Anthony Lane on a new book about SF movies released in the summer of 1982:
Such is Nashawaty’s command of superlatives that he merits a sci-fi yarn of his own. “The Optimizer,” perhaps. Or “The Hyphenator.” Thus, “Star Wars” is lauded as “a true once-in-a-generation pop-culture juggernaut,” while the triumph of “The Wrath of Khan” was to turn “a cash-grab sequel into a franchise-resuscitating classic.” Far from scorning this excitable tic, I find it both judicious and contagious; the book’s parsing of “Halloween” as “a babysitter-in-peril slashterpiece” is hard to quibble with, and I wonder what other paragons of the medium would profit from so crisp a paraphrase. Ingmar Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers”? A crimson-tinged, don’t-hold-back Scandi cancerthon. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc”? A chat-free high-stakes teen roast. Once you slip into the habit, you can’t stop.
I’m gonna have some fun with this game.