I don’t think it’s helpful to call a work of art “pretentious,” but I do think it’s meaningful to call one “unpretentious.” Rather than open up an unnecessarily Bourdieuvian riff, let me put it this way: I dig a good B-movie. One of my favorites of the last decade was Cellular, a nimble kidnap thriller in which Kim Basinger is uniquely suited to slay one of her captors because she’s a seventh-grade biology teacher who knows her axillary arteries. Life-and-death stakes, a little broad comedy, car chases, never boring and never in bad faith.

Stephanie Zacharek’s compare-and-contrast of Premium Rush to The Master gave me the idea that the former might be in my zone, Continue reading “Monday Movies Likes To Ride” →