or thrilled. Or I might be disappointed, bored, frustrated, or upset. Or perhaps I have a more ambivalent reaction than any of these. After my immediate reaction, I ask “Why did the movie provoke this reaction in me? Why did I like it or dislike it? What made the movie work or not work for me?” These questions lead me to analyze the movie—the screenplay, staging, shot composition, cinematography, performances, or other elements—to see if I can reverse engineer how the movie produced the reaction in me that it did.
Granted, this process might sound just like the most pedestrian description of what any movie review supposedly does. Yet I am often disappointed by a lot of movie reviews or analyses, which do not delve very deeply in identifying or explaining a movie’s success or failure. A disappointing review might describe the movie’s plot (within the limits of avoiding spoilers) then offer some positive or negative assessments of the actors (“X gives a stunning performance;” “Y is rather unconvincing and unmemorable as the love interest”) and perhaps a couple other elements, and then leaves it at that. Such a review might tell me whether the critic liked or disliked the movie and perhaps which elements made the biggest impression. But the review does not give me a clear or especially detailed understanding of why the critic liked or disliked the movie or deepen my own appreciation of it.
This problem is not necessarily because of any lack of eloquence or erudition on the critic’s part. One reason for unmemorable movie reviews is simply space limitations: an 850-word newspaper article or an even smaller capsule review does not offer much scope for a detailed discussion. Having to write on deadline also does not allow much time for reflection.
Another reason was identified over 50 years ago by the great film critic Dwight Macdonald. As he explained in an interview, many reviews are written as what Macdonald referred to as “tips”: “The reviewer’s job in the daily press is essentially that of a tipster. Like the guy who gives you a tip on the horse races, the reviewer tells you that you will or will not enjoy this or that.” (Interviews with Dwight Macdonald, edited by Michael Wreszin, p. 18)
Writing “tips” on which movies to see requires sharing a minimum of information, both to avoid spoiling the plot and also because in-depth analysis of a movie tends to be confusing or boring unless the person reading the analysis has already seen the movie and knows what is being discussed. In contrast to “tips,” Macdonald favored writing genuine criticism, precisely that type of in-depth analysis that presupposes author and reader have both seen the movie, know what happens in it, and can appreciate a detailed evaluation.
As he said in the same interview,
“But the job of a critic…is to try to explain why he likes or why he does not like a given work of art. A critic must make clear why he has reached certain conclusions. Even if one disagrees completely with the conclusions, if his method has a certain depth and if he is intelligent, sensitive, experienced in the art, then the reader will get something out of what he writes. One reads a critic for the process by which he reaches his conclusions, not only for the conclusions themselves” [emphasis added].
The critical approach identified by Macdonald, of explaining clearly and informatively why you liked or disliked a movie—or, as I put it, why a movie does or does not “work”—is what interests me and what I will try to do on this blog. Such an approach involves allowing the necessary space and time for careful analysis (so don’t be surprised if my posts tend to be longer and don’t appear too often), as well as detailed discussion of movies (so beware spoilers!).
I should add that for me a rewarding discussion of a movie goes beyond merely analyzing the story (the events and the choices characters make), crucial though that element is, to analyzing how the filmmaking team behind the movie used the resources available to them to tell that story. Another great film critic, Richard Alleva, called this the process of “reading” a movie:
To truly watch a movie was to read it, i.e. to see all that was put before you and to question yourself about what was shown.
There were, it seemed, many questions to be asked. How was the action framed and where were the characters placed? Why in the foreground? Why in the background? Why did the camera look over the shoulder of one character rather than over the shoulder of the character being looked at? Why was another character kept off-screen while speaking? Why was the camera moving in a given shot but kept still in another? Why was music used at one moment and not another? Why was one scene told with rapid cutting while another consisted of one shot held for five minutes? (from ” ‘I Would Toss Myself Aside’: Confessions of a Catholic Film Critic,” Image Journal, 20)
Alleva is a master of this kind of close reading of a movie, often taking time in his reviews to describe carefully at least a couple scenes in a movie in a way that answers the kinds of questions posed above. He thereby illustrates in an engaging way why the movie worked or did not work for him.
(A medium that lends itself especially well to such close readings and has become common in the era of YouTube is the video essay. If done well, film criticism in video essay form can be delightful, and I may devote some future post just to this type of criticism.)
So, this is the kind of movie reviewing I most enjoy and that I will attempt—and, I am sure, frequently fail—to write on this blog.
Having laid out this no doubt absurdly over-ambitious goal for the Cameraman blog, I will mention a few other miscellaneous points about the movies and me:
- I have never gone to film school and therefore my knowledge of the technical side of filmmaking and the related terminology is certainly inadequate. If I sometimes struggle to describe or analyze, say, a movie’s lighting or use of color that would be why. My apologies in advance!
- My taste in movies is eclectic. I enjoy mainstream Hollywood movies and genre movies (especially action, science fiction, and fantasy). I also am fond of more obscure or underrated movies—not necessarily “cult” movies, but ones that are not part of the generally accepted canon of critical or popular successes. My knowledge of non-American movies is sadly under-developed, and I hope this blog can offer an opportunity to remedy that deficiency.
- I have been in a big animated movies’ phase of late. I am currently exploring the works of Studio Ghibli with particular interest. So, animated features might dominate some of the initial posts.
The Cameraman 