I haven’t seen the new Pirates of the Caribbean film, but my friend Ali Arikan’s review/refusal-to-review of it, colorfully entitled “A Fountain of Maggots,” is more than just one of the funniest pieces of film writing I’ve read this year, it’s actually a genuinely touching cri de coeur that rebels against a very specific kind of modern-day event movie. Here’s a sample quote:
One of the worst films of all time, On Stranger Tides has absolutely and utterly no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I wanted to say it's like watching an enema, but even that's a good thing: you get rid of the filth…It's as if you were cloned, and the clones shared the same consciousness, and then were turned into the human centipede, but instead of three, this centipede is endless. It's not so much pain, though there's that, too, but, instead, nausea.
