Raving in the Dark: My Film Reviews

Here are links to a series of weekly film reviews that I wrote. Most of them are films that appeared during that time, but I also looked back to such classics as High Noon. The reviews are my honest response to the films, and honestly, they may come across as rather eccentric. I still do not understand the appeal of American Beauty, and I still appreciate For Love of the Game, but I also appreciate such quirky jewels as George Washington.

Although this series of film reviews is now somewhat dated, I still return to these reviews because in them, I developed a concept of "reading" a film that (for this sometime English major) turns out to be jarringly different from the way in which we read a book. I never felt during my tenure as film critic that I was in the business of labeling films as good or bad. In fact, I mainly wanted to muddy the view of the films, maybe focus on what works and what does not work. In short, I was functioning as a teacher and at the same time as a student. As a good student and teacher, I also include a list of useful online resources.