Anthony Lane on Con Air—

“Advance word on Con Air said that it was all about an airplane with an unusually dangerous and potentially lethal load. Big deal. You should try the lunches they serve out of Newark. Compared with the chicken napalm I ate on my last flight, the men in Con Air are about as dangerous as balloons.”

Anthony Lane on The Bridges of Madison County—

“I got my copy at the airport, behind a guy who was buying Playboy’s Book of Lingerie, and I think he had the better deal. He certainly looked happy with his purchase, whereas I had to ask for a paper bag.”

Anthony Lane on Martha Stewart—

“Super-skilled, free of fear, the last word in human efficiency, Martha Stewart is the woman who convinced a million Americans that they have the time, the means, the right, and—damn it—the duty to pipe a little squirt of soft cheese into the middle of a snow pea, and to continue piping until there are ‘fifty to sixty’ stuffed peas raring to go.”

For ten years, Anthony Lane has delighted New Yorker readers with his film reviews, book reviews, and profiles that range from Buster Keaton to Vladimir Nabokov to Ernest Shackleton. Nobody’s Perfect is an unforgettable collection of Lane’s trademark wit, satire, and insight that will satisfy both the long addicted and the not so familiar.

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“Lane writes the way Fred Astaire danced; his sentences and paragraphs are a sublime, rhythmic concoction of glide and snap, lightness and sting.” –The New York Times Book Review

“Anthony Lane has energy, wit, taste, learning, and (most signally) elegance of mind.” —Martin Amis

“A pure pleasure to read.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review

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Introduction

MOVIES

Indecent Proposal
Un Coeur en Hiver
Sleepless in Seattle
Poetic Justice
The Fugitive
Tito and Me
The Age of Innocence
Divertimento
Dazed and Confused
It’s All True
The Remains of the Day
Three Colors: Blue
Naked
Heaven and Earth
Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould
The Blue Kite
Speed
Wolf
Forrest Gump
Pulp Fiction
The Last Seduction
Bullets Over Broadway
Three Colors: Red
Tom and Viv
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
The Madness of King George
Before Sunrise
Shallow Grave
Priest
Don Juan DeMarco
Burnt by the Sun
Braveheart
The Bridges of Madison County
First Knight
Nine Months
The Usual Suspects
Persuasion
Showgirls
The Scarlet Letter
French Twist
Sgt. Bilko
Stealing Beauty
Emma and Kingpin
Beyond the Clouds
The English Patient
Star Trek: First Contact
Crash
The Saint
Con Air
Men in Black, Batman & Robin, and Speed 2
Contact
Mrs. Brown
L.A. Confidential
Titanic
Nil by Mouth
Lolita
Twilight
The Spanish Prisoner
Deep Impact
Godzilla
The Truman Show
Out of Sight
The Thief
Saving Private Ryan
Halloween H2O
Ronin
Love Is the Devil
Gods and Monsters
Celebrity
Meet Joe Black
Rushmore
The Thin Red Line
The Prince of Egypt
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
The Dreamlife of Angels
The Mummy
The Phantom Menace
Notting Hill
Bowfinger
West Beirut
Anywhere but Here
The World Is not Enough
Liberty Heights
The Talented Mr. Ripley
American Psycho
Gladiator
Mission: Impossible 2
Time Regained
The Nutty Professor 2
Dancer in the Dark
The Yards
Charlie’s Angels
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Snatch
Hannibal
Pollock
Under the Sand
Pearl Harbor
Apocalypse Now Redux
Together

BOOKS

Best-sellers I
Sex Books
Edward Lear
Best-sellers II
Vladimir Nabokov
Cookbooks
Cyril Connolly
Ian Fleming
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Pynchon
Bloom on Shakespeare
Matthew Arnold
André Gide
Evelyn Waugh
W. G. Sebald
John Ruskin
A. E. Housman

PROFILES

The Sound of Music
Eugène Atget
ˇ Svankmajer
Karl Lagerfeld
Buster Keaton
The Oscars
Shakespeare on Film
Cannes
Lego
Obituaries
Preston Sturges
Robert Bresson
Ernest Shackleton
Alfred Hitchcock
Museum of Sex
The New Yorker at 75
Walker Evans
Astronauts
Jacques Tati
Luis Buñuel
Julia Roberts
William Klein
Billy Wilder

Acknowledgments
Index

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Anthony Lane has been a film critic for The New Yorker since 1993. He lives in London.


From the Hardcover edition.

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