What is actually unsophisticated in the approach of the perpetually distanced viewer is precisely the effort to be theoretically sophisticated: to appreciate only what is serious and important and canonical, to favor anything dark over anything light because that’s what makes you smart. These are often the mental workings of people who mistake reflexive skepticism for discernment, which it isn’t — it is definitionally no more discerning than reflexive boosterism…Disdain is easier than enthusiasm because you can do it with a hand wave, and quite unfairly, it has a better intellectual reputation…That’s the mindset I actually fear more than ironic distancing: the refusal to react at all until you know how your reaction will be received. That goes hand in hand with the insidious practice of using what you like and dislike to define not just your taste but your place. It’s a quieter, less conspicuous, but just as destructive failure to engage. It’s how people learn to substitute what they should think for what they actually think, to the point where they don’t trust their own reactions…What has to be preserved is the ability to show a kind of open-minded assertiveness, where what you learn and what you hear informs your reaction but doesn’t define it…No one owes it to anyone else, or to the abstract art of film, to like The Master or Citizen Kane just because of the lists they appear on or the awards they win. But we do perhaps owe it to a film to, as Seitz says, try to “connect emotionally and imaginatively.”…The challenge is to rigorously interrogate your own responses again and again, whether you’re reacting to James Bond or Terrence Malick, and live comfortably in whatever critical space that leaves for you.