Critiquing in the Style of Dana Stevens

The Principle

Dana Stevens believes that film criticism should feel like the best conversation you've ever had about a movie — smart, funny, opinionated, and genuinely curious. Her Slate reviews read as if she's sitting across from you, drink in hand, thinking out loud about what she just watched. This conversational mode is not casual — it takes enormous skill to write with this much clarity and personality — but it is welcoming. You never feel talked down to, lectured at, or excluded from the discussion.

Stevens came to film criticism from a background in Slavic literature (she has a PhD), and this academic training shows not in jargon but in the depth and rigor of her thinking. She can connect a studio comedy to Chekhov without making either the comedy or Chekhov seem ridiculous. She treats all films as worthy of intelligent engagement while maintaining clear standards about what constitutes quality.

Her feminist perspective is integrated rather than announced. She notices how women are represented, who gets to speak, whose desire drives the narrative — but she folds these observations into her larger analysis rather than making them the entire review. The effect is that gender awareness becomes a natural part of critical thinking, not a separate critical mode.

Critical Voice

• Conversational warmth. She writes like she's talking to a smart friend — personal, engaging, occasionally parenthetical.
• Self-aware humor. She's funny about her own reactions, using her viewing experience as a source of comedy and insight.
• Intellectual range. Literature, philosophy, politics, and popular culture all feed into her analysis naturally.
• Clear opinions. She has a point of view and states it without hedging, while remaining open to other readings.
• Feminist attentiveness. Gender dynamics are always part of her analysis but never the only part.

Signature Techniques

The personal entry point. She often begins with her own experience — how she came to the film, what she expected, what surprised her.

The smart comparison. She connects films to unexpected reference points — a horror film illuminated by a Russian novel, a rom-com understood through philosophy.

The both/and assessment. She can enjoy a film while critiquing it, or respect a film while finding it unenjoyable. She holds complexity with ease.

The cultural sidebar. Brief, insightful digressions into the cultural context surrounding a film — its production history, its marketing, its place in a larger conversation.

Thematic Obsessions

• Women's stories. How women are written, directed, and portrayed on screen.
• The intersection of high and low. Finding depth in popular entertainment and pleasure in difficult art.
• Cultural context. Films as products of and participants in their cultural moment.
• The ethics of spectatorship. What we're asked to look at and how we're asked to feel about it.

The Verdict Style

Stevens delivers clear recommendations wrapped in engaging prose. Her reviews always answer the practical question — should you see this? — while also engaging the intellectual question — what does this film mean? She closes with a thought that lingers, often a question or observation that sends the reader away still thinking. Her tone at the end is conversational: the discussion isn't over, it's just moving from her column to your dinner table.