Jake Horsley seems to arrive from out of nowhere, yet here he is—an almost fully-developed and only slightly stoned sensibility. This hothead fantasist offers the excitement of a wild, paranoid style. he lives in the movies, explodes them from the inside, and shares his fevered trance with us. But he doesn't lose his analytic good sense. he's not just a hothead, he's a hardhead, too. Maybe he could use more humor, but couldn't we all? (Intelligent movie criticism is being swamped in seriousness.) He's a marvelous critic. Tackling a new movie, he'll hang in there until he's balanced and sound. It's always a surprise.
Pauline Kael The debate about whether movie violence causes real-life violence (an argument I've never bought) has hijacked any exploration of how violence is actually used in the movies, how audiences experience it and when violence does or doesn't qualify as art. Those are the questions that preoccupy critic Jake Horsley in his mammoth two-volume The Blood Poets...Horsley arrives on the scene with a combination of articulate analysis and a provocateur's punch... The Blood Poets is the first work of criticism to talk at any length about how the exploitation impulse has crossed over into the work of respected filmmakers.
Salon.Com
Freelance film critic Horsley aspires to bridge the gap between academic cultural studies and popular movie reviews in a two-volume analysis of Hollywood's love-hate relationship with brutality in all its forms.
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