‘“A Sudden Flicker of Light” is subtitled “A Revisionist History of Movies,” and in it he describes himself as “someone who feels more than regret that over the decades he has given time to wondering which film was the greatest ever made, to distinguishing the auteurs and artists … and to treating the enterprise of darkness and light as if it honored society and history.”

From the vantage point of a dystopian present in which “attention has become infernal, hopeless, yet unstoppable,” he chronicles how, under the spell of movies, “we let the lifelike distract us from life.” This isn’t an abstract, philosophical predicament; it’s a political crisis….’ (A.O. Scott via The New York Times)