Thumbs down for bias

Critics bring their biases to their reviews just like some news reporters do. Both http://www.newsbusters.org/ and http://www.mediamatters.org/ track biased reporting on the left and right, respectively, but too little is said about how film critics bend their reviews to their ideological viewpoint. I doubt even Media Matters would argue that the vast majority of critics lean left. Just look at Michael Moore's last two films for all the proof you could ever need. Such flawed arguments would be shredded had they come from the right.

We're already seeing some pretty unfair reviews for this Friday's new film "The Kingdom," an imperfect but still hugely entertaining actioner about a terrorist attack on Americans living in Saudi Arabia. Methinks it's largely due to how the various critics vote on Election Day.

-Variety's John Anderson dubs it "quietly jingoistic" like it's a disease audiences might catch.

- The Hollywood Reporter's Stephen Farber seems weepy in his reportage: "Given the heinous actions of the terrorists, audiences are primed to cheer when they finally get blown to smithereens."

And some reviews are just plain daffy.

- The New Yorker's Anthony Lane writes: "The film has nothing but contempt for the traditional methods of diplomacy and international law, and the true villains of the piece are not the terrorists, whose patient bombmaking we watch in horrified detail, but Schmidt, the sweating wimp from the State Department, who is nauseated by the sight of blood, and, even more heinous, the U.S. Attorney General (Danny Huston), with his quibbling reluctance to unleash the F.B.I. on foreign soil."

Wow. I bet most "Kingdom" viewers will insist the terrorists who gleefully gun down men, women and children are the true villains. Call me crazy.

Here's my bias. I don't mind watching terrorists bite it on screen. And I'm ashamed that some of my fellow critics feel otherwise.