My version of crying is not all-out weeping but tearing up some and getting an overwhelimg the-universe-really-is-like-that feeling. So the movies that get me going are ones that have endings that mirror the imperfection and melancholy of real life. Storybook endings don't get me. The movies that do are sometimes embarrassing. The first ROCKY movie, for example, gets me every time because

I love Martin Balsam. Only person who can say he was in both Breakfast at Tiffany's and St. Elmo's Fire.

There's a gaping hole on Twitter where Michael's goofy jokes and big heart were.

Awful news.

There's also a difference between a talented person who rests on laurels and/or gets lazy (Kevin Smith) and someone who never had it to begin with. Shamaylan, to me, is the latter. The fact that The Sixth Sense is such a good movie seems almost like an accident when you look (if you dare) at everything else he's done.

There should be a Stonecutters-type secret society of directors who started as great and progressively got worse. The Downhill Club. (Shamaylan's the chairman.)

I have a soft spot in my heart for those guys. It's like someone whose greatest achievements were in high school, and the rest of his life is just a succession of failures.

Re: Marcellus Wallace's soul. This is from Snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/pulpfiction.asp

Lots of people who will end up buying a ticket to Ep8--i.e. the general public--probably don't know it's happening at this time. Some non-movie-fanatics may have seen an article here or there, but many people just don't interact with the media sources in which such news runs in a constant stream.

When the trailers and TV spots and billboards drop, that's when they'll know.

I was also the only person who laughed at that part in my BOYHOOD screening. I sensed people being like "Why is he laughing so hard?" No clue.

Yeah, you never know what might be appreciated or viewed as significant by people in the future.

Emily Dickinson's poems weren't widely read in her lifetime. They were just papers in her house. Later, people were like, "Oh hey, this woman was a genius. How 'bout that?" Now she's required reading in every American poetry course.

So you never know. I'd err on the side of saving shit if you can.

Well if that's your argument, then we agree entirely. I expressed that very view in the chat during the recording. (I put it forward as a view, not an incontrovertible law of the universe, but there you go.)

Well now if you're going to argue that your view simply is self-evidently true, all I can say is that I don't think it is. From what I can detect, what's self-evident is that it's not self-evident. As I say, critics have debated the role of the critic and the job of the critic since forever. Good critics have taken different positions, no ministry of film criticism in existence, etc. Ask ten different professional critics what they understand their job to be, or what their publication mandates as their job description, and, I would wager, you get ten different answers.

My point about job descriptions is that I haven't seen critic job descriptions that read in the stark terms you indicate. The job description varies publication to publication, is what I've seen. And when I've heard pro critics opine on the role of the critic, I don't believe I've heard many characterize their job the way you do. That's why I asked if you have.

If you're describing what your personal view of things is, it's not. Zarban's movie magazine jolly well should give its critics a clear mandate. When president Obama appoints Zarban Secretary of Health and Human Film Criticism, you can standardize these rules for all in the field. Until then, these precepts are your own (perfectly reasonable and uncontroversial) philosophy of what criticism should do. Clearly others approach the subject slightly differently. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

Well the real problem is there's no Ministry of Film Criticism that can hand down hard-and-fast definitions of these terms or settle disputes when gray areas arise. What is and isn't criticism, what the role of the critic is, etc., have always been exactly the questions critics have debated. Every critics' panel discussion I've ever been to addresses these exact questions. This conversation is as old as criticism itself.

Now technology has complicated these questions, but technology has always complicated these questions. (Watch Life Itself: S & E got shit from Richard Corliss and others for doing criticism on TV.) Since there is no ministry for film criticism that can just define these things by fiat, the prerequisite for debating these questions should be for everyone to first to acknowledge that to some extent these distinctions are subjective, informed by one's personal philosophy on art and art criticism. We can argue for our philosophy, beginning sentences with qualifiers like "To my mind" and such, but saying criticism absolutely IS this or a critic's job absolutely IS that, full stop (as if it were just a matter objective fact, binding on everyone without exception), isn't doing much because no critic is under any obligation to accept someone else's definitions for her own work. It's an ongoing conversation that will continue to evolve as the times do. It's not a discussion in which someone can just say "This is what it is, Q.E.D." Never has been.

My understanding is that a true troll is someone who says what he or she says specifically to fuck with people and, indeed, get a reaction. It seems to me such a person may or may not be saying something she actually believes.

Not really relevant here, but I've noticed people labeling someone else a troll simply because the person is saying something provacative that they disagree with. I've been called a "left wing troll" for defending the health care law in what were pretty mild terms. I wasn't trolling, but it was an easy out for the other guy to just pathologize me in that way--I was "just a troll" who could be therefore dismissed. The word itself became an excuse to bail on an argument the person was (if I may say so) not winning. Again, not really relevant to OP, but there ya go.

Ebert famously called Armond White a troll, which I didn't agree with not because it was mean but because I felt it was inaccurate.  (I think Armond's whole thing he does is far more complicated, and often way more fucked up and mean spirited, than your average everyday troll.)