Criticwatch: Giving credit where credit is due

So here we are. The end of the Ben Lyons Quote of the Week in spinoff form. Criticwatch will always have an eye out when he crosses our field of vision, but no longer will he have a major network venue to inch film criticism closer to the world of Idiocracy. It’s a glorious time. Proof that the written word can make a difference after all the talk from the powers that be and Mankiewicz who said, “this is a TV show and the notion that only people who qualify to talk about film criticism are people who have written for a newspaper seems silly." Disney never wanted to cop to sagging ratings on the show, so maybe the constant criticism by this column and Scott Johnson over at StopBenLyons.com really did have a hand in the change.

That is Erik Childress from Criticwatch giving his final Ben Lyons Quote of the Week. He continues with a top ten list of Ben Lyons' worst quotes of the past year:

10. "And it seems like this is going to be the one film we’re gonna see of this franchise. It wasn’t like Zack Snyder was trying to setup the sequel. I really appreciate that.”

9. “I like Splinter too, I just don’t have the stomach for horror movies. Life is too short. I have to say rent it.”

8. “If someone said to you and told you this was the same directing team that did No Country for Old Men, I wouldn’t believe you unless you said it was the Coen Bros.”

7. “It helps me improve my movie knowledge, and it's a lot of fun to play either alone or with some of the homies when they come over.”

6. “It’s really important to tell people to go out and see W. so they can talk about it and have an opinion about it and this freedom of speech of course that allows us to go and talk about a film about a current sitting president.”

That's five, you can click here to read the rest.

Criticwatch: Hyping till the end

Just as Ben Lyons is about to go off the air, I find myself on vacation in smoky Santa Cruz, CA, and I have not yet been able to watch this weekend's episode of At the Movies. So I'll hand it over to Erik Childress from Criticwatch to sum things up with his Ben Lyons Quote of the Week:

Lyons: And until next week, as always, we’ll be At The Movies.

Erik then continues:

There is something perfectly poetic if those are the final words we ever hear from Ben Lyons on this show. Hyping something that cannot possibly be, said before all the facts are in. As of the Aug. 15 airing we are now officially in the two-week period before the new season of At The Movies begins with Michael Phillips and A.O. Scott. Traditionally a period where Siskel & Ebert took a couple of weeks off and either ran reruns or taped a special recap show to air, could the same be true of the now defunct coupling of Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz? My Tivo, too dumb to recognize reruns of The Daily Show but smart enough to notice an At The Movies repeat when it sees it, is showing just that. The Aug. 22/23 airing is slated to be a rerun of their Aug. 7 show. You know – the one where they had twice promised a G.I. Joe review only to be shunned from the screenings like the rest of us. If this stands that only leaves Aug. 29. Will it be a repeat, a special show, or have we indeed seen the last of Ben Lyons under the title first made famous by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel? If it is, Junior gave us quite a sendoff, delivering his own brand of a greatest hits package reminding us why no one has anything positive to say about his tenure.

Click here to read the entire review

Criticwatch: One season wonder

Erik Childress from Criticwatch gives us the Ben Lyons Quote of the Week:

Lyons: This is a true story so if she is a little whiny that is the character she's embodying.

Erik then continues:

Basically what you're saying then, Ben, in your review of Julie & Julia is that because the film portrays the real-life Julie Powell as she is we should just accept that person, flaws and all, since it remains true to them - no matter how self-centered, dim, or flaccid they come off when trying to relay their thoughts on a subject. Awwww, has someone been hard on Ben lately?

Not precisely sure when the big news came to Ben Lyons, but the public became aware on August 5 that he and co-host Ben Mankiewicz were being replaced on At the Movies. After just under a year on the air, Lyons and Mank officially aligned themselves with the Jean Doumanian season of Saturday Night Live. One and done. Cut short. After the PR tour during Oscar season to counteract all the bad publicity the show had got, the Associated Press article they finally opened to, the spin that the ratings were not on the downswing, attempts to localize them as Chicago celebrities and rumors that it would be cheaper to keep them on for another year to fulfill syndication contracts than to dump them, the Bens will be no more on the show come September. Replacing them will be hometown boy, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune, and New York's A.O. Scott who will be flown in every couple of weeks to tape a pair of shows. Funny that the reason Scott was initially taken off the guest host roster is because producers didn't want to have to fly him every week. No, they chose instead to fly in Ben Lyons every week. Well now they can fly him out.

Click here to read the entire article

Criticwatch: Party pooper

Erik Childress sums up this weeks episode of At the Movies, starting with Ben Lyons' dismissal of Thirst:

This week’s show was a happy affair. 9 out of 10 “see it”’s and certainly some great movies to boot (Funny People, In The Loop, World’s Greatest Dad). Lyons turned out to be the party pooper this week, delivering the one “skip it” on the final film they reviewed, Park Chan-Wook’s Thirst. In fairness, I would have pooped on the perfect show too. According to the show’s review aesthetic, I would have gone with “rent it”, but I am certain that I could back it up better and maybe bring something to the discussion about why I thought it ultimately failed as a film rather than an experience. After all, we know how Lyons feels about horror fare.

Looking over his Quote of the Week you might think he’s still reviewing Orphan from last week. Thirst is an entirely different beast though. Anyone familiar with Park’s previous work, particularly his Vengeance trilogy (Old Boy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Lady Vengeance), knows he possesses a rather dark sense of humor amidst the violence. Some critics have even gone so far as to call it a black comedy. Suggesting Thirst is unintentionally funny is so off the mark it boggles the mind, although Lyons tries to cover himself by wondering if some of the jokes were lost in translation. Yeah, that Korean vampire humor always goes right over my head too. It might be hard to label it in the video stores as anything but horror, but any student of even a decade’s worth of film is aware that there are various subsets of the genre and not all of them require giant scares. Never during Thirst was I thinking “hey, I’m not scared at all here.” Park was chasing something more than just making us jump in our seats and if that’s all Lyons was focusing on, maybe that’s why he was so bored.

Click here to read the rest of the story

Criticwatch - If I had a hammer . . .

Erik Childress discusses the exchange from this week's At the Movies on the movie Orphan (among other things):

LYONS: “For me I don’t know what’s really fun about seeing a nine year-old girl take a hammer to somebody’s head over and over again. That’s not enjoyable for me at the movies.”

MANKIEWICZ: “IT’S A HORROR MOVIE, BEN!”

Thank you Mank for shouting out what so many of us have wanted to spit back in his face through all his stomach-churning logic and overly biased attitude towards horror films during this last year on the air. Oh boy, so you liked Drag Me To Hell. That PG-13 rating suits you, does it? You gave a positive review to Let the Right One In? Only three people on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 144) gave it a negative. (For the record those three morons are Amy Nicholson from Box Office Magazine, Prairie Miller and Owen Gleiberman who should have his “top critic” moniker erased on the basis of this one review.) You want to knock Orphan – have at it, sir. There’s a lot to pan it for. I recommended it on the basis of pure comedy and not as a horror film. But within my review I knocked how poorly directed it was if it really had aspirations to be a true-red horror flick. All you can say is how uncomfortable you get when little Esther bashes in a skull with a hammer.

Click here to read Erik's other musing about this week's episode

Criticwatch - Who's he crappin'?

Erik Childress cites many of the moments that I cited in this week's episode of At the Movies, so I'll highlight one of Erik's points that I did not mention, regarding a movie I did not see:

Lyons (on I Love You, Beth Cooper): It condones drinking and driving.

Really, Benny? Are you really going to go there? The guy who praised The Hangover to the hilt? The guy who put it second on his list of 3-To-See on the June 20 show? The film where three completely messed up guys in Vegas steal a police car, drive it to Mike Tyson’s house, steal his tiger, put said tiger IN THE CAR and then drive back down the strip to Caesar’s Palace. You mean drinking and driving like that? Beth Cooper has maybe a beer or two by comparison and is shown to be primarily the worst teen driver since Kelly Jo Minter in Summer School. Anyone? Whomever was driving the police car in The Hangover had not only been drinking all night, but jacked up on rufies. But I guess you don’t care if it’s real or if it’s fake. You just wanna find out if it’s funny. Ben Lyons, who in the hell do you think you’re crappin’?

Read the entire Ben Lyons Quote of the Week here.

So good it's bad

I spent all weekend at the Socialism 2009 conference in San Francisco, and though I finally got a chance to watch At the Movies on Monday night, I'll forgo my own lengthy commentary about the episode and hand it over to Erik Childress. His Ben Lyons Quote of the Week is:

Lyons: Depp is so good that in the moment he holds your attention and I’m along for the ride and it’s a good adult summer movie. However, I wanted an awards show contender and its just not that.

Erik continues:

Lyons was brutal this week. On the movies. Without the immediate benefit of a show-by-show breakdown, this may have been the first time during his tenure on At the Movies that Junior failed to recommend a single title; a prospect that even surprised Mankiewicz during their recap. The closest he came was on Michael Mann’s Public Enemies which got the dreaded “rent it” despite Lyons calling it a “good adult summer movie.” Having spent a part of this weekend on the other side of Criticwatch determining the correct use of the word “masterpiece”, here we have another lesson in choosing your words carefully.

I concur--if you ever wanted to watch 22 minutes of a grumpy, furrow-browed Ben Lyons with little positive to say and struggling to maintain his fake smile, this was the week to watch. Not that I would recommend it. As Erik quotes Ben in the Quote of the Week, he even raised his usually low standards, giving a "Rent it" to a movie just because it wasn't Oscar worthy. Well, we'll see how Ben's turn to high standard maintains itself in the future . . .

Read the rest of the Criticwatch Ben Lyons Quote of the Week here.

Criticwatch: Revenge of the sequel

Erik Childress gives us the Ben Lyons Quote of the Week:

Lyons: I found that the filmmakers were really irresponsible in ignoring the younger fanbase of this franchise. You mention the 14 year old boys love the action and Megan Fox but the language and drug references completely unnecessary.

And then continues with his own commentary:

Hearing statements like that from Ben Lyons is enough to make you want to watch a reality show of his exploits at the Hard Rock in Vegas. The movie in question is not Land of the Lost, but Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a film that only accentuates everything that passed as action and humor the first time around. Why didn’t those PG-13 elements violate his delicate sensibilities back in 2007? Maybe because he was just on the E! Network then and not playing to a more adult audience on ABC that has found ways to work his age into the criticism of him?

Click here to read the rest

Criticwatch - Blurbing 2009 into a vintage year

Erik Childress from Criticwatch gives us the Ben Lyons quote of the week:

Lyons: This is vintage classic Woody Allen. Like you said, not his best work obviously but a return to form in a lot of ways.

And follows with his own commentary:

Then how about we don’t use the words “vintage” and “classic” to call it then? This is becoming an increasing problem in the Twitter culture that we live in. What is Twitter precisely if not an opportunity to provide your own ready-made 140-character blurb for a movie? Forget writing a whole review or 140 words. You can just walk out of a movie and post your reaction for all your followers to see. Oh, but you must get their attention, right? You can’t just say that Whatever Works is one of Woody’s better efforts over the last decade. You need to get everyone’s attention. So you say it’s classic Woody Allen, more or less suggesting that it ranks with the likes of Annie Hall, Manhattan and The Purple Rose of Cairo. Yes, there’s a bit of assumption on our part. But there’s a difference when you call something classic and tap into our own memories of what constitutes the meaning of “classic” (whether it be for a genre or filmmaker) and my friends and I saying that Megaforce is the greatest movie ever made.

Read Erik's entire commentary here.

Criticwatch - The seedy underbelly of Ben Lyons

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Except for Ben Lyons, unfortunately.Erik Childress finally gets his chance to tear apart The Hangover--oh yeah, and Ben Lyons, too:

Last week I was unable to counter the Bens’ early positive review of The Hangover due to constrictions of an embargo. And the fact that its seriously one of the worst films of the year. Laughter can vary from person-to-person, but I’m rather shocked that more professional students of film have been unable to call Todd Phillips out on his utter inability to setup or payoff a gag, punchline or comic situation. Continue reading on to last week’s column where you can see some of the “intelligent” and “sophisticated” humor to be found in The Hangover. This week we had the painful reminder that they believe this “strong script” to be “one of the funniest comedies this year so far.” It got more painful as Lyons tried to sell the idea that this was somehow a darker and edgier piece about Vegas.

Ok, full disclosure, I actually thought it was pretty funny, unfortunately most of the characters are unlikable and it falls back on crude stereotypes and just crudeness for crudeness sake. Oh yeah, and the closer we get to the end of the mystery, the more absurd and unbelievable it gets. On the other hand, it actually doesn't descend into the grittiness of Las Vegas at other moments, which is what Ben Lyons held it up for, and where Erik rightly takes him down, starting with this quote:

Lyons: A great slice of authentic Vegas. This is not Oceans’ 11 with slick suits and gorgeous casinos or even a movie like 21 which tried to glorify Vegas.

And then this exchange:

LYONS: “This is modern Vegas. It shows you the good, the bad, the ugly. It really captures the feeling of sin city being tucked away in the desert.

MANK: Little bit of the despair.

LYONS: A LOT of the despair.

To which Erik responds:

Selling this idea that Phillips succeeded in making The Hangover worthy of the title of a “dark comedy” is profoundly absurd. How many down-and-out losers end up at MIKE TYSON’S MANSION??? How dark can a movie be when it channels Rain Man - and I say “channel” instead of “satirize” since Phillips doesn’t understand how the scene doesn’t come as funny but rather as something straight out of 21, which Lyons scoffed for glorifying Vegas - and has our characters go off on a blackjack streak that even William H. Macy in The Cooler couldn’t ice with the most golden hearted stripper/escort who looks like Heather Graham on one of their arms? Todd Phillips’ Vegas – the place where dreams go to die.

Click here to read the entire article

Criticwatch - The rules of the game

Erik Childress on this week's episode of At the Movies, in which we get an early review of The Hangover:

This week’s column is reflective of everything that’s wrong with the established laws of film criticism. Actually, the word “guidelines” would be more apropos than “laws” since the enforcement of such things is a rather arbitrary exercise. But I’m getting ahead of myself. A greater examination of these “rules” will be published at the end of this summer once the required research has come to fruition, so stay tuned for a very special report in August. Call this week’s entry a little preview though into everything that’s wrong with the stipulations we’re asked to follow.

You see there’s one review that the Bens did on the show this week and to comment in full I would be forced to break the understanding I have with our local publicists not to publish my thoughts before the release date . . . I, like so many of my colleagues are handcuffed into revealing our thoughts. Lest you think this is a full-on disagreement with the Bens, consider the fact that I saw a film several weeks ago that I believe to be one of the best films of the year. Maybe even THE best film to date. My review is written. The studio reps have seen it. The film opens next week in NY & LA. But since it doesn’t open until a week later in Chicago, I’ve been asked to withhold my review from public consumption until then. And, again, this is a film I believe may be the best film of 2009 so far. Makes perfect sense, don't it?

Read the entire article here.

Criticwatch - The Lyons Experience

Erik Childress at Criticwatch gives us the Ben Lyons quote of the week from At the Movies:

Lyons: And you really do lose yourself in these characters and yes it jumps around and the narrative can be a little difficult to follow. But when it does come together, there’s a sense of ahhhh, this is interesting. I see why now how it connects and I’m ready to move forward with the story.

Then Erik continues:

After finally running his positive/negative batting average to .500 on the year, it was a five “see it” show for Ben Lyons this week. Four of those “see it”s I’ve seen for myself and three of them are definite “skip it”s. I don’t play the “rent it” game. The only one worth anyone’s adult time is Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, which I’m actually shocked Lyons recommended after his fervent panning of last year’s Synecdoche, New York . . . He spends half his allotted time going through Soderbergh’s IMDB page and the other half-heartedly responding to Mank’s assertion that the fractured timeline hurt the film for him. Nothing to say about Sasha Grey’s performance. Nothing about it being set during the last Presidential election. Nothing to say about it’s a thinly-veiled guise for the world of art and film criticism. Those elements probably flew right over his head. He left it to Mank to get in talk about the film’s economical ironies. When people ask why we continue to give Lyons such a hard time, it’s for reasons like this. He doesn’t have the critical faculties necessary to discuss film. Even on the films that should be right up his little hypeboy alley – like Terminator Salvation.


Click here to read the rest of the story

Criticwatch - Well done, Ben Lyons

Erik Childress at Criticwatch has a definite advantage over me in discussing At the Movies, which is that he has actually seen all of the movies these guys are talking about while I am just playing catch-up. So when Ben Lyons throws out a quote like this about Rudo y Cursi, Erik is much better than I at realizing how wrong-headed it is:

Lyons: It’s a great little sports movie and what’s really cool about it is often times in sports films the actors can take you out of the moment because they aren’t accomplished athletes. Here they do a nice job of not even really showing the soccer. You don’t even really see it that much. But it’s, it’s really well done.

I heard Lyons say this and all I really got out of it was that the actors don't "take you out of the moment" with their crappy soccer playing. The "not even really showing the soccer" part just went over my head--obviously (I thought) he was saying the soccer they did show was "really well done." My biggest mistake, I suppose, was assuming that this was in fact a soccer movie, since that is what it looks like based on the trailers I have seen. But I guess I should have learned from Lyons' missteps to avoid making any assumptions about a movie based on the trailer, even seemingly benign ones.

Erik catches the real point, as he writes:

The sport in question is soccer and as you can see, according to Benny Boy, you don’t really need to show the sport in order to call it a sports movie. Did Will Ferrell’s lack of skills behind a race car deter in your viewing of Talladega Nights? How about Billy Blanks thumbing his nose at the rules of football by using a loaded pistol on the field of play in The Last Boy Scout? Or would you just simply not call them sports movies? My remembrance of the film, Rudo y Cursi, does include some vague references to the brothers playing soccer, but mostly that the storytelling was so poorly handled I didn’t know how to label it . . .

If Rudo y Cursi is a “great sports movie” then it better damn well either be about the sport in more than just a passing capacity or have some solid footage of the sport being played. Lyons is saying the film does a nice job of not showing the soccer. OK, so they’re covering up the fact that Bernal and Luna can’t play? Why is it “really cool” for a sports movie to not really show the actual sport that much?

There is more this week, including some exclusive info that Erik picked up outside of At the Movies. Click here to read the rest.

Criticwatch - Obsessed with fake positive images

Erik Childress at Criticwatch gives us the Ben Lyons Quote of the Week:

Lyons: "Say what you want about the movies of Tyler Perry or even the recently released, Obsessed, but those films, for the most part, at least project positive images of intelligent, powerful and sophisticated minority characters.”

Ben Lyons’ entire review of Next Day Air this week was in the running for the Quote of the Week. Such a veritable cornucopia of “what-did-he-say?” moments that it would have been easy to print one long run-on sentence in quotations. I refrained since doctors recommend smacking yourself in the head over a period of time rather than one after another. At least that’s what mine told me after I checked myself into Alexian Brothers directly after this week’s show.

Lyons giving a half-hearted compliment to his DJ buddy and future household name (his words), Idris Elba, while panning the film wasn’t that big of a deal. Basically saying Elba can do much better really isn’t saying much, although that’s really only held true of his TV work on The Wire and The Office. When I saw Obsessed a couple weeks back with my colleague, Peter Sobczynski, we agreed that at least Tyler Perry’s films, as abhorrent as they are, at least had a streak of trying to create a positive message. He fails miserably each time out, but at least he tries. Obsessed, on the other hand, has no redeeming positive values. Sure, Idris Elba’s character doesn’t go full Michael Douglas and sleep with the crazy white chick but no one would accuse ANY of the characters in the film of being “intelligent.” Certainly it’s the white women of the film (Ali Larter’s temp, Scout Taylor-Compton’s babysitter and Christine Lahti’s detective) who lead the pack in batshit stupid but I doubt anyone is looking towards Beyonce’s character (Elba’s original secretary who later became his housewife) who goes all "oh no you didn't" on Larter as a positive image.

Read the entire review here

Criticwatch - This is blowing Ben's mind

Erik Childress gives us the Ben Lyons quote of the week, regarding the release of Benjamin Button on DVD which includes, Lord help us, an extra 3 hours of footage:

Lyons: The way in which they constructed Pitt’s facial expressions to match them to the bodies of smaller actors working with essentially giant blue socks on their heads worked seamlessly, brilliantly in fact and will be what the movie is most remembered for.

Erik then continues:

That wasn’t just in reference to Lyons’ DVD pick of the week, but also his choice for the best film of 2008 – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And, according to him, it will be remembered for the [little people] who wore giant blue socks on their heads. Not for being an epic romance or a meditation on life and death. No. For the short people behind the scenes who couldn’t become one of the Blue Man Group. There’s no denying that Lyons is referring to the special effects involved in the film; effects that are, no doubt, impressive. But I have always believed the movie to be a massive failure and could make the same statement to deride how the film will ultimately be remembered. I could also say its just a bloated copy of Forrest Gump minus the heart, humor, sentiment and, well, curiosity. How could someone who loves the film so much to announce its better than any other film they saw in a calendar year not think of anything better than to say its special effects will be the reason people come back to it time and time again? Should we now fully expect Lyons to name Transformers 2 as the best film of 2009?

Read the entire Criticwatch Ben Lyons Quote of the Week here

A vacation from Ben Lyons

Sorry for the delay in posting today. I spent the weekend on vacation in Santa Cruz, CA, and had every intention of posting about the latest episode of At the Movies today. However, it appears that Santa Cruz residents--not only a major NorCal tourist spot but also the home of the University of California, Santa Cruz--do not have access to the show!

The hotel I stayed in has a very good cable package and even gets the same ABC channel 7--with the same local newscast from San Francisco--that I get at home in Oakland. But when At the Movies is supposed to appear, inexplicably, there is an infomercial. The local TV listings do not provide any other alternative time to watch the show. Apparently, there has not been a sufficient outcry from the locals to change this state of affairs, and you can imagine why.

I've left Santa Cruz as of Monday afternoon, but I have not yet made it home to my DVR as I am spending the day doing research at a library to prepare for my presentation on Charlie Chaplin later this summer. So I will leave you with Erik Childress' review of At the Movies.

We start with the quote of the week:

Lyons: "See for me a great documentary really exposes something you hadn’t seen before, you didn’t know existed.”

And then continue with Erik's commentary:

So it’s that simple, is it, Ben? You can like a documentary if you’ve seen the subject matter before. But if you haven’t it automatically achieves greatness. I see. Appropriate that last week’s juxtaposition of the old school vs. the new school (Lyons framed with Ben Affleck and Mank with Russell Crowe during their State of Play review) has given way to this week’s photo with Mank sitting in front of Robert Downey as a down-on-his-luck journalist and Lyons in front of the mentally disturbed character he’s desperately trying to assist.

Wow, I thought last week's juxtaposition was stark, now I'm wondering if the AtM staff aren't just messing with these guys. Good catch, Erik. But wait, it get's better, like when Lyons talks about the new movie Every Little Step:

Lyons: “There’s so many talking heads spread throughout the film that I never really bonded on any level with the dancers or producers that are profiled. It takes place in dimly-lit dance studios and dark and empty theaters.”

As opposed to those theater auditions we’ve all seen in front of a packed house, Junior? This guy prides himself on his knowledge of growing up in New York but doesn’t realize this wasn’t just some style choice on the part of the filmmakers?

LYONS: “I mention the dimly-lit theaters. It could have been shot a lot better…”

MANK: “BUT THAT’S WHERE YOU AUDITION! IN THESE SPARSE, BARREN ROOMS!”

LYONS: “But that’s not where you perform. You perform on stage in Broadway and I didn’t feel the sort of grand importance of what this was all about. Maybe it’s the fact that American Idol…we see people audition every night. The idea of auditioning is not really interesting in a documentary.”


Oh boy, looks like I missed a good one. Lyons not only has difficulty critiquing a movie but also has trouble discerning differences in time and space.

Read the rest of Erik's Ben Lyons Quote of the Week here.

Criticwatch - Ben Lyons finally asks for help

A snippet from this week's Ben Lyons Quote of the Week from Erik Childress at Criticwatch:

Lyons: "It’s the old school vs. the new school here which is really interesting. As much as it is a political movie, it’s a movie about journalism and how technology has affected journalism and the world of blogs and the internet and being credible in that world. And its really interesting to look at it from that angle.”

Yes, technology has expedited the world of journalism. Stories are released faster than ever. Or, at least, rumors travel faster. It’s certainly given credence to the old adage that everyone is a critic. All you need is a message board, blog or a website of your own creation. And if its fancy enough you could even wind up on Rotten Tomatoes. Before you throw the first stone though, at least most of those people (young and old) express their thoughts through a keyboard. Some, like our buddy Ben Lyons, have the benefit of just saying something on television and having a quote pulled for the website, likely by one of the show’s handlers. Who needs the Quote of the Week when you can take your pick from Rotten Tomatoes? If you really want the Ben Lyons Written Experience though, you can always follow him on Twitter. My personal favorite Tweet of his in the last few hours:

Lyons: “After a long weekend in Vegas, I'm back on my TWITTER grind people. Off to NYC to interview Beyonce & Idris Elba. Send questions?”

I guess he’s looking for some objective queries to ask his household name on a film that’s not even being screened for critics. When are journalists going to get it through their thick heads not to provide free press for films they won’t even bother to show us? Sorry, did I just call Ben Lyons a journalist?

Read the entire Ben Lyons Quote of the Week here

Criticwatch - A rage-fueled thrashing

Erik Childress at Criticwatch observes and reports on At the Movies, starting with a quote from Ben Lyons:

Lyons: “Often times, Mank, on the festival scene as you know, movies like this sorta get overhyped at Sundance or Toronto, these American stories of dysfunctional families, but here I think all this excitement surrounding Lymelife is deserved because this is a film that really builds to these awkward, uncomfortable places naturally, organically. It takes its time to establish the character dynamic and then you sorta take a breath as the audience, we say, this is really twisted and morbid these situations that they’re in.”

There Lyons goes again – paying attention to the hype from film festivals he couldn’t be bothered to see more than five movies at. And what’s his obsession with organics? Just two weeks ago the quote of the week focused on that very thing when he said that the script for Spinning Into Butter "kinda feels contrived and setup for certain power struggles instead of organically coming to that moment.” Then on The Cake Eaters he said, “the film establishes the intricate character dynamic with a guiding hand, not a forceful one, which I appreciate.” Nothing like recycling your indie review checklist, Lyons. But let’s take a breath for a moment and look at his Lymelife review a little more closely. It seems, according to him, that once that film established who its characters are he was able to take a moment and recognize that he was dealing with a film that he never expected would be so “twisted and morbid.” Imagine that! Lyons was able to organically come to that moment despite us having setup his less-than-intricate character dynamic (or entire lack of character.) And yet Observe and Report is stuck with a skip it. Way to look past your expectations, Junior.

Read the entire Ben Lyons Quote of the Week here

Criticwatch - The guy who blurbed me

Erik Childress breaks down this week's At the Movies:

Ben: Hey, aren't you Roger Moore?
Sean: Guess again, junior.Lyons was on my side of the fence [on rating the movie Gigantic] and you’ll notice that he wasn’t quick to label it as one of those Sundance-type movies. Probably because it never played at Sundance and Lyons wouldn’t know how to label it any other way, despite this week reviewing (or re-reviewing) three films on the show that played at the Park City festival. Just a few weeks ago he said Sunshine Cleaning was “a Sundance movie in every sense of the word…that quirky, American indie that’s looking to find moments of humor set against the backdrop of some dark, tragic moments.”What does he have to say to Mank in defense of Gigantic?

Lyons: “Zooey Deschanel and Paul Dano, sure, they play quirky indie characters and nobody does it better than them. And I think pairing them together really works. It’s the first time I’ve seen them on screen together and I really enjoy their chemistry and that’s the heart of this movie.”

Nobody does it better than them? From the female side, Deschanel has certainly done her share of independent quirk and few would argue that she hasn’t earned the right to be in the argument. With all due respect to Paul Dano though, Lyons has probably got Little Miss Sunshine (and ONLY Little Miss Sunshine on the brain) where referring to Dano’s indie resume. I somehow doubt he saw Weapons from Sundance a few years back or Explicit Ills which they couldn’t find time to review on the show just last month so they could do early reviews on I Love You, Man and Adventureland; Jesse Eisenberg being one of many who might have a beef (along with Sam Rockwell, Peter Sarsgaard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt) over Lyons’ “nobody does it better” designation. Kinda makes me feel sad for the rest.

Read the entire Criticwatch Ben Lyons Quote of the Week here

Criticwatch - Manufacturing dissent

Erik Childress from Criticwatch gives us the Ben Lyons Quote of the Week:

"The script kinda feels contrived and setup for certain power struggles instead of organically coming to that moment.”

Erik then continues:

So says Professor Lyons in the latest of many statements that we could easily apply to the chemistry between him and Mankiewicz just as well as the movie in question (in this case, The Education of Charlie Banks.) So goes a big part of the criticism of Junior & Mank At the Movies; maybe the second most discussed topic I’ve seen in message boards next to the usual “Ben Lyons is a smiling no-nothing idiot” stamps. It may not be as noticeable when they are in agreement, but when they are miles apart there is a scripted quality to their argument. At least on one side of it. How many times have I read that the viewers’ faith in Lyons’ opinion is lower than their willingness to trust Jim Cramer with their investments because they get the impression that he’s either cowtowing to the types of movies professional critics are SUPPOSED to like or that he’s too frickin’ stupid to understand or appreciate others. Take this week’s discussion of the vastly praised Goodbye Solo by acclaimed director Ramin Bahrani.

MANK: "They [Souleymane Sy Savane & Red West] share a small but powerful story that never really felt undertold. It’s hopeful and tragic but without any false Hollywood melodrama. I think definitely you should see Goodbye Solo."

LYONS: "I can’t praise enough the performance of Souleymane Sy Savane in this film. He is incredible to watch on screen. Really a beautiful performance but for me that was sort of the only thing to watch. I thought the film was incredibly stripped down, which is fine, but there’s nothing else to sort of help build it back up again. It’s simply watching him, his positive nature, he’s great to watch on film, but the film itself kind of left me uninterested."

MANK: "YOU WEREN’T INTERESTED TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS TO WILLIAM, WHAT HAPPENS TO RED WEST?"

Watching this exchange live on tape has all the feeling of a staged disagreement. While Lyons is going on, Mank sits there almost catatonic (perhaps imagining ways to strangle his partner).It’s not that far of a leap to imagine the director off screen going Holly Hunter on Mank and telling him “you’re outraged, you disagree, go after him NOW!” At which point Mank raises the volume level only to have Lyons explain that he was more interested in the “incredibly engaging” Solo than the “isolated and grumpy” William who didn’t really draw him into the story. Solo was the one he “wanted to watch.” It’s a good thing that Souleymane Sy Savane (you know, playing the main titular character) is on screen at least 95% of the time in the film.

Read the entire Criticwatch Ben Lyons Quote of the Week here.