"The Lying, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe"

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but if you’re looking for a reason to subscribe to the New Yorker, look no further than Anthony Lane. The smartest, wittiest critic out there, Lane’s reviews drip with wit and, almost as importantly, knowledge about the film industry and the history of cinema. Truly an amazing writer. His take on Sex and the City is, needless to say, a must-read:

“When Samantha couldn’t get off, she got things,” Carrie says. Look at the beam in your own eye, sister. Mr. Big not only buys her a penthouse apartment (“I got it”), he offers to customize the space for her shoes and other fetishes. “I can build you a better closet,” he says, as if that were a binding condition of their sexual harmony: if he builds it, she will come. The creepiest aspect of this sequence was the sound that rose from the audience as he displayed the finished closet: gasps, fluttering moans, and, beside me, two women applauding. The tactic here is basically pornographic—arouse the viewer with image upon image of what lies just beyond her reach—and the film makes feeble attempts to rein it in.

The headline to this post is Lane’s suggested subtitle for the movie; a better one I cannot imagine.