“If Ferris Bueller and his day off resemble something else universal, it is liberation. In the context of the journey, this is best understood as the ability to be in transit.”
“As a character study, Miloš Forman’s feature directorial debut presents a realistic vision of a boy’s attempt to come of age; a path full of setbacks without a tidy resolution.”
“Davis’ mandate has always been to offer solace for sad kids, but his lyrics reside more often in the inescapable experiences of pain, isolation and frustration than in the pursuit of recovery.”
“In all her dramatic iterations, Patty Hearst stands for an American purity that was always illusory but remains hallowed, that successive generations have set out to wrest back from the forces of complication.”
“‘A Hero’s Death’ is an articulate, energetic work, bristling with moody post-punk fury, and it signals an incremental consolidation and increased sophistication to the still-green quintet’s robust, fulsome sound.”
“If New Hollywood was an attempt to shape the future in novel ways, Bogdanovich was manifestly more interested in looking back, in reaction over revolution, in conforming his artistic impulses to an unambiguously Golden Age Hollywood influence.”
“If one person sees themselves in the anecdotes and idioms of ‘Old Flowers,’ then this is an undeniably worthwhile work. In its brightness and simplicity, though, this record’s reach is sure to be much wider than that.”
“‘The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl’ feels like an inadvertent political statement, a continuation of the status quo in the romantic comedy genre. Still, there is something there.”
“Film criticism unable to confront film’s relationship to business is destined to fail and will continue to reproduce the same tired critiques of cinema.”
“‘Clean, Shaven’ depicts a culture in which there is little empathy for the mentally ill, perhaps because it is a culture influenced by fictional portrayals in which people like Peter are predominately unfeeling mad killers.”