Bubbleboy is right to observe that film critics are in a highly privileged position, invited to see movies that paying customers, including the director's core fans, might not get to see for months or even years. I hope most of us remember that it really is an exquisite privilege, and not just a hassle or a responsibility, but it's useful to be reminded.

It's an odd job, though. (I am definitely not asking for sympathy here.) I was eager to see "Inland Empire" too, as more or less a Lynch fan. But then I had to get up early on a rainy Sunday morning and haul my ass to Lincoln Center for a 9 AM screening of a dark, weird movie, when like anybody else I'd basically rather have slept late, had a lazy breakfast and played with my kids. It's not an ideal circumstance to see a movie like that or any other, and those of us who do it have to try to clear the early-morning junk out of our heads and get into "movie space." If there was ever a film for late-late-night consumption, this is it.

I sometimes wonder how the often-strange circumstances of consumption affect me, and other critics. The press screenings at Cannes started at 8:30 AM, and you need to get there early, so I had to catch the 7:40 train from two towns away. I know, poor me. My only point is that it's a strange thing to get up at commuter hours, take the commuter train, and go see a movie. Sometimes I think it's the acid test: "Volver" was still wonderful in the breakfast hour, but Richard Kelly's "Southland Tales" was possibly even more unbearable than it would have been at night. You just don't forgive flabbiness and long-windedness the same way, I suspect. I would have found "Marie Antoinette" to be a pretty, vacant spectacle at any hour, but it seemed especially and progressively trivial as it went on, and as I concentrated more & more on getting out of 18th century France and back to the 21st century version, where I could eat a fucking croissant and have some of that delicious burned-tasting coffee. All the pastries Marie and her pals in the film just added insult to injury.

Whatever. Speaking of coffee, I didn't do a great job on "Black Gold" this week. There was too much other stuff. Check it out if you can. It's funny and intriguing and doesn't lecture you. It goes not just to Ethiopia but also Italy and Seattle and London. Plus it has lots of random facts about the international coffee trade, and I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.

I was out all day yesterday and got home to discover: Oh, boy! Letters!

As at least some of you gathered, I wasn't insulting Terry Gilliam because of his age. I definitely regret that anybody got that impression, but hey, I praised a movie last week directed by a guy who's 97, for goodness' sake.

I thought the ocntext of the comment was clear: I was saying that trying to be the dark outrageous rebel who shocks middlebrow sensibilities at 65, when you've been doing it for close to 30 years, is kind of silly.

My deliberately provocative comment about "12 Monkeys" was indeed flip and dismissive. But, hey, it's what I think. Good friends of mine love that movie. In fact, I was the editor who assigned and published Virginia Vitzthum's glowing article about the film for Salon's (since-discontinued) Masterpieces series. Believe it or not, people can disagree strongly about movies (as well as about less important things, like the war in Iraq or the true age of the universe) and still like and respect each other

I said the movie was crap. That's my opinion, indelicately expressed. I could, I suppose, have elaborated on my feeling that 12M appears to be a promising, ambitious movie at first, and is often visually spectacular, but gradually collapses into a philosophically shallow magic trick. If I had said all that, I wouldn't have gotten all these exciting letters.

Was the whole review written quickly, and motivated by anger? Yeah. I had to sit through "Tideland," and so far the rest of you haven't. I was really looking forward to that movie, and it left me with a worse taste in my mouth than anything else I've seen all year. And that's including the Adam Sandler movie "Click."

I praised "Brazil" and "Baron Munchausen," and said that "Brothers Grimm" and "Fisher King" were overly sentimental. I never mentioned "Time Bandits" (which is a likable, whimsical film) or "Fear and Loathing" (which I haven't seen) at all. Plus I made an impolitic comment about his cultiest movie. It wasn't the most grownup way to describe a film many people love (including several of my best friends) but there you are.

Gilliam is clearly an idiosyncratic, prickly talent. My assessment of his overall career is that it's an extremely mixed affair, and that he's gotten stuck in a pseudo-confrontational attitude (which includes a bitter hatred of all things American) that's not doing him any favors. "Tideland" indicates, to me anyway, that he's completely lost all perspective on what he's doing and why he's doing it, and possibly lost his mind as well. I don't apologize in any way for the review, it reflects my legitimate response. If I hadn't had 10 other movies to write about or whatever it was, I'd have spent more time on "Tideland" and undoubtedly written something more nuanced. Frankly, the film isn't worth that much attention.

Of course I don't expect Gilliam's fans to be with me on this, but them's the breaks.