I just discovered Plinkett and his movie reviews. They’re really brilliant. They remind me that fancy language often obscures clear thinking. He breaks down everything from Star Wars Phantom Menace to Avatar in a clear, understandable, and devastatingly critical way. It’s laugh out loud funny at times.
It also reminds me that there is, ideally, an interplay of critic and art. That good criticism can deepen the experience of a movie or book and that, contra the bullshit positivism we’re served in middle school, that there is such a thing as a right and wrong opinion, that there are degrees of well formed opinions, and that much of our life depends on the ability to do just that. I also noticed that a good movie just seems good in a way that a bad one doesn’t. Viewers may be inarticulate about what doesn’t sit right about Phantom Menace vice Empire Strikes Back, but they know something is different and wrong and it goes beyond Jar Jar Binks. Plinkett does what every responsible intellectual should do: articulate what others only inchoately feel.
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have you been reading OneSTDV then?
No, do they like him over there?
I’ve seen Plinkett’s Star Wars reviews, and he stretches the truth a lot, but there is still plenty to criticize in Episodes I, II, and III, and I enjoyed his reviews except for the tangential captive whore in his basement. But then, he could have torn the original trilogy to pieces, too, especially The Attack of the Ewoks.