The MovieGoer

On "The Love Guru," when the trailer is abysmally bad, what can possibly help the movie itself?

As for "Get Smart," I'll see it just to see Anne Hathaway as 99. I remember my father having the biggest crush on the original 99, Barbara Feldon. This was basically pre-puberty for me, or maybe it was dirty ol middle-aged man for him, but I didn't quite see her the same way. Now, of course, I do. I'm the dirty ol' middle-aged man and Anne Hathaway is today's Barbara Feldon. Give me some of that 99.

Since you brought it up here, below I've reposted my response to Lindsay's item below. And I would remind you that not only did I review Snow Angels, I ran an interview with the very accessible (as in easy to get to) David Gordon Green. Not really because of his Little Rock connection -- which is almost as tenuous as Josh Lucas's -- but because I like his movies and think he's an interesting, important and somewhat overlooked
player.

I don't expect not to be criticized, but you'd think people would at least hold fire until after they've seen a movie.

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Following is the long and somewhat laborious reply I posted in response to Lindsay's comment -- which struck me as disingenuous and probably a put-up job; I like Lindsay but the AT attitude is such that it's politically expedient to slag off on the daily newspaper whenever possible. I would think a person would hold fire until they've actually seen the movie but I guess that's asking a lot these days:

Lindsay writes:"But, ever the maverick, the Dem-Gaz's chief film critic Philip Martin scores it an 85, which might be the highest score he's given anything since "No Country For Old Men." The review itself is fairly tepid, but you have to read pretty far to get that."

Really? I thought it was pretty clear from the first word that TLG was a lowbrow, vulgar extended SNL skit aimed at 14 year old boys.

But a man goes to the movies and in the end the only question about a film like this one is: Is it funny? And I laughed. So it passes. Other people didn't, and I get that. Some people thought Shotgun Stories was slow and full of stereotypes too. I got an email from a grandfather who wanted to shoot me because I thought the latest Indiana Jones movie was boring. People respond differently to different movies.

For my money the verdict is always the least interesting part of the review -- and anyone has read more than a few of my reviews and columns might understand that the "grades" are a contrivance in which I'm not fully invested. The way I look at it is that and 84 or an 85 can go either way, Rotten Tomatoes wise ("fresh" or "rotten") -- those re the lowest grades I'll give to a film that I think "passes." But I don't pretend the scale is immutable or that any given grade is the authoritative last word. To stretch the analogy, it's easier to get an 85 in sixth-grade health than it is in calculus. You measure a movie by how well it succeeds at what it aspires to do.

The only real mistake a reviewer can make is to misrepresent his or her own experience. It would be wrong to suggest a movie is something it isn't. I don't think I did that and I'm slightly disappointed by the disingenuous nature of the original post: I notice no one from the Times reviewed the movie, and apparently you haven't seen it yet. It could be suggested that the reason the Times avoided reviewing the film was because you suspected it would suck and didn't want to be put in a position where you might have to say bad things about a movie that has some Arkansas connections. I don't believe that's the case -- I'm plenty aware of the problems inherent in trying to produce a weekly publication of quality with limited resources and I assume that people were too busy and deadlines too tight to allow someone to get to one of the screenings. We can turn around a Tuesday night screening for Friday but it's probably a lot harder for you guys to get it turned around by -- what? Wednesday morning?

Still, I wish you'd reserve comment until you've seen the film -- or having decided not to see the film (a perfectly rational decision) you'd at least have done a little fact checking. For instance, here's a partial list of films I've reviewed and scored 85 or higher since No Country For Old Men opened last December:

Son of Rambow - 87
The Visitor - 91
Taxi to the Dark Side- 91
Redbelt - 88
Iron Man -90
The Counterfeiters -90
Snow Angels - 90
Paranoid Park -85
The Band's Visit -90
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
City of Men -88
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day -88
There Will be Blood - 91
The Savages - 90
Diving Bell and the Butterfly - 91
The Kite Runner -88
The Bucket List - 85
Juno- 90
I'm Not There -93
The Water Horse - 91
Margot at the Wedding - 88
Charlie Wilson's War - 87
Sweeney Todd - 90
Shotgun Stories - 92
The Golden Compass -87
Michael Clayton -86
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - 91

Looking over that range, I'm bnot uncomfortable with TLG being "awarded" an 85. Could I have graded it more harshly? Sure. It's entirely subjective. But I have a soft spot for this kind of anarchic, messy movie. And I did like some of the textures, the music and the fact that the film wasn't especially cruel.

But to suggest I gave TLG one of the highest grades of the year so far is simply wrong.

I stand by my review, though I wish I'd written it better. I wish I'd had more time to write it better. But I think it's fair, both to the movie and the potential audience for that movie. By your lights it sucks, because a lot of critics hated it. OK. But I didn't. But I didn't think it was a great movie either. I just tried to make some interesting points about the film.

Lindsay again: "So: the nation's critics, on average, give it a 22 vs. Martin, who ranks it just 15 points from perfection. Wonder if Arkansas connections factor in?"

I'm sure they did -- that's part of the reason people here may be more interested in this film than some others. Factors like this always impinge ... certainly we wouldn't have run a interview with Graham Gordy had there not been a local connection. I seriously doubt we'd have had an opportunity to screen and review the film without the local connection.

As for the strangepup reference to Graham Gordy as "my friend," well, that's just a sheepish way of admitting that it's possible I'm biased, a little feint toward transparency. While I'm particularly interested in letting people know about my personal life -- it's not the point and it's fairly boring -- but if I'm writing about someone I occasionally see socially I feel better if I don't try to pretend I don't know them. Gordy and I have had a few conversations, we've been to lunch and we're playing golf in a week or two. That make him a "friend?" I don't know, but when I put the bit up (which was before I saw the movie) I thought it best to let people know it was a bit of logrolling. Pygface thinks I'm cozying up, but I look at it as cluing people in. This is way to small a market to pretend that we don't sometimes interact with people we write about.

Honestly, I didn't think much about the blog mention. Like I didn't think much about the grade I assigned the movie. You want to say I was too easy, that it should have been a 78? Fine. Fair comment.

You want to speculate about my intellectual honesty? That's fair too -- but don't mislead people. I've spent a lot of column inches (too many they tell me) explaining how the grades are primarily for people who don't read the reviews, and that in a perfect world I'd do away with them.

If I'm doing this right, then you can find a very good review of The Love Guru by clicking on my name. (If not, google Mick LaSalle and check out his rview of TLG). He doesn't love the movie either, but he makes a lot of cogent comments about how and why it may be interesting to some people.

I'll say one thing, Mr. Martin: You are without a doubt one pompous-ass son-of-a-gun.
And I quote: "I'm plenty aware of the problems inherent in trying to produce a weekly publication of quality with limited resources and I assume that people were too busy and deadlines too tight to allow someone to get to one of the screenings ..."

You compare your alternative-weekly experiences at The Spectrum, or your Arizona version of the Spectrum, to that of the Arkansas Times? Maybe if you worked under an editor the likes of Brantley, who has no peer in this town, we wouldn't be exposed regularly to your overwrought, laborious prose that passes for movie reviews, history lessons, told-you-so's on American culture and the like that you've partially gleaned from cohorts and others in the Internet. My god, man, self-edit yourself if nobody else is going to do it over there. Griffin Smith your benefactor aside, nobody wants to read 12 to 20 columns of preamble before you get to the point. Same with this response you've kindly offered here. You can write; yes, we know. On and on and on, which apparently in some eyes makes you "prolific" and even "well versed." Just in case we fail to realize how smart you are, you constantly remind us.
Then, you take the Times to task for jumping on the daily rag when in fact the Little Rock daily rag makes such an easy target, from the funereal diatribes of Weak Tea, to Frank Felonious' goofball assertions on what a paper should cover, to Greenberg's overally pompousness and inconsistency, to your own lengthy exposes on whatever strikes your fancy.
But, alas, it is all we have for our daily dose of local-flair journalism, and pay the 50 cents a day (and more on Sunday) we must, and with nothing better to do as we six crapping the morning away we find ourselves reading what latest dog droppings Eric Harrison has dived into and lapped up like a starving maggot and proclaimed the best food he's ever eaten, to you christening every movie maker or co-screenwriter who once called Arkansas home a genius with skills that would make Howard Koch envious.
The Democrat-Gazette continually parades out the homer reviews, from movies to music to whomever's been nice to Jack Hill lately. Give 'em an A, it's damn good, and it's just a damn coincidence they grew up in Sardis or Bayou Meto and we like them so, so much.
By the way, the guy's name is LINDSEY (Millar), not Lindsay. But then, you're a writer and not an editor. I wish you had some self-editing skills, though, since no one will touch your wondrous flowing copy over there, and maybe that would make room for three or four more stories of substance, in turn making that daily 50-cent expense a tad more worthwhile.
Press on, oh great one.

Does War Eagle have a website you could link to?