Here's one example: Back in 1993, I went to see Jane Campion's "The Piano" (a piece that's not available online, thank God) at a 10 a.m. screening and had to violently pinch myself to keep from dozing off. This was no reflection on the film, which was excellent, but of the fact that I'd been up late drinking the night before and had arrived at the screening after a pancake breakfast. I kept drifting off during the middle part and there were sections of the narrative that were a blur when I had to compose the piece, and because this was the pre-Internet era, there was no easy way to check the details. Because it was the only screening of the film prior to its release in Dallas, I had to write the piece anyway. I don't think the review was worthless, but it certainly was more vague than I would have liked, and when I read it later I was embarrassed by how weak it was.



There have been other examples of that sort of thing happening throughout my career: I'm late to a screening and have to ask somebody what happened in the first ten or even twenty minutes, or go to another screening and watch the part I missed and leave, which fills in the gap but doesn't really give a complete picture, so to speak, because the story is fragmented in my mind.



My side projects have also affected my critical judgment. I now realize that a lot of my reviews of low-budget films shot on video in the mid-aughts were colored by the fact that I'd produced one such movie and directed another. I was slightly more sympathetic to films in the vein of what I'd done myself, and slightly harder on movies in a vein that were entirely unlike anything it would've occurred to me to do. I don't think I've ever panned a film because it reminded me of a story I wrote in school, or because the actress in it reminded me an ex-girlfriend, but these things fall under the realm of the subjective, so I can't say for sure. I might make one claim about a review and my therapist might make another.



Scheduling and endurance are factors as well. I've been a bit harsher on movies that were not screened for critics in time for my deadline, that I had to go see at 11 a.m. on a Friday and turn around immediately, not because I'm trying to teach anyone a lesson, but because when you have to work under less-than-ideal conditions, it's hard to keep a trace of resentment from creeping into the prose (sometimes more than a trace). And I've said publicly many times that I feel sorry for filmmakers whose work is screened during the awards season, when releases pile up in anticipation of critics' groups voting and reviewers sometimes have to see three or even four films in a day. The film that screens first on a day like that is sure to get a more welcoming reception (provided the critic is a morning person!) than the film that screens third or fourth, because by the time the 8 p.m. screening rolls around, there's a good chance that the critic has been rushing all over town all day and might not have had a chance to eat anything, or even take a proper bathroom break. When you're on your twelfth film in four days sometimes you judge that film with a jaundiced eye, not because it deserves it, but because by that point you're sick of movies.

