PositiveMetroactive...Hamrah practices the kind of acid criticism that divines the difference between gold and iron pyrite. His work favors acute observation over the roster of what happened to whom during the course of a movie. Hamrah is not a fanatic, favoring both Uncle Buck and Uncle Boonmee, Who Can Remember His Past Lives. He can be intransigent, as when he refuses to review Life of Pi on the grounds that they wouldn\'t let him in the theater with the expensive cup of coffee he had just brought ... But as was said of the critic\'s critic Manny Farber, you learn something even when Hamrah is beating up a movie you like ... Today, it\'s quite hard to tell where the political spectacle begins and the cinematic spectacle ends. But pull threads as deftly as Hamrah does, and the whole ugly tapestry falls apart.
