Filmwell

Today at Filmwell, a film blog (?) that lives at The Other Journal, Michael Leary and I begin an epic journey, playing Siskel and Ebert all the way through what the Sight and Sound 2012 critics poll has voted the top ten films of all time.

I want to read perspectives and interpretations... not assessments of "I liked it" or "It sucked." When I was a child watching Siskel and Ebert, the thumbs-up/thumbs-down was a suspenseful gimmick; I couldn't wait to see the sparks fly when the critics' thumb-ation of the film put them odds. But it was what they said beyond that, the thought process that inspired the thumb-arization, that affected me. They taught me that people could disagree on a film without one person being Right and the other person being Wrong.

I've been talking about big-screen women, how they can reinforce harmful stereotypes, or set bold, truthful, and liberating precedents. Looks like Lauren Wilford, over at Filmwell, has been thinking about some of the same things. Here she is, passionately describing her gratitude for a new film that many of us might otherwise have overlooked...