Ann Hornaday, the longtime Washington Post film critic, has died at 66, the newspaper reports. For readers considering how to remember her, the most meaningful place to begin is with the work: a review of something they loved, something they disliked, or something they never got around to seeing.
A critic’s death invites a particular kind of reflection. Movie reviews are usually encountered in anticipation, when a film is arriving and an evening’s plans remain undecided. Read afterward, they become something else: records of attention, arguments worth testing, and encounters between a writer’s sensibility and a reader’s experience.
This remembrance approaches Hornaday’s passing from that reader’s perspective. Beyond acknowledging the reported news, its concern is interpretation: how to revisit film criticism without reducing a writer to a handful of verdicts or assuming that admiration requires agreement.
Begin with a review, not a ranking
A list of a critic’s favorite movies can be an inviting entrance to their work. It is also an incomplete one. Titles reveal preferences; the paragraphs explaining those preferences reveal the thinking. A reader who stops at approval or disappointment misses the movement from an observed detail to a larger judgment.
When returning to a Hornaday review, choose a film you remember clearly enough to challenge the account. Read beyond the opening assessment. Find the moment where description becomes interpretation: where an observation about an actor, a scene, or the film’s rhythm supports a claim about its meaning.
The useful question is whether you can follow that connection. You might remember the same scene and reach another conclusion. That difference gives you something concrete to examine. Agreement without examination tells you less about either the review or your own response.
Our earlier reflection on Hornaday’s death and film criticism’s place in the newsroom considers the institutional significance of the profession. Reading an individual review brings the focus closer: to the exchange between a particular writer and a particular viewer.
Follow the character beneath the plot summary
One productive way to read any film review is to watch how it handles character. Summarizing what a protagonist does is relatively straightforward. Explaining why those actions become convincing, troubling, funny, or moving requires closer attention.
As you revisit Hornaday’s writing, ask which character the review treats as the film’s emotional center. Then compare that emphasis with your own. The person who drives the plot is not necessarily the person whose experience gives the story its weight. A supporting performance can change the meaning of a scene without changing its outcome.
Separate three questions: What does the character want? What does the character understand? What does the film allow the audience to know? Those perspectives may overlap, but their differences are often where tension lives. A viewer can understand someone’s motives while recognizing consequences that the character refuses to see.
These are reading tools, not claims about Hornaday’s opinions on any particular movie. Applied to an actual review, they help make discussion precise. Instead of deciding only whether a protagonist is likable, you can consider whether the film has made that person’s behavior intelligible and whether its sympathies feel earned.
Look for the detail that carries the argument
Strong criticism gives readers something they can return to the screen and examine. A claim about emotional distance becomes more persuasive when connected to framing, performance, or editing. Calling a scene intimate means more when the writer explains how the film creates that intimacy.
While rereading, identify one detail that does real argumentative work. It might concern a pause, a change in tone, or the relationship between an image and its accompanying sound. Consider what would happen to the review’s conclusion if that detail were removed. Does the argument still stand? Does it need more evidence?
Dialogue deserves the same care. A memorable line may sound decisive in isolation while becoming uncertain, ironic, or painful in performance. When a review quotes dialogue, return to its context: who speaks, who listens, and what happens immediately afterward. Accuracy includes the dramatic circumstances surrounding the words.
That is why a remembrance need not assemble familiar movie quotations to establish its love of cinema. For someone exploring Hornaday’s writing, the more revealing discovery is how a specific passage makes a specific film newly visible.
Make room for a disagreement that lasts
Remembering a critic respectfully does not require converting every old disagreement into agreement. A review that irritated you may be especially useful to revisit because it exposes the assumptions you brought to the movie.
Perhaps you valued emotional immediacy while the review questioned how the emotion was produced. Perhaps you accepted a narrative shortcut because a performance held your attention. Neither response automatically settles the issue. Naming the difference makes the conversation more honest.
Try stating the critic’s argument in language they could reasonably recognize before answering it. Then distinguish a dispute about what appears onscreen from a dispute about its value. The former may be resolved by watching again; the latter may remain open even when both viewers agree about every detail.
Our discussion of performance and interpretation in documentary criticism raises a related question about how viewers reach judgments. Across different kinds of film, an explanation of the judgment is often more useful than its intensity.
A practical way to return to Hornaday’s work
A modest reading project can be more rewarding than trying to absorb an entire career at once. Choose one review and give it enough time to become a conversation with the movie.
- Record your own response first. Write down one scene you remember and why it mattered to you.
- Read the complete review. Follow the reasoning rather than extracting its most approving or dismissive sentence.
- Identify one difference. Notice a character, formal choice, or emotional effect that the review emphasizes differently.
- Revisit the relevant scene. Check both the critic’s description and your memory against what is actually there.
- Keep the unresolved question. A useful encounter with criticism may complicate your response without reversing it.
What remains after the verdict
Hornaday’s passing is an occasion to return attention to the act of reading her. An obituary establishes the loss; the work allows a reader to encounter the thinking in its fuller shape, with its qualifications, emphases, and arguments intact.
My view is that this is the most durable way to honor a film critic: let a review send you back to a movie with a better question. Read carefully enough to understand the judgment. Watch closely enough to test it. Allow the encounter to change what you notice, even when it leaves your original opinion in place.
A verdict can help choose an evening’s entertainment. A piece of criticism worth returning to can remain part of the experience long after that evening ends.
Original content by this site's editorial team. Published: October 20, 2026 at 04:44:43 PDT (Los Angeles time)
