Tyler Cowen says that Scott Sumner is "the greatest movie critic in the world," and I enjoy Sumner's movie reviews, too. Sumner's all time favorite TV shows is Twin Peaks and I agree with many of his other opinions, too.
A couple of links:
Peak cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The reviews are short; here are a couple of Sumner reviews of films by RAW favorite Orson Welles:
The Lady From Shanghai (US, 1947, CC) 3.9 Despite its leisurely pace, the first half of this film is near-perfect cinema. The second half is more fast paced and contains three famous set-pieces—including the hall of mirrors shootout—but it is actually the weaker half of the film. I enjoyed this more the second time around, as I no longer get frustrated when a film has an intricate and difficult to follow plot.
The Trial (US/Europe, 1962, CC) 3.7 Suppose you were a film buff who had never heard of Kafka, and you also knew nothing about Orson Welles. Also imagine that you were told that this film was produced by an obscure Eastern European filmmaker. How would you rate it? Clearly it would be viewed as an overlooked masterpiece. But you have heard of Kafka and Welles, and that undoubtedly explains why it received mixed reviews. For this sort of project, reviewers are naturally going to have extremely high standards. If someone felt that the film fell well short of expectations, I would not argue with them. The print has been beautifully restored.
Tom again: Sumner also blogs about other cultural topics, about economics (his actual academic specialty) and about politics. He is my favorite political blogger (libertarian, anti-Trump.) Here is an excellent essay on how pop music peaked in the mid-1960s. And here are remarks on the U.S. becoming a banana republic (scroll to the end, the main post is about Trump's tariffs.)
Click the Scott Sumner tag on this post for more interesting stuff.
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