Pauline Kael

When Lester is caught masturbating by Carolyn, his angry retort about their lack of intimacy is the first time he says aloud what he thinks about her.[15] By confronting the issue and Carolyn's "superficial investments in others", Lester is trying to "regain a voice in a home that [only respects] the voices of mother and daughter".[14] His final turning point comes when he and Angela almost have sex;[16] after she confesses her virginity, he no longer thinks of her as a sex object, but as a daughter.[17] He holds her close and "wraps her up". Mendes called it "the most satisfying end to [Lester's] journey there could possibly have been". With these final scenes, Mendes intended to show Lester at the conclusion of a "mythical quest". After Lester gets a beer from the refrigerator, the camera pushes toward him, then stops facing a hallway down which he walks "to meet his fate".[16][18] Having begun to act his age again, Lester achieves closure.[17] As he smiles at a family photo, the camera pans slowly from Lester to the kitchen wall, onto which blood spatters as a gunshot rings out; the slow pan reflects the peace of Lester's death.[19] His body is discovered by Jane and Ricky. Mendes said that Ricky's staring into Lester's dead eyes is "the culmination of the theme" of the film: that beauty is found where it is least expected.[20]

Professor Roy M. Anker argues that the film's thematic center is its direction to the audience to "look closer"

GOD I hate Film Studies departments

nev mind, that was the other thread

xxp

by the time this came out the drudge sirens were going off whenever my film school cronies were breathlessly recommending the latest life-changing entry in the american film renaissance of the late 90s

i always thought that shot of ricky looking at dead lester was basically a patient zero moment for his future as a serial killer

I don't remember Janney in this either, actually, but surely she can't be worse here than when she's telling off the nurse in Juno, most assuredly the worst scene she (or anyone else on screen at the time) has ever acted in.

Gallagher I only remember here because of the "Bus-ted!" scene.

the PK quote

"I didn't dislike American Beauty -- I hated it. It's not that it's badly made -- it isn't. It has snappy rhythms and Kevin Spacey's line readings are very smart, and Annette Bening is skillful in the scene where she beats up on herself. But the picture is a con. It buries us under the same load of attitudes that were tried out in Carnal Knowledge and The Ice Storm, with the nice trustworthy young dope-dealers of Easy Rider. Maybe audiences are so familiar with this set of anti-suburbia attitudes that it's developed into its own movie genre."

Bening throwing herself on her closetful of clothes in a paroxysm of grief is the most embarrassing scene she's ever played

Carnal Knowledge >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> American Beauty

One of only two movies I saw twice in a 12-hour period. I hated it when I watched it in the morning, then my best friend and his girlfriend "conned" me into a second viewing.

AB, or CK?

i hated american beauty as well. cable dramas kinda took the pandering liberal fantasy world thing to new levels though. weeds, mad men, breaking bad, etc. even though i like those shows. liberals need violent wish-fulfillment too.

hence, V For Vendetta

by the time this came out the drudge sirens were going off whenever my film school cronies were breathlessly recommending the latest life-changing entry in the american film renaissance of the late 90s

That whole thing was really just Oscar season '99, right?

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/165416-the-critic-as-artful-gadfly-pauline-kael/

another myth semi-punctured

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/actually-pauline-kael-did-sometimes-watch-movies-more-than-once

Yeah, I was pretty sure that one was BS from the get-go.

She said repeatedly in her reviews that such-and-such movie from the thirties played much better when she "last" saw it on TV.

Actually don't remember that--can you think off an example offhand?

I can't take all this myth dismantling. Secret Last Year at Marienbad lover, lifelong obsession with split infinitives, Hampton vacations with Andy and Molly, who knows what awaits.

The Hect-MacCarthur comedies, All About Eve, and other films whose worth is mostly literary.

*Hecht

A clueless reviewer quoted Kael's annoyance at the repetition in Hiroshima Mon Amour ("we get it already") to mirror his feeling at the apparent repetitions (not textual so much as visual) found in Haneke's Amour.

Got to read this woman..

I mean it must be laugh a page. I think I'm ready.

Hitchcock fans will fondly recall Kael’s dismissal of the Master’s 1958 thriller Vertigo, now widely considered the crowning achievement of his illustrious career and, oh yeah, the Greatest Film Ever Made, according to the 2012 Sight and Sound poll. She deemed the movie “stupid,” though she did love Kim Novak, who was “touching in the dreamy-floozy Marilyn Monroe-like role.”

i have never read this before! honestly kind of surprising to me.

not me

Nor I

Also: PK in Furtive Fassbinder Fanatic Shocka!

i know she wasn't keen on 'the birds' or the other later stuff but the depth of her de palma love makes it a bit bewildering to me that she didn't have any time for '50s hitch. did she hate 'rear window' too?

That I'm aware of she never wrote a line about Rear Window, although it's as easy to imagine her liking it as it is to imagine her loathing Vertigo.

I'm having a hard time figuring out where I read her on Vertigo--I just checked I Lost it at the Movies, 5001 Nights, Conversations with PK, and Afterglow, and it's nowhere. But I have. I know she didn't care for it, but I don't remember the word "stupid."

Kael's the Nixon of ILX--she cannot be killed.

i have never read this before! honestly kind of surprising to me.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, November 20, 2012 6:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

you never read it before because its misattributed - she was talking about Kiss Me, Stupid, not Vertigo

"...he used to be the master entertainer of the screen, because he could tease us so cleverly; we enjoyed being willfully manipulated to be tense and afraid and expectant...The plots were usually fantastic, and the "MacGuffin" was a mere pretext for the chases and excitations and thrills. He gave excitement to the world."

That's from her negative review of "Topaz". One can probably surmise (sorry, "we" can surmise) from that that "Rear Window" was one she liked.

Doing a Google search to see if she'd ever written anything about Gorky Park, I came across this:

http://www.listal.com/list/kael

Nothing you didn't already know (with the possible exception of the first film listed), but funny-obsessive nonetheless.

I'm waiting for someone to put her Cavett interviews on Youtube. The stock of Googleable Kael footage hasn't changed in years.

Yeah, I'd love to see that stuff. All you can get is Jerry Lewis on Cavett saying how good Kael and Rex Reed (!) are, and blasting what seems to be Judith Crist, and using the word "totality".

Did Kael ever write anything about My Bloody Valentine?

The movie or the band?

(in either case, I'm guessing no)

Kael was more a C86 lady than a Shoegazer.

I've been reading Kiss Kiss Bang Bang on the subway lately... her defense of Welles in one essay is quite stirring (Chimes at Midnight >>> Makiewicz's Julius Caesar), all the stranger that the double-edged sword of "Raising Kane" came about 5 years later.

Well, she never stopped tilting at the auteurist windmill.

It's been years and years since I've read "Raising Kane," and I don't remember it being a scathing takedown of Welles unless you thought the man was G-d or something.

as Boggie did

I guess it's no surprise that in the Gallo wine phase of his career the usually erudite and thoughtful Welles succumbed to self-pity.

Was she dismantling Welles, or his champions?

Boggie? Oh, I get it. Once saw him do a Barnes and Noble in-store promoting a new edition of his bio. His discussion of his relationship with him was kind of a masterpiece of rhetoric.

Is it time to post that SCTV clip with John Candy again?

well, PK seems to try hard to minimize Welles' contribution to Kane, which is pretty silly even if you think his collaborators deserve credit.

also i think she is just grossly unfactual about a few things.

Yeah, I remember hearing that, but I don't recall what they were.

Is it time to post that SCTV clip with John Candy again?

Is it ever not?

xp, she referred to G-d as "Welles." Big no-no.

Speaking of Kane, thinking about jumping on the train to see the 2:50 Power and the Glory.