Got that.
>I'm only highlighting that difference and saying that I don't think
watching movies without thinking too much can just be dismissed
as know-nothingness.
People can watch movies with as little or much thinking as they wish.
My problem with Walsh is that he equates a movie with its plot. Rarely does he include consideration of any other cinematic elements. Then based on his "movie=plot" mentality, he writes about what the filmmaker was trying to convey. For a film critic to ignore mise en scene, space, light, gesture, editing, etc and focus solely on plot is like an art critic restricting himself to talking only about how a painter uses the color red. What goes on plotwise in a movie can be commented upon, qualified or even contradicted by the film's mise en scene (think Douglas Sirk).
For me, the simplistic reductions Walsh enages in are a variety of know- nothingness.
Brian