Astute followers of my posts will note that I hold the AV Club in pretty high esteem when it comes to web zines. Quality content that's not afraid to sound a bit artsy, sometimes hoi polloi, without the full of itself attitude of the worst of Salon. It also offers some of the best interviews of today, in print or web form.
People familiar with me will also know that I like to criticize things. I don't consider myself a particularly harsh critic--I knowingly enjoy plenty of absolutely terrible things--but I do think that people need to take steps back and recognize the imperfections present in everything. Looking at the AV Club, it's easy to see that they have clear weaknesses: It's not as full of itself as Salon, but it's undoubtedly stained by the precociousness of hipsterdom, for example. This unfortunate stripe shows itself primarily in reviews. Undue respect is paid to non-entities like Wes Anderson on a fairly regular basis, and even more embarassing accolades could be found in the music reviews. Take your pick; the staff is filled with hipsters, making it easy to find someone with taste that you or anyone would find terrible.
But hipsterdom on the internet. . .it's kind of expected. From Pitchfork to the Blogosphere, everyone's got a niche, so I can't really consider the hipster slant of the AV Club a total misfire. I may not find it particularly agreeable, but it's validly targeting a demographic.
But yesterday they published a review that I find completely meritless, and it's a miss that I find so puzzling that I'm not sure it can be clearly defined as a hipster move. I am talking about their review of Oliver Stone's Wall Street. Before I get to the meat, let's take a looksie:
http://www.avclub.com/content/dvds/wall_streetAs a preamble, Oliver Stone has done a lot of work in what appears to be a calculated attempt to alienate both the audience and the critics. Everything since JFK has been somewhat problematic. Natural Born Killers and Nixon are both movies with some merit, but after that there's just been a cold grey waste. When it appeared as if his career could be saved with Any Given Sunday, he went to quick work to flush things with the one-twop punch of Alexander and World Trade Center. Oliver Stone, today, is a joke. That is accepted.
In short, the AV Club here gives one of Stone's best movies a B-, and in doing so they use a largely negative-sounding voice, so it's as if they want the grade to be lower, but realize they can't get away with it. Twenty years from now, even more, Wall Street will be mentioned when talking about fictional representations of the 80s. It is an iconic, well-made movie that is characteristic of the other Stone movies made in that period, like Talk Radio and Platoon. This was when his movies were clear and straightforward, as defining of their subjects as entries in a dictionary. Later on, in Born on the Fourth of July and JFK and NBK, things would get a little more ambiguous--intentionally, of course. But here, in this AV Club review, the reviewer paints this trait of the films of this Stone period as a negative.
Building on this point, the reviewer seems to have a lack of thematic knowledge on Stone in his introductory paragraph. I won't attack the arguer unless I am sure I am in the right on a point, and when the reviewer says, "That's Stone in a nutshell: Present the audience with the simplest, least sophisticated morality tale imaginable, then throw in a line like that, just in case the point wasn't clear," I
definitely know that I'm right. In short: this reviewer is someone that's seen Stone's reputation as of 2007, knows that he used to do better, but sees his current reputation as a good enough reason to downplay his best work.
In short? Wall Street is an A. The AV Club missed the mark on this one, oddly enough during the same week that they have spent fellating legitimate hack Wes Anderson. -1 AV Club. It's a good thing you offered up that great McDowell interview today.
