Task: Sentiment Analysis
Input (English): A talented writer who's wrong more often than right... . Reading John Simon's latest compilation of film reviews begs the question, does one have to be "right" to be a great critic or can simply writing cleverly and rigorously in defense of a basically incorrect critical assessment suffice?  What I have always admired about Mr. Simon is his unflappable way of sticking to his own view irregardless of the popular/critical consensus surrounding him.  Yet Stanley Kauffmann tended to give negative notices to many of the same films as Simon while writing more sympathetically, insightfully and fairly about the works, so where does that leave Simon?  Out in the cold I'm afraid.  Reading this latest Simon book is exasperating as he snootily dismisses one great film after another (Au Revoir Les Enfants, Saving Private Ryan, etc.)  I finally came to the consensus that however good a writer he is, he is simply too far off the critical mark...too often.      Simon has a famous reputation for been gratuitously nasty toward female actresses whom he doesn't care for the looks of and that continues in this collection.  As another reviewer notes, this latest collection also appears to solidify his reputation for being a homophobe too.  Going all the way back to his review of Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet in 1968 (where he accuses the director of being a [...] because of the nude love scenes) to his recent review of My Own Private Idaho which he quickly dismisses as a "homosexual fantasy" his reviews have had a nasty homophobic edge to them, something Stanley Kauffmann, Pauline Kael or Roger Ebert's writings have never had.  And the fact that he liked Outrageous! (about a drag queen) back in 1978 and Savage Nights (about a bisexual HIV+ Frenchman) in the 1980's doesn't absolve him in my mind for all the nasty remarks he's voiced elsewhere over the years regarding "homosexuals" (he never uses the word gay, it's always "homosexuals".      Simon's writing is just as caustic and technically proficient as always (and he still loves providing untranslated foreign quotes) but all that effort is at the expense of all too often unappreciative and skewed critical views.  For my money, the essential critics remain Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert, Stanley Kauffmann and David Thomson, soon to be joined by Anthony Lane of The New Yorker
Output (English): NEG