Looking for the Jonathan Rosenbaum review of Eyes Wide Shut that Philip Lopate praises on today's Leonard Lopate Show, I found this provocative statement from Rosenbaum's 1999 roundup:

Nineteen ninety-nine was a pivotal year in movies, clarifying where a lot of people stood and who they were. This kind of definition was encouraged by the existential stocktaking that came with the end of the millennium—the compiling of more best-film lists than usual (of the 90s, of the century) and more generalized meditating on the state of the art and the medium. (After finishing my own best-of-the-90s list for the last issue of the year, I discovered that all but one of the movies had an interesting trait in common: they hadn’t been reviewed in the New Yorker. The sole exception, Eyes Wide Shut, was treated with a dismissive contempt the reviewer would never have dreamed of heaping on a James Bond adventure.)

Here's the magazine's condensed Eyes Wide Shut review, and Rosenbaum's longer story. Wonder what the great Chicagoan thinks of the New Yorker coverage in the past few years? And which NYer critics, besides Pauline Kael of course, show up in Lopate's anthology? I can answer that one myself.

Philip Lopate is speaking about "The Art of Film Criticism" on a panel this Monday. From the WNYC website:

Phillip Lopate will be leading a panel with Kent Jones, Andrew Sarris, J. Hoberman, and Stanley Kauffmann
Monday, April 3 at 6:30 pm
The Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center
165 West 65th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway
For tickets, call 212-496-3809 or visit filmlinc.org