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Chris Garcia: The Austin-American Statesman used to have an awful "critic" by the name of Ann Hornaday. One day she moved to some other unfortunate city (Baltimore, I think), and the Austinites rejoiced... for a few months. That is when Garcia stepped in, and ruined the fun again. A self-proclaimed fan of Pauline Kael, Garcia started with a couple of reviews of summer flicks, back in 1998. Problem was, he started out by reviewing both Deep Impact and Godzilla without really talking about those films but instead ranting about how much he hated Independence Day. He then proceeded to write several strange reviews, where one would wonder what the heck he is smoking, and if he actually saw the movie he's talking about, because he would hardly describe the films in question. Regardless of whether the films were good or bad, his appreciations are horrible. Want examples? "The General's Daughter is just plain mysogionistic trash that is any fratboy's wet dream.", quote. Another one: "Being John Malkovich is a deadpan promenade through fashionable weirdness that you wish were more exhilaratingly kooky than it is". Don't ask. Yet another one: "Shindler's List, upon second viewing, plays more like a well made TV movie." Okay, a final one: "Johnny Depp's bumbling performance in Sleepy Hollow resonates much of his Ed Wood performance".
He seems to hate or under appreciate any film that was not made in 1939, 1979, by Robert Altman, or is not Intolerance (not even Kubrick films). On a scale of * to **** he gave no film whatsoever in 1998 a **** rating, and only gave out three ***1/2 ratings, which were to Armageddon, the documentary Hands on a Hard Body, and Rushmore (which he wrote a very strange review about that wanted to sound like a poem about the film's artistic qualities). And did he ever start a campaign against Saving Private Ryan, which just led to his embarrassment and a large fight with the public, which he lost and led to his finally conceding a few graces and a slightly higher rating to the film. At the beginning of 1999 he switched to a rating system with only the ratings of *, **, ***, ****, *****, which has just meant that no film has received the 5-star rating, and only a few the **** rating (somebody apparently did not do his math well when translating one system to the other). All other films except for those 3 or 4 have received a rating between * and ***, which has only led to his lack of credibility (and trust me, those *** films have been few as well).
[update: perhaps giving in to pressure, Garcia at last gave a film 5 stars, American Beauty, and followed it with a 4 star review of Three Kings. However, after that he went back into regular underrating mode.]
As if wanting to exemplify the above, his list of top ten movies of 1990 only included 3 or 4 movies that he had given the top rating to. Is Mr. Garcia trying to tell us that there have been only 3 or 4 excellent movies in the 90s? What a joke...
To add insult to injury, the guy has no sense of humor. Among the things he has found as completely unfunny are Animal House, Mr. Show, and the films of Kevin Smith (particularly Dogma, in which he commented that Jay and Silent Bob are the least funny comedic pair in the history of film), among many other examples which I have managed to dislodge from my brain, fortunately. Yet he thought Cookie's Fortune was hilarious. Riiiiight...
Another major problem is that Garcia is not a good writer. He always starts his reviews by stating something obvious or that is rather common knowledge (many times incorrectly). Then he either barely touches what the film is about, or he goes into major spoiler mode. And then he attempts to make a concluding paragraph (if he remembers to!) where he inserts the oddest commentary possible. Interspersed through this are his strange assessments which interrupt the flow of whatever he's trying to say. Of course, in attempt to disguise his problems in assessing a film and writing about it, and to furthermore attempt to embellish his writings to sound like a cultured man (and rather artsy), the man fills each sentence with as many adjectives possible. But not any adjectives, no, no, no! He struggles to find either through a thesaurus or an SAT training book the most obscure and complicated synonyms possible of whatever word he was going to use. He would be able to pull it off if it were not that the words come out too forced, destroying his attempted illusion.
The only good thing I can say about him is that he's not a bad film columnist, even if he's bad critic. However, what he writes in his columns is unoriginal, nothing deep nor really informational, and does not go beyond the level that you would find in some of the slightly better posters at sites like ain't-it-cool-news or Mr. Cranky.
In fact, I accuse the Austin-American Statesman of purposely searching for people to underrate or bomb every movie possible. First off, Garcia and the other critics of the paper do not review more than 3 movies a week. For the other movies out, the paper just places reviews of the films that label them as awful, usually written by some guy named Stephen (Holden, Cox, or Steve Murray). And Garcia's replacing Hornaday does not sound like a coincidence. Heck, the music critics and the TV critics that they have aren't any better... Or perhaps it has to do with the newspapers in Austin. The "competition" is the Austin Chronicle, which prides itself as being "alternative", is only slightly better, but still pretty bad. As someone pointed out to me, "any film about homosexuality immediately gets praised by them". And there are more bones to pick. The Daily Texan, a student newspaper, seems to hire mostly the 5 stupidest film and music critics out of 49,000 students. Their lowest point came when some guy spent 2/3 of his review of What Dreams May Come laughing in Beavis & Butthead style at how it sounded like a porno flick title (witty! NOT!). There ARE good critics in Austin, but they all seem to be on the web...
P.M.-