This is indeed the basic paradox I want to argue and to deepen in the following remarks: that it is what is good about the film that is bad about it, and what is bad about it that on the contrary rather good in many ways...

Fredric Jameson wrote that about Dog Day Afternoon in a very interesting essay you can read here, if you have a university IP -- and it seems to me that these words apply quite well to The Departed, which I saw tonight, and which is quite hard to make sense of aesthetically. It is, you can be sure, either a brilliant movie with some truly glaring flaws or a rather bad movie with moments of artistic genius.

If I decide which it is I'll be sure to let you know.