In his notes, the iconic French director Robert Bresson tried to distill exactly what it was that made a good movie — or maybe more exactly, what it means for a movie to be good.
“The greater the success,” he wrote, “the closer it verges upon failure.”
A few decades later, American author Robert Warshow would lay out his approach to film criticism in contrast to how many thought it should be done. Instead of watching a movie as a piece of art to be deciphered and evaluated as a reflection of society, it was all about the “immediate experience.” Forget how much
