A PERSONAL CANON

The risk we run with too much sensible, serious film criticism, is in forgetting that cinema is, like any art form, about strong personal responses; and that is why I am pleased to announce a new, albeit intermittent, series.

On the first and third Sundays of every month, barring those in which I have something else specific planned, I will be writing pieces - "reviews" might even be too strong of a term, sometime - of films in my own personal canon of the greats: films that I love more than they deserve; or love for reasons that are so specific to their place in my personal history that I cannot begin to separate out the rational reasons that they are good from the reasons I love them; or films that have some extremely specific role in my development as a cinephile that I can't really be objective about them.

In short: films that I'm writing about just because I want to write about them, and to hell with sense or timeliness or reason.

Pauline Kael once said, about her film criticism, "I'm frequently asked why I don't write my memoirs. I think I have." This series, then, shall be my autobiography. It is my pleasure to share it with you.

The first entry goes up tonight. It will be... spectacular, spectacular.