The Late Great Rex Reed

Born in 1938 in Fort Worth, Texas, Mr. Rex Taylor Reed emerged in the 1960s as a formidable force in American journalism. Educated at Louisiana State University, he cultivated a reputation as an arbiter of taste whose acerbic wit and unyielding standards became the stuff of legend. Writing for esteemed publications such as Vogue, GQ, The New York Times, and most notably during his long tenure at The New York Observer, Mr. Reed was never merely a reviewer; he was a gatekeeper of cinematic elegance.

It is difficult not to lament his departure from the cultural forefront, for one must acknowledge him as, quite perhaps, the last great American film critic. His loss to the daily discourse is not an isolated event, but rather a stark symptom of an overall American cultural decline. We have traded the sharpened pen of the educated aesthete for the clamor of the crowd.

In a bygone era, a discerning audience could comfortably rely on the elevated, uncompromising opinions of film experts like Rex to guide their evening’s entertainment. A critic of his caliber served as a necessary filter against mediocrity. Nowadays, however, we find ourselves navigating a rather regrettable landscape. The critical establishment has thoroughly capitulated to populism, resulting in a confounding reality where cinematic garbage such as Black Panther, Oppenheimer, and Sinners is universally praised. It is a time when sheer spectacle and trendy posturing have entirely usurped the quiet dignity of genuine cinematic art, and it is, at best, a faint hope that one day there will be a swing back toward the refined standards Mr. Reed so admirably defended.

PS: Nobody in the Arts ever used the word *ossified* more frequently or aptly. Here are a just a few examples:

A Prairie Home Companion (2006): "The jabbering, meandering and ossified movie that Robert Altman has made from Garrison Keillor's lumbering, affected and pointless audio curiosity A Prairie Home Companion is not a movie at all".

The Cured (2018): When confronted with this Irish zombie picture, he used the term to indict the entire category of film, noting, "The latest in this ossified cornball genre is The Cured, which at least tries for a soupçon of freshness".

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018): Directing his weariness toward the blockbuster action series, he remarked that it was "business as usual with Fallout, the sixth installment in the ossified franchise series that seems more like the sixtieth.”

RIP Rex Reed