In the November 12 issue of The New Yorker, film critic Anthony Lane reviews both The Front Runner, a Gary Hart biopic starring Hugh Jackman, and Outlaw King, a Scottish period piece starring Chris Pine. (Link here, subscription required.) Lane is impressed with neither film.
What surprised me about Lane’s Outlaw King review is that the film is currently streaming on Netflix. “I know that the weeks before Thanksgiving are grim ones for moviegoers,” I thought, “but have Lane’s standards dipped so low that he won’t even venture out to the multiplex before his triptofan hangover recedes?”
Whether or not the definition of “movie” includes “you have to schlep to the theater” is an issue of some importance to me, so I was getting riled up and ready to write more of a diatribe here… until I thought to check on Atom Tickets to see if the movie is actually in theaters anywhere.
It is playing in Los Angeles and New York… the only two cities that matter to people like Lane… and I’m not even sure he’d agree about Los Angeles.
Another day, I’ll have more to say about whether a movie that only shows at film festivals and two cities counts as a movie, and I’m frankly surprised that Lane neglected to mention the limited distribution.
For the moment, though, I’d like simply to add “movie” to the list of tectonically-shifting terms: Facebook has ruined the word “friend,” Twitter has ruined “follow,” Amazon has ruined “book,” and now Netflix is doing its damndest to ruin “movie.”
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