That critics would fervently praise a mediocre film like James Gray’s The Immigrant (2014) points up that movie criticism is still in the same dismal state it has always been in.  No, it’s in a worse state, for, after all, we used to have the fine criticism of John Simon, Stanley Kauffmann, Charles Thomas Samuels, Dwight MacDonald, Vernon Young and—well—Pauline Kael.  No more.

Re The Immigrant, it’s an unpersuasive period piece which I refused to watch to the end.  No one is paying me to view these films; the expense is mine.