The Cinema House & the World

To all but a small but tenacious cabal of connoisseurs, the term “film criticism” suggests—if it suggests anything at all—the consumer-guide style typified by the writing of Roger Ebert: brisk, demotic plot summary requiring no breaks to decipher unfamiliar vocabulary; pat value judgments reflected in stars, letter grades, or some other merit-reflecting token; a few asides to extol or condemn the cinematography, ideally “luminous,” and the performances, ideally “pitch-perfect.”