Do film critics understand film? This article is bound to get some pseudo-intellectual blood boiling. Beware the great American novel, or the Man Booker Prize winning one. Beware the films that critics call "among the greatest of all time”. Do not feel ashamed or unworthy or like a simpleton if you 'don't get it'. You are not meant to, unless you know what their game is, or you belong to that class of pseudo-intellectual existentialist literati, who celebrate depictions of degradation, and plot-less stories, with a view to infiltrate your culture. Do not feel obliged to go into a book club or a film society and rave about something that you found dull.

Judgment Overdue—What sort of art is consonant with an enterprising outlook on life? Has this precious citadel been under persistent attack from existentialist detractors? This provocative essay applies the objective standards first forwarded by Ayn Rand in the sixties into a question-based framework for story art. The judgment pulls no punches, finding inferior and lazy writing in several Oscar-winning scripts, but ending on a note of optimism as box-office performance and the young-at-heart keep individualism alive. From Citizen Kane to The Great Gatsby to American Beauty, the critics’ favorites are savaged using the incisive blade of objective standards. As the literati mission is laid bare, the innocent are now forever spared the hypocrisy of professing a love for the dull and the insipid, a love that that they never felt.