It wouldn’t be fair to reveal it, except to say that it explicitly emphasizes the difference between a movie and a novel-or, rather, what’s needed to make a filmed adaptation a success. Near the end of this adaptation of Percival Everett’s dazzlingly polyphonic 2001 novel “ Erasure,” the writer and director Cord Jefferson introduces a deft metafictional twist of his own. Now, however, the fact that they are in the running for a major prize stokes responses, too, and prompts me to clarify why I wouldn’t have put any of the three in my own list of the year’s best movies. I’ve already reviewed seven of the ten Best Picture nominees: “ Anatomy of a Fall,” “ Barbie,” “ The Holdovers,” “ Killers of the Flower Moon,” “ Maestro,” “ Oppenheimer,” and “ The Zone of Interest.” The remaining three, all of which I first saw months ago, are far from inconsequential, but others stoked stronger responses at the time. But then come the Oscar nominations, which give movies instant prominence, thus creating journalistic necessities of their own. ![]() Many of them will vanish without leaving much of an artistic trace, or even a cultural one-defining “cultural” here as everything in the arts that gets talked about other than aesthetics. Generally, it feels better to share the former than the latter, and toward the end of each year, when distributors display the wares they’re proudest of for awards season, there’s no shortage of good movies to enthuse about, so I’m more inclined to pick and choose among the lesser ones. ![]() ![]() Paul Valéry wrote that taste is made of a thousand distastes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |