Kenneth Turan is not a great movie critic. He approaches his work with respect and dignity, and he has solid taste in movies. But his reviews in the Los Angeles Times are flat; they offer decent basic analysis, but rarely provide any notable or interesting insight. He is a useful guide to new movies on a week to week basis, but he is purely run-of-the-mill. His writing has no special draw to it, lacking the generous warmth and history of Roger Ebert or the cutting versatility and wonderful voice of the New York Times' A.O. Scott.
So it is inevitable that Turan's new book would flounder similarly. In \Never Coming to a Theater Near You,"" Turan presents the same matter-of-fact writing with a concept that tries and fails to justify its own existence. The premise of the book is that most people do not get to see some of the movies Turan finds to be the most fulfilling, so he tries to expose them. But while he seem selfless and genuine in this goal from cover to cover, Turan never shows the focus or sense of his audience that a project like this would demand.
What drives the book's futility is its bizarre selection of movies. Turan refuses to commit to any clear and consistent set of criteria, which gives him free license to not make sense. Can ""Das Boot,"" ""Touch of Evil"" and ""A Streetcar Named Desire"" really be considered unseen classics? Sure, ""Touch of Evil"" flopped when it was first released, but history has corrected itself, as the Orson Welles film has become one of the most celebrated works from arguably the most celebrated American director. Meanwhile, the other two were long ago deemed precedent-setting classics. Turan refers to ""Streetcar"" as ""surprisingly forgotten."" By whom?
Meanwhile, the newer movies chronicled share little common ground and are often widely known. The Academy Awards and the American movie-going public have already showered recognition on ""Whale Rider,"" but Turan seems oblivious. He writes about movies like ""High Fidelity"" that have big followings and were profitable in the first place. He writes about ""Bottle Rocket,"" which has become retroactively famous because of the subsequent fame for director Wes Anderson and stars Luke and Owen Wilson.
The worst is when Turan writes about ""Groundhog Day,"" which grossed more than $70 million when it was released and then went on to become one of the most popularly shown movies on cable TV of the last decade. Who has not seen it or heard of it? And when he writes about documentaries, Turan often writes about the very most famous recent offerings, like ""Lost in La Mancha"" or ""Spellbound.""
Turan is a respectable movie critic when it comes to new releases, but ""Never Coming to a Theater Near You"" is embarrassing. For all his workmanlike writing, he condescends to his audience by writing like he is the only movie critic ever to have existed. The book refers to itself as ""A Celebration of a Certain Kind of Movie,"" but that ""certain kind"" seems to be an arbitrary list of movies he likes.
""Never Coming to a Theater Near You,"" by Kenneth Turan, is released by Public Affairs Books.
