Zarban wrote:No film critic regularly writes the kind of things the WAYDM panel says.
If you're a good critic, sure you can.
Here's a randomly selected example: A.O. Scott's review of Closed Curtain.
That's a good review. Here is the sum total of analysis in it (that is, the author's interpretation of the film rather than facts from the press kit or recounting of the plot):
This could be the start of a mystery.
Some of that mixture of defiance and whimsy is present ... but it is also edged with melancholy and fatigue.
“Closed Curtain,” as its title suggests, draws on theater as well as film for inspiration.
The outside world intrudes...
Then again: She might be a figment of his imagination, unless both of them are figments of the directors’. These things might both be true...
“Closed Curtain” [unfolds] in an intriguing limbo of deniability, subverting both its own existence and its officially mandated nonexistence. (This actually makes sense in context; I'm not suggesting Scott is a bad writer.)
For the viewer, this conundrum is both troubling and amusing. On one level, the film ... is a mischievous, Pirandellian entertainment. It is also an allegory, dark but not despairing, of the creative spirit under political pressure, and of the ways the imagination can be both a refuge and a place of confinement.
Notice how Scott does not actually answer any of the questions he raises. Is this film a mystery? Are some of the characters just figments of another's imagination? Scott doesn't hazard a guess, not that analysis MUST provide a definitive answer to any questions the film raises, but it usually suggests one.
EDIT: On second thought, some of that probably IS from the press kit.