God bless you, Meathead

Among the reigning generation of film critics, there seems to be some agreement that great American movies from the classical or golden age (1920s-1940s), movies like Citizen Kane, Gone With the Wind, and The Wizard of Oz, were technically groundbreaking in their day but are only quaint and rarely affecting to the modern audience; that great American movies from "new Hollywood" or silver or "post-classical" age (1960s-1970s), movies like Taxi Driver, The Graduate, and The Godfather, represent the best the art has to offer; and that, with the rise of the blockbuster (usually critics point to Jaws as the turning point), film in this country took a nosedive, and great American movies come only from independent studios, if ever.

While the predominance of this idea may have some connection to a real decline in the art, I suspect that it owes much to three effects of timing: first, most of the reigning film critics I'm referring to came of age during the 1960s-1970s, and it's natural that they would favor movies from those decades; second, the 1980s saw the rise of the home video, which may have demystified subsequent films; and third, "new Hollywood" roughly coincides with the movement of film theory into academia, where taste becomes canon, where thought goes to die. (For the record: I am talking about literary academia, not Sweatshirt's.)

Small wonder, then, that directors from the 1980s get shortchanged. Look at Rob Reiner. He never gets mentioned when people talk about great filmmakers, but in just four years he directed Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, and When Harry Met Sally. Never mind his abysmal recent projects: he produced three touchstones for my generation, and I think he deserves our love.