American Film Criticism Research Articles

Asia, Moral Duties, and American Films Noir: World for Ransom and Macao

ABSTRACT Leading American film critics, including, among others, Tony Williams and Robert Miklitsch, have claimed that both World for Ransom and Macao reflect an orientalist, racist, and reactionary worldview. In this article I argue that, on the contrary, these 1950s films noir portray Asian and American characters alike actually carrying out their moral duties. To be sure, these American films employ aesthetic techniques to help illustrate the ethical ambiguities for which film noir is justly celebrated. Still, where the fulfillment of moral duties is concerned, the films’ resolutions are clear. This article enlists the thought of moral philosophers H.L.A. Hart and Daniel Statman to vindicate the ethical outlook of these works, which reward characters who fulfill imperfect, perfect, and/or supererogatory moral obligations. The American protagonists transcend their given circumstances by carrying out high-stake duties in an Asian setting, while forming amorous alliances tested by the aesthetics of film noir. Moreover, I show that none of the protagonists’ moral duties involves maligning Asia. Indeed, were these films noir to disparage Asia, they would diminish the very milieu breathing life into their finest characters.

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Film Criticism: Balancing Advancement and Human Expertise

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has had a significant influence on diverse domains, including the discipline of film criticism. In recent times, advanced artificial intelligence models have demonstrated the capacity to scrutinize vast quantities of film-related data, encompassing evaluations, and appraisals, as well as audience attitudes and reception. Therefore, the utilization of AI in this regard can offer more advantages to both critics and audiences through the implementation of automated analysis, summarization, and recommendation systems, which provide valuable further insights into the world of movies and thus enhance a more global comprehension of films. In addition, critics can employ AI as a valuable instrument that reduces the processing time of current film criticism. However, the emergence of AI in the realm of film criticism has also prompted apprehensions regarding the possible deprivation of human intuition and creativity, the very subjective analysis, and the emotional involvement that is integral to a traditional critic’s expertise. The ongoing challenge today lies in balancing the benefits of AI-driven analysis and the irreplaceable human touch. The objective of this article is to investigate the correlation between AI and current American film criticism. Specifically, the article centers on how democratization and AI augmentation might impact the domain of conventional film criticism, leading to both a possible crisis in the field and an unprecedented advancement in the same area. It also presents and examines a new form of film analysis: automated criticism. To shed light on the topic, the present paper will engage with media and cultural studies focused, but not limited to, Lev Manovich’s theories on new media and artificial intelligence, Henry Jenkins’s concept of convergence culture, and Marshall McLuhan’s perspective on the influence of the medium on the message.

Adaptation is Survival: Current Trends in American Film Criticism

Adaptation is Survival: Current Trends in American Film Criticism

Minority Views: “Liberator”, American Cinema, and the 1960s African American Film Criticism

The article reconstructs the discourse of film criticism in Liberator – a radical African American magazine published between 1961 and 1971. Employing Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the cultural field, the author situates Liberator within the context of the 1960s, civil rights movement, and Black Arts movement, and analyses the magazine’s role in film culture of the era, as well as the links between the magazine and important black filmmakers and film writers. Four aspects of Liberator’s film criticism are explored: cultural memory of past representations, criticism of genre filmmaking, the need for cinematic realism, and the possibility of creating a distinct black cinema. The case study of the critic Clayton Riley’s career presents an author who wanted to continue his radical criticism in the mainstream press (The New York Times). Liberator’s legacy is framed as essential in understanding the tradition of African American film criticism.

Bohemians in 1970s New York City: perspectives on Miloš Forman and Ivan Passer’s films

Miloš Forman and Ivan Passer began their directing careers during the Czechoslovak New Wave, collaborating on and contributing several prominent films that helped define the movement. Following the 1968 Warsaw Pact troop invasion, Forman and Passer fled from Communist Czechoslovakia to emigrate to the United States. For most of the 1970s, they lived and worked in New York City, whence each directed two films centered largely on the location: Forman’s Taking Off (1971) and Hair (1979) and Passer’s Born to Win (1971) and Law and Disorder (1974). This article aims to understand the ways in which North American film critics interpretated the Czech émigré directors’ depictions of New York City and American mores. The results suggest that critics contributing articles to newspapers, magazines, and specialist film publications generally agreed that Forman exhibited a deeper understanding of New York City and American culture at large than Passer.

Détourning Asia/America with Valerie Soe

Research Article| October 01 2019 Détourning Asia/America with Valerie Soe: https://vimeo.com/298057510/b8ac9472e1 Mila Zuo, Mila Zuo Mila Zuo is an assistant professor in the department of Theatre and Film at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests include non-Western and Asian American cinemas, star studies, film philosophy, and critical feminist, race, and queer theory. She has published in Women and Performance: a journal of feminist theory, Celebrity Studies, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and the volumes Exploiting East Asian Cinemas (Bloomsbury, 2018) and The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Her current book project examines the affective world-making of contemporary Chinese women film stars. Zuo's short film Carnal Orient (2016) premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival. Her latest film, Kin, was awarded the 2019 Oregon Media Arts Fellowship. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Valerie Soe Valerie Soe Valerie Soe is a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University. Since 1986 her experimental videos, installations, and documentaries have won dozens of awards, grants, and commissions, and have been exhibited worldwide at such venues as the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the New Museum, New York. She has published extensively in books and journals, including Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism, Asian Cinema, and Amerasia Journal. Soe is the author of the blog beyondasiaphilia.com (recipient of a 2012 Arts Writers Grant from the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation). Her latest film is Love Boat: Taiwan (2019). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Feminist Media Histories (2019) 5 (4): 56–58. https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2019.5.4.56 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mila Zuo, Valerie Soe; Détourning Asia/America with Valerie Soe: https://vimeo.com/298057510/b8ac9472e1. Feminist Media Histories 1 October 2019; 5 (4): 56–58. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2019.5.4.56 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFeminist Media Histories Search Keywords: Asian American film, feminist film, punk, Situationists, Valerie Soe This combined video interview and visual essay explores the video and film works of Asian American feminist filmmaker Valerie Soe through the concept of détournement, an aesthetics of appropriation, reuse, and remix articulated by Guy Debord and the Situationists.1 Following Debord's observation that “spectacle is not a collection of images” but rather “a social relationship between people that is mediated by images,” Soe's creative output over the past thirty years deepens and complicates our understanding of the Asian American community's experiences with racism and alienation.2 By recontextualizing popular film and television images, Soe hijacks and reroutes the spectacularization of gendered Asian bodies as mediatized “image-objects” in films like Picturing Oriental Girls: A (Re)Educational Videotape (1999), Cynsin: An American Princess (1991), and Snapshot: Six Months of the Korean American Male (2007). Soe's documentary works, including Mixed Blood (1992), The Chinese Gardens (2012), and The Oak Park Story (2010),... You do not currently have access to this content.

Gothic: New Directions in Media and Popular Culture

Gothic: New Directions in Media and Popular Culture

Towards a Politics and Art of the Land: Gothic Cinema of the Australian New Wave and Its Reception by American Film Critics

This article will drill down to the level of the reception of two examples of Australian gothic film-making by two well-known American critics. Rayner’s comparison of Australian gothic with American film noir is useful; however, it begs the question of how American critics such as Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris influentially shaped the reception of Australian gothic in America and in other locations (such as Australia itself) where their reviews found an audience either at the time or afterwards. The significance of the present article rests on the fact that, as William McClain observes, following in Rick Altman’s footsteps, “critics form one of the key material institutions that support generic formations” (54). This article nurtures the suggestion that knowing how Australian gothic cinema was shaped, in its infancy, in the increasingly important American market (a market of both commerce and ideas) might usefully inform revisionist studies of Australian cinema as a national mode.

Pauline Kael and the western genre as critical displacement of self & nation: Metaphorics and affects of ‘taste’ in American film criticism

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) is one of the most influential American film critics of the second half of the twentieth century. Many people are writing on her presently, with at least half an eye to her future cultural, political and historical importance. Certainly the full impact of Kael’s work, both within and beyond the borders of cinema (however defined), has not yet been established. This article unpacks the mechanisms and operations of ‘taste’ in Kael’s writings by using two notions drawn from Roland Barthes’ observations about another key figure of current cultural critique: Julia Kristeva. The comparison of Kael with Kristeva is not dwelt upon; instead, the article focuses on how Kael used the concepts of ‘taste’ and ‘dis-taste’ to draw her readership into a field of what might be termed ‘permanent dissent’. This article concludes by sketching out why Jewish-American Kael’s taste might endure, through the dual transition she occupies from a Cold War to a post-Cold War period, and from an era when cinema was the supreme, undisputed, screen artform, to the rise of the myriad screen technologies of the networked, Internet age.

Visual Literacy and Cultural Production: Examining Black Masculinity through Participatory Community Engagement

This paper highlights the results of a project, in which a group of students, who were enrolled in an African American film criticism course at a large university in Southern California, participated in a community engagement project that incorporated visual and media literacy skills acquired in the classroom setting. The parameters of the project were informed by discourses of media studies and visual literacy, as well as principles of community engagement. The production of a short digital documentary film about Black masculinity, demonstrated that activities utilizing image-making as powerful tools of inquiry, offers a multitude of benefits to college students.

The complete history of American film criticism

The complete history of American film criticism

Western, Go Home! Sergio Leone and the “Death of the Western” in American Film Criticism

Abstract I am showing the Old West as it really was … Americans treat westerns with too much rhetoric. —Sergio Leone (qtd. in “Hi-Ho, Denaro!” 57)

Western, Go Home! Sergio Leone and the “Death of the Western” in American Film Criticism

I am showing the Old West as it really was . . . Americans treat westerns with too much rhetoric. -Sergio Leone (qtd. in Hi-Ho, Denaro! 57) WHEN ITALIAN DIRECTOR SERGIO LEONE'S/4 Fistful of Dollars arrived in the United States in early 1967, the American film industry and the critics who observed it were in state of ferment. Critics sense that the American cinema was changing and that its old pieties and genres, often spoken of in the same breath, were in vital sense dying out. Among them, the was perhaps the greatest barometer- the genre long seen as most uniquely American, most assuredly linked to the national character and mythology, seemed to be evolving into new, rougher beast. And for critics, Sergio Leone's films were clearly part of the problem. Leone's Dollars trilogy, starting with A Fistful of Dollars (1964, US release: January 1967) and continuing with Fora Few Dollars More (1965, US release: May 1967) and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966, US release: December, 1967), was neltherthe entirety nor the beginning of the Western cycle in Italy,' but for Americans Leone's films represented the true beginning of the Italian invasion of their privileged cultural form (Liehm 186). Hindsight tempts one to simply question critics' judgment: after all, Leone's films have been vindicated by continued popular and critical interest, and their place in the now sturdy family tree of post-studio revisionist Westerns suggests their healthy influence on the evolution of the Christopher Frayling, in his noted book on the Italian spaghetti Western, describes American critical reception of the spaghetti cycle as to a large extent, confined to debate about the 'cultural roots' of the American/Hollywood Western. He remarks that few critics dared admit that they were, in fact, bored with an exhausted Hollywood genre. Pauline Kael, he notes, was willing to acknowledge this critical ennui and thus appreciate how film such as Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961) could exploit conventions while debunking its morality (39). This revisionist project, Frayling argues along with many others (e.g., Bondanella 255), was the key to Leone's success and, to some degree, to that of the spaghetti genre as whole. The term sterile debate, however, effaces the almost venomous hostility that greeted Leone's Dollars trilogy in American critical circles. Critics found the Dollars films deeply problematic on number of levels: their unusually graphic and cynical violence, their ambivalent relationship to historical and generic realism, and their relationship to the history of the genre as whole. However, film critics of the time were not merely displeased by these films' perceived aesthetic flaws: they were bitterly resistant to what they saw as an existential threat to the genre and to some extent their understanding of the American cinema as whole, for in Leone's films critics found echoes, and perhaps causes, of deeply disturbing trends in domestic film culture- trends that would later culminate in what would be dubbed the New Hollywood. However, Leone's films seem to have had uniquely distasteful element for American critics of the late 1960s beyond their place in broader shifts in American film culture, for whereas films such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) split critics into hotly contentious camps, the Dollars films were simply generally excoriated. Our goal here is not to say that critics of the period were defending critical good taste against the barbarians at the gates or that they somehow didn't get it. Rather, we seek an understanding of moment in the history of the American popular critical institutions wherein critics attempted to resist aesthetic change, refused to acknowledge emerging artistic norms as legitimate, and in so doing attempted to defend the genre as an institution against Leone's illegitimate revisionism and the wider developments it typified. …

For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. Dir. by Gerald Peary. Prod. by Amy Geller. Central Productions and WGBH, 2008. 83 mins. (http://www.fortheloveofmovies.net)

For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. Dir. by Gerald Peary. Prod. by Amy Geller. Central Productions and WGBH, 2008. 83 mins. (http://www.fortheloveofmovies.net)

"MTV Aesthetics" at the Movies: Interrogating a Film Criticism Fallacy

DEBUTED ON CABLE TELEVISION IN AUGUST of 1981 in only a few US markets, airing music videos introduced by awkward video jockeys. In fact, according to historians of MTV, it was not until January of 1983 that channel really took off, when it expanded more fully into most markets around country-including, for first time, New York and Los Angeles (Denisoff; McGrath). And yet that same year, upon release of Adrian Lyne's Flashdance (1983), American film critics already had begun to observe that Hollywood films were unduly influenced by music video form and by in particular. In its review, Variety described Flashdance as pretty much like looking at for 96 minutes. Virtually plotless, exceedingly thin on characterization and sociologically laughable, pic at least lives up to its title by offering an anthology of extraordinarily flashy dance numbers (12). A few months later, Roger Ebert opined that Staying Alive (1983), a sequel to gutsy, electric Saturday Night Fever, is a slick, commercial cinematic jukebox, a series of self-contained song-and-dance sequences that could be cut apart and played forever on (Staying). More than two decades later, is still a common critical shorthand and reference point, as similar critiques of Hollywood films and their form continue unabated not only among mainstream journalistic critics, but also, in an indication of its cultural ubiquity, among academic writers, alternative media critics, amateur critics, and fans posting reviews online. References in contemporary film criticism to visuals, MTV-style editing, the generation, post-MTV filmmaking, and like constitute what I will call aesthetics trope. It is significant that this trope actually cites MTV specifically as part of its discourse; as I discuss below, there is a world of discursive difference between a critical trope that references MTV's influence and one that simply references influence of music videos. The fact that aesthetics trope persists even today, when vast majority of videos are screened and seen via television channels and media other than MTV- which has long since cut back on its airing of videos-is a further testament both to staying power of this critical reflex and to fact that MTV in aesthetics trope serves a predominantly symbolic function (Caramanica sec. 2:1). The foundation of aesthetics trope is a fairly straightforward and concrete critique associating contemporary Hollywood filmmaking with music video form, although it also typically coexists with much more symbolic and connotative importations about what and its audience represent (see below). The foundational critique is concerned with three interrelated characteristics of recent Hollywood film. The first is frequent use of (mainly nondiegetic) popular songs for a film's soundtrack, especially for montage sequences of characters dancing, fighting, falling in love, trying on clothes, and so on. Although still noted by critics discussing current films, this continues to be a particularly common point to make about films of early-to-mid-1980s, such as aforementioned Flashdance and Staying Alive, as well as Footloose (1984), Top Gun (1986), Dirty Dancing (1987), and Rocky IV (1985), of which Ebert wrote: [there are] endless, unnecessary songs on soundtrack; half time, we seem to be watching . (Rocky). The second and third cinematic characteristics that form foundation of aesthetics trope relate to perception that many Hollywood films since origins of have become showy exercises in technique and style. The second characteristic is tendency of films since early 1980s to privilege gloss, atmospherics, and camerawork. According to this critique, films too often serve up production design and especially cinematography and direction clearly meant to be noticed and appreciated on their own burnished terms. …

LOST: (Adventures in the American Psyche after the 9/11 Fall)

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, British and American film critics predicted that Hollywood and the major television (TV) networks would respond by producing feel good movi...

Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film, 1893–1941

Book Review| June 01 2005 Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film, 1893–1941 Bruce Posner, ed. Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film, 1893–1941. New York: Anthology Film Archives, 2001. $11.95. Greg Taylor Greg Taylor Greg Taylor is Associate Professor of Film in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film at Purchase College, SUNY, and the author of Artists in the Audience: Cults, Camp, and American Film Criticism. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Film Quarterly (2005) 58 (4): 73–74. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2005.58.4.73 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Greg Taylor; Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film, 1893–1941. Film Quarterly 1 June 2005; 58 (4): 73–74. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2005.58.4.73 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2005 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.2005 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Artists in the Audience: Cults, Camp and American Film Criticism

Artists in the Audience: Cults, Camp and American Film Criticism

It's Only a Movie!: Films and Critics in American Culture

Film critics emerged around 1900, discussing the form's merit and its influence on the public. A smaller group debated whether motion pictures constituted a viable art form. The critic's role in the success or failure of films is the subject of Raymond J. Haberski Jr.'s survey of American film criticism. Sparked by lamentations of recent film critics concerning the dearth of “good films” in theaters, Haber-ski argues that what rankles them is the decline of their “cultural authority.” Because contemporary critics sit appalled by the general public's lurid tastes, Haberski examined the film critic's role over time. Through a series of case studies he discovered that current critics often echo the protests and praise of earlier cultural critics. (One of the most interesting concerns Theodore Dreiser's antipathy for movies and the film industry. Dreiser, who considered himself a good socialist, hated a medium that appealed to the masses.) Literary and art critics, who used different language and criteria for assessing their subjects, were the first to examine film seriously. They posed a recurring question for critics: do “movies force a reconsideration of the form and function of art?” Class distinctions often clouded the first generation's appraisal, because serious critics (for example, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Randolph Bourne) found it difficult to reconcile popular tastes with the expectations of high art. These men regarded movies as a guilty pleasure, fearing they would lure barbarians against the bastions of good taste. The prevailing critical attitude of early-twentieth-century guardians of culture was that middling- and lower-class people lacked the ability to appreciate art. Dwight Macdonald feared a growing “Mass Cult,” which involved the blending of high and low culture into a bastardized Frankenstein monster, spoiling both. Even critically acclaimed movies could lead to the diminution of what critics considered good taste. Taken to an extreme, these attitudes led to censorship. The public had to be protected from the dreck churned out by Hollywood that appealed to prurient interests.

Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism (review)

Anyone who has recently taught an Asian American Studies class recognizes the need for scholarship on the rapidly growing number of films and videos by Asian Americans. In response to this need, Darrell Y. Hamamoto and Sandra Liu have compiled Countervisions, a sophisticated, innovative, and engaging collection. Asian American film criticism from its inception in 1960s and 1970s counterculture has had a political engagement that has honed its analytical edge. As editor Hamamoto suggests, "in the main, Asian American film criticism has avoided the excesses of psychoanalytic abstractions and theoreticism while holding to the primacy and determinate force of history and politics in explaining and [End Page 78] understanding the impact of racial inequality on minority communities" (3). This is not to say that this volume is light on theory. Essays in the collection employ current approaches to analyzing filmmaking practices and reception in a broad range of examples from independent and mainstream venues.