David Denby Is a Dick

For non-New Yorker readers, David Denby is the sucky half of two alternating movie critics at the magazine; Anthony Lane is the "scan the Contents and keep your fingers crossed it's  Anthony Lane this week" half.

This week Denby spoils but good the new movie based on Ishiguro Kazuo's Never Let Me Go, with a fuck-you-gentle-reader lack of alert. I read the book (quietly disturbing, slowly suspenseful, modern Gothic with, I think, shades of Shirley Jackson menace), haven't seen the movie. If you read the review... movie spoiled. Done. Hello, Crying Game. The critics - and even the audiences - managed to keep their big fat traps shut on that one. Denby’s just being a pill, spoiling it for everyone. Sad power trip, David. 

Denby's other crime this week? Referring to the "new" Woody Allen movie as intriguing. How intriguing – a male senior citizen leaves his wife of decades for a perky prostitute (heart of gold optional), and suffers some consequences. I rarely get to the movies (first it’s pesky kids [mine], now it’s pesky bedbugs [theirs], keeping me out of movie theaters), and I won’t be seeing this one. Why would I? I’ve seen Woody Allen make this movie a dozen times by now. I don’t care enough about Woody Allen anymore to be angry about the retreads he churns out every year, presumably out of dumb habit; he broke my heart a long time ago.

But Denby – he must be savoring a revenge fantasy – his own wife of many years left him a few years back, for a woman (level of perkiness unknown).

Not dicky enough? Maybe, but Denby will generously provide me with more ammunition on what I like to think of as Anthony Lane’s off-weeks.

Maybe my new thing is ranting not about movies I haven’t seen (I’ll leave that to right-wing extremists; they’re so good at it), but reviews of movies I haven’t seen. Like a 2^nd reviewer, once removed.

Ok, bye.