A sampling of the responses to my review of Tomb Raider:

Smith, Michael A.:

Just finished reading your review. Har de har har. I enjoy reading your reviews, although you sometimes come across a little arrogant and elitist ('course, you are a Mensa member from New York, what should I expect?), and it is with reviews like this that I remember why I visit your site. Thanks, and keep up the good work!

(What's wrong with being arrogant and elitist? Someone has to do it.--MAJ)

Rick Wynn:

Funniest. Review. Ever.

(Best. Fanmail. Ever.--MAJ)

Professor Moriarty:

Brava. You've just been added to my bookmark list and I've forwarded a link of your review to a number of friends. Nice piece of work, and dead-on accurate.

Tom McNeil:

I loved your Tomb Raider review (no, I haven't seen the movie, yet). I haven't laughed that hard in days. I sent a link to it to a bunch of my friends at a former employer. He said the whole IS department was rolling on the floor laughing.

Craig D. Cummings:

Your's was the first review of the movie I read, because I wanted to get the opinion of a woman on a movie that, no matter what they did to the script, would appeal more to a male audience (Okay, I'm not discounting the female Xena Warrior Princess demographic, but I'm not sure how big their numbers are).

My rant to the executive would be along the lines of "How is Anjelina Jolie such a big actress that she gets to decide that one of the signature features of the character she portrays (Laura Croft's POWDER BLUE tank top) is altered just because she only wears black? Huh? Who the heck is her agent? God? Who the heck was the casting director?" Sheesh! Okay, I thought it was a bit silly at the time, but the character of Laura Croft was featured in several magazines for her fashion.

I've never played any of the games myself, even though I'm a computer gamer, so I don't know if I'll go to see this movie unless there's nothing else playing at the $2.00 theater that I'd rather see.

Thanks for the review. As an old computer gamer I got a kick out of the format. I know some of the people who read it will not know why you did it that way.

Sam763@aol.com:

You are the Best Critic in the World Your word is the absolute truth! I just read you're brilliant Tomb Raider Review, and it is one of your best.

Richard Gazley:

I just wanted to say I loved your review of Tomb Raider. Fortunately I paid a matinee price so I only felt half as sodomized as you did. There was no tension in the film at all, I think that maybe having Lara actually get hurt during her fights might have made things a little less boring. Oooooo the English speaking Cambodian monk has her drink a magical healing tea, which miraculously heals the tiny shaving nick on her arm...

Maybe if she had been at deaths door from the fight with the CGI statues there would have been a purpose to that whole sequence...as it was it was just more pointless crap.

Is it just me or have scripts gotten dumber in the past few years...

Anyways, keep up the excellent work, you are always a joy to read.

David W. Strauss:

My lover and I have been avid followers of your column for more than a year. We have found, to our pleasure, that even when we disagree with your opinion, we still find that your writing is upbeat, sharp, clever, sly, insightful, fair-minded, and most unusually ingenious, given the level of writing on most bulletin boards today (how can one mis-spell "idyot"?)

Anyhoo, we just read your review of Tomb Raider and I, for one, being a die-hard "Zork" fan from the early eighties, was so impressed by your review's STRUCTURE, with the appropriately witless and inane responses that Zork gave - i.e. "I don't see an executive here." or "You can't pull the executive." It was brilliant wordsmith work that you worked your review (however negative - and it should be stated here that we haven't seen Tomb Raider and probably won't be beating down any theater doors - bleckkk) into the style of an old-time computer game (oxymoron?) and I, for one, am proud to be a follower of your literary work.

Please keep up the wonderful effort. Your website is an inspiration to movie-watchers - you're one of the few critics who not only says "I didn't like the movie" but actually has the guts and standards to venture to say how and WHY your opinion holds sway.

Thank you for your honesty, MaryAnn. We enjoy your writing very much, and if we don't agree with you, you're still a hell of a writer. Thanks, again.

Steve Linberg:

Just wanted to say that your Tomb Raider review was the most brilliant movie review I've ever read, anywhere, hands down.

Bonnie Black:

hilarious, bitter and brilliant!

Jim Scarborough:

Thank you! I nearly fell on the floor reading your Tomb Raider review! It was hilarious! Fantastic.

Adam MacKay-Smith:

bravo me lady. I never read movie reviews for multiple reasons, but you pulled me into your Tomb Raider tale and left me with the memory of the greatest review I have ever read. Let your brain take a bow. You rule and thank you.

Michael Dean:

Awesome.

X-Man EDS:

i read and ABSOLUTELY LOVED your review of Tomb Raider! i really really enjoyed it! good reference to Clockwork Orange. and there was that other reference there, too; that conceit, that style; a certain je ne sais quoi...

Meg Wood:

Oh man, MaryAnn, that was sheer GENIUS. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard!

McNeill L Michael Capt SMC/XRII:

That was probably the best review of a sorry-ass movie I've ever seen. Have you seen the U2 video, however? It is much better than the movie...funny, cool FX, a more sensible plot, and set to better music! Movie, 1 star...tops. Video...4 Stars!

Maurice Depestre:

right on target! no redemption left. so sad...

Nigel Perels:

Just a short note to say that your Tomb Raider review was absolutely inspired - very funny indeed!

(FYI: I didn't get a single piece of hate mail or even a civil detracting opinion regarding this review. Must be a first.--MAJ)

Alfred B Cheng writes:

Re: Final Fantasy

Just to let you know, sarcasm does not make a film review good.

In one line, you could have summarized the films flaws -- animation not quite realistic as humans, characters cliched. Then, maybe you could have said something that the entire world came into the movie already knowing.

I dunno. I mean, an opinion is a valuable thing, but that was just a crappy movie review. Hell, i didn't like the movie either, but surely something more valuable could have been said. I suppose it bothers me when someone just takes delight in creating pretty sounding phrases that have no function other than to sound clever. Why do you review movies? To get off, or because you think its something worth doing?

The Flick Filosopher responds:

If you want to read movie reviews that are as boring as the films they're discussing, you've got plenty of other options on the Net.

If you think my review of Final Fantasy was nothing more than an attempt to sound clever, then you missed the point of the review. It is not merely a discussion of the film but a condemnation of the Hollywood factory system that pumps out junk movies starring "actors" who are little better than mannequins, even when they are actually human. It was a slap to a way of thinking in the movie industry that believes that audiences will be wowed by special effects at the expense of story and character.

If you're incapable of reading subtext into written material, I again refer you to 95 percent of the other movie critics online. Better yet, read reviews in your local paper. They'll spell everything out for you.

Alfred B Cheng replies:

This is dangerously close to becoming a dialogue, so i'll be brief.

Simply put. The subtext, irony, and condemnation of Hollywood is all there -- what is used for, however, is akin to a 10-year old's needling of a fellow classmate. The platform that was used for the review wasn't "the movie that shows how the factory system that is hollywood kills intelligent film" but "this film sucks. Here's how i dismiess the entire picture".

I don't really think that's even too debatable, if you're honest with yourself. You don't discuss a single merit to the film, of which it has several. Call me incapable of reading subtext -- i'm afraid that after 4 years of studying cultural anthropology, my wits have grown dim. But judge the opinion on its own.

The Flick Filosopher responds:

Final Fantasy is eminently dismissable. So I dismissed it. Lousy actors in a film with no heart or soul will always be lousy actors in a film with no heart or soul, whether they and it are live action or animated. I see no reason to praise Final Fantasy for using all that time, money, computing power, and human resources to create a film that is, in the end, simply not worth seeing, no matter how "impressive" everyone else seems to think the CGI is.

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