Prologue
The funny thing about being a film critic is that it gives rise to an extremely common scenario: 1) people asking what movie they should watch that night and 2) usually watching something else.
I find this fascinating. “What movie should I watch?” doesn’t seem like a loaded question, and yet it reveals more about both asker and answerer than you’d think. I don’t often respond the way I’d like to, because if I did I’d be telling everybody to watch something like The Thin Red Line, Burning, or Jauja — which is to say, long and/or foreign movies that some are liable to find boring or, even worse, pretentious. What if I tell someone to watch my favorite movie and they hate it? Will they think less of me? Will I think less of them?
Such outcomes are best avoided, and so I usually recommend something in the vein of Palm Springs or Kajillionaire — good but not necessarily demanding. This isn’t faint praise, as I genuinely enjoy these movies, but the longer I’ve been doing this, the more guarded I’ve become when asked for a recommendation.
For now, let’s think of Film Occasionally as a way of answering that question before it’s asked. In the 11 years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve found that the style (and, often as not, quality) of my writing changes depending on the publication — and, by extension, audience — it’s being written for. Reviews I wrote for the Village Voice were different from articles I wrote for IndieWire, which were different from pieces I wrote for Vice, and so on and so forth.
So what will Film Occasionally be like? I suppose there’s only one way to find out, dear reader.