Citing Sources

Let's take a quick break from reviews and talk about my own sources of reviews, criticism and essays that guide me to films. I grew up in the Chicago area, so I have adolescent-era memories of Siskel and Ebert on the local PBS station; that show probably had the most impact on the development of my taste in movies. Here's where I turn these days to cultivate titles and find reliable criticism

* My main source is the New York Times Friday Weekend section. It's the newspaper of record for just about every film released each week. As for the reviewers, there's no denying their talents. A.O. Scott is essentially my alter-ego, though in the past year or so we've veered off the track we were on together. For decades, now, I've tracked well with Stephen Holden both in film and music, so his views are steady and reliable. Manohla Dargis is more hit-and-miss for me. She's brilliant, but her reviews are too long, and she skews too often toward pulp and spectacle.

* The New Yorker offers three more voices. I skew closely with David Denby. Anthony Lane is a master of snark and I love reading him, but our tastes diverge often. Richard Brody's blog features some fascinating essays on the big picture of cinema, but I rarely agree with his reviews. (He found "Damsels in Distress" to be a Great Work.)

* Slant Magazine is ambitious in the range of films they review. Nothing is too obscure. It's tough to get four stars out of them, and it's pretty rare to score three out of four. The main problem is their stable of reviewers is so varied that you can't get a consistent read on any of them. And they seem to be a little too aware of their elitist status, giving too much rope to directors like Bruno Dumont and ripping into some decent films that fail the site's auteur test.

* The Onion AV Club has short, smart reviews with reliable letter grades. They recently shook up their lineup a bit. I couldn't keep track of the various critics (I picture them all being rumpled, clever 38-year-old white men), except for the ultra-mainstream Tasha Robinson, who I know I often disagree with and who has moved on.

* The Boston Globe has two of the most reliable critics, Ty Burr and Wesley Morris (who recently won a Pulitzer for his criticism). They are tough graders and have little patience for run-of-the-mill movies.

* The blog Feminema, by the academic Didion, comes at pop culture from a feminist slant. It's a bit of an inspiration for my revival of this blog. At times, she can be prolific, and she knocks out long, thoughtful essays, dressed up with a snappy layout. I'm in awe of her output and the quality of her criticism, in particular her parsing of the various players (actors and directors). I also like the fact that she hated one of my favorites, Noah Baumbach's "Greenberg" (she called it "misogynistic, unbearable"), marking a thick gender line in the sand.

* Jonathan Rosenbaum: Again, more of an early influence than a current source, Rosenbaum covered film as an essayist for the Chicago Reader, mainly in the '90s.

* I hadn't regularly read Ebert, who died in April, since it was my job at times to proof his copy; I was more partial to Siskel's tastes. (Here's a great compilation of the Siskel/Ebert Top 10 lists over three decades.) No one, though, can match Ebert (a Pulitzer winner) for his writing style's unique combination of serious criticism and popular appeal. (Perhaps my all-time favorite review of his was this one, of the original "South Park" movie.) And his site is ultra-accessible and comprehensive.

Other reliable sources:
* The "coming soon" calendars at the Guild Cinema, The Screen (literally the best screen in New Mexico), and the CCA.

* The annual Santa Fe Film Festival and reports from the Sundance, Cannes and Toronto fests.

* Finally, for a roundup of critics' reviews, I prefer Metacritic to Rotten Tomatoes. The former is based on an actual grading system. The latter is often misleading. A movie can get all B's or B-minuses from 50 critics and still get a 100 percent rating. A movie can get 9 A's and a cranky C and get a 90 percent rating. Both sites, of course, are comprehensive and provide links to a multitude of reviews.