DLizzle

Nice of Devin to return the favor from the Se7en episode and rail endlessly on sticking points that don't end up mattering. You can criticize "bad" camerawork, "bad" acting, "bad" dialogue, etc. but if it works, it works. It works in Boyz 'n the Hood. I understand it's difficult to have an hour long discussion about something that "just works" (I think Amy did a commendable job here), but I just don't believe that Devin sat cross-armed and unaffected by this movie; he's not a good enough actor. In addition, I am having trouble putting this point delicately, but I can imagine (or perhaps there has been a Canon episode one could reference) Devin having a very different reaction to a movie with similar and/or different-but-as-numerous problems to Boyz 'n the Hood if it was say, a dramatic slice of life tale of Italians in NYC.

I like that you did this and wish people would do it more often, but I feel like if there was a concerted effort to cross-reference everything every major critic writes or says, we could break the whole thing. On some level critics and readers/listeners alike are constantly having to willfully assess each work/review in a vacuum (but only sometimes, like when it serves us or when we feel like it, or something). I don't know how I feel about it other than thinking it's a weird phenomenon.

I don't think you're wrong that Devin does this in other cases, but in this Woody example, it seems that he's advocating at all times for not allowing real-life events to affect his view of an artist's work, which is consistent with his criticism of Amy here. He's in fact more like the opposite: so beholden to the art that it affects's his view of real-life events, which is arguably/probably more problematic for everyone EXCEPT a professional critic.

Interested to see how gleeful Devin is when he mentions this forum discussion next week.