Lisa Schwarzbaum

It, it's still a thing, actually.

I'm still a little angry at Lisa Schwarzbaum for giving a better grade to the Crocodile Hunter movie than she did to Road to Perdition.

I kinda have never gotten over that.

Well, that, that was a, that was a strange era in mainstream, uh, uh, criticism and, uh, we look the other way.

They are watching a manufactured product designed to sell them a specific aesthetic.

And then Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly delivered what I think is the final blow.

She called the film witless, insultingly derivative, muddy looking, and she specifically called out the hammering epileptic style that marks so many films produced by Michael Bay.

Hammering epileptic style.

He says some other things that I don't love in his article, but that's the one that matters.

[laughs] Lisa Schwarzbaum got into some of the gender politics of the film in her review for Entertainment Weekly, writing, quote, "Merida may be a headstrong heroine, a feisty animated hybrid who calls to mind Katniss Everdeen, Bella Swan, and the neo-fairy tale protagonist who faces off against her evil stepmother in Snow White and the Huntsman, but she is also, for safety's sake, a nice girl in a pretty green dress who loves her family and believes in dynasty." End quote.

Mm-hmm.

It's like, mm, I like that.

But, um, I, I did find some interesting, um, criticisms of, of the film in these reviews that I wanna get into with you all.

Um, I will start with Lisa Schwarzbaum for EW.

Uh, I'm going to pause in the middle of this review 'cause I wanna talk about something with you all, and then I will continue it.

Uh, so Lisa starts, "The Talented Mr. Ripley slithers along with great elegance and purpose for most of Ripley's reign, stumbling only at the end when Minghella trips on the limitations imposed by his own updated psychoanalysis." Now, this is where I'm going to pause, 'cause this is something that I saw a lot in these reviews, which is that this was a handsomely mounted, great production until the ending.