Pauline Kael (pictured) passed away on September 3, 2001. It had been a slow news summer (a fact that was about to change in a very rude way in another week, but no matter), and Kael's death received a lot of attention. I'll add a bit more now at a quarter century distance. One great Kael passage reads thus: If somewhere in the Hollywood-entertainment world someone has managed to break through with something that speaks to you, then it isn’t all corruption. The movie doesn’t have to be great; it can be stupid and empty and you can still have the joy of a good performance, or the joy in just a good line. An actor’s scowl, a small subversive gesture, a dirty remark that someone tosses off with a mock-innocent face, and the world makes a little bit of sense. Sitting there alone or painfully alone because those with you do not react as you do, you know there must be others perhaps in this very theatre or in this city, surely in other theatres in other cities, now, i...