1) Never read the publicity material.

2) Whenever possible, see a film in the company of ordinary human beings.

3) Try to keep up with documentaries about Swabian transsexuals {or, see everything regardless of budget and hype}.

4) Whenever possible, pass sentence on a movie the day after it comes out. Otherwise, wait fifty years.

5) Try to avoid the Lane technique of summer moviegoing.

On a broiling day, I ran to a screening of Contact, the Jodie Foster flick about messages from another galaxy. I made it for the opening credits, and, panting heavily — which, with all due respect, is not something that I find myself doing that often in Jodie Foster films — I started taking notes. These went "v. gloomy," "odd noir look for sci-fi," "creepy shadows in outdoor scene," and so on. Only after three-quarters of an hour did I remember to remove my dark glasses.

• The Maria Problem (February 14), on The Sound of Music
• The Eye of the Land (March 13), on the photographs of Walker Evans
• The Light Side of the Moon (April 10), on photographs from the Apollo program

• 1996 award for Special Interest, for the article Look Back in Hunger (December 18), a humorous piece about cookbooks
• 2000 award for Reviews & Criticism, for the articles
• The Man in the Mirror (August 9), on André Gide
• In Love with Fear (August 16), on Alfred Hitchcock
• Waugh in Pieces (October 4), on Evelyn Waugh

Articles

• Reviews Synecdoche, New York and High School Musical 3.
• Reviews "Slumdog Millionaire" and "A Christmas Tale".

• The New Yorker's contributor biography
• Cohu, Will (14/12/2003) A writer's life: Anthony Lane. Telegraph Online, UK