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Introducing Metacritique, the blog that takes reviews of films and reviews them. It calls out reviews for not being harsh enough, or being lazy, or relying on the same old lines and conventions to get a review out to press. It critiques their critiques on films– call it meta film theory at its best.

Take, for example, one of his recent posts on Bruno:
“This is one point that I wish more reviewers would have gotten to: the confused and difficult blending of homosexuality with immorality. Brüno, as an Austrian, is uncomfortably comfortable with the Holocaust; and, as Scott insufficiently addresses, part of Brüno’s satire appears aimed at the gay community for divorcing itself from its own politics, turning away from the painful trials of activism and toward the escapist fantasies …

Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, though it came out a few weeks ago, set me thinking about the tough position he’s gotten himself into over the years. His early success with Manhunter, both critically and commercially, placed him in what seems like a good spot for a director– left alone by money-grubbing producers and well-received by critics.

However, then he was expected to do it again. And again. Heat and The Insider cemented Mann as a fast growing auteur. With Ali, people generally agreed he was headed for an Oscar reasonably soon. Then, the immensely enjoyable but not quite artsy Collateral, and the laughable Miami Vice, set him back a few points in the critics world, though he was still making money.

And with Public Enemies, he again is making money. The reviews are positive in the Benjamin Button way– …

There has been an increasing trend of the Smug Indie Film lately. Let me sum up this trend: You, a normal person, sit in a movie theater and you see a preview for a film, say, Away We Go. You think, hey! That kind of looks good. I like Maya Rudolph, and there’s that guy from The Office with a beard! Oh, a road trip! Oh, an imminent baby! This looks like a combination of Little Miss Sunshine and Juno! Laughs to be had!

However, something nags at you. There seems to be a whole lot of side-eye (see here for an example) and eye rolling going on in this film, and it occurs by the protagonists toward their surroundings. It seems, on further analysis, that our protagonists are annoyed by everything that happens around them.

A.O. Scott’s …

I hate to say, “I told you so,” but I told you so. Advance reviews of Zach Snyder’s “Watchmen” adaptation (coming out Friday) have begun popping up around the internets, and guess what? They’re pretty terrible, for the most part.

Below I’ve culled together a few quotes from some of the more reputable critics whose reviews have been published so far. If there’s one thing that surprised me about their reactions, it’s that several of them said the movie’s fatal flaw isn’t that ignored the brilliance of its source material, it’s that it stayed too faithful. I guess there’s a reason why Terry Gilliam walked away from the project in the early 90s after declaring it un-filmable.

Anthony Lane, The New Yorker critic who doesn’t spend his spare time raging against snark, writes …

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