be observed in the following comments from several of his reviews: "One of the great, if all-too-infrequent, pleasures of being a film critic is having your mind blown by a film you didn't expect much from. Such an incident occurred in December 1997, when I was assigned to review Jean Eustache's 1973 film The Mother and the Whore, then beginning a revival engagement at Film Forum. Yes, I'd heard that it was a classic of French cinema, but I wasn't exactly thrilled at catching an early-morning screening of a three-hour-and-thirty-five-minute foreign-language film that reportedly consisted of little more than people sitting around and talking. Frankly, I was a lot more excited about seeing Scream 2 that evening. Little did I know, as I eased into my seat, that I was in for one of the most memorable cinematic experiences of my life." Johnston identified Richard Kelly's film Donnie Darko as one of the outstanding films at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001, describing it as "a heady blend of science fiction, spirituality, and teen angst." In his list of best TV for 2005 in Time Out New York, Johnston cited Nip/Tuck, Six Feet Under, Lost, Deadwood, Veronica Mars, The Office, House, Weeds, The Shield and Battlestar Galactica, and gave honorable mention to Gilmore Girls, Rome, Medium, Rescue Me, My Name Is Earl, Project Runway, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Alias, Scrubs and Grey's Anatomy. Writing about Deadwood, he commented, "If history is written by the victors, Deadwood is all about giving losers their due. In the first season, magnificent bastard Al Swearingen (Ian McShayne) came off as a villain; this year, his inevitably doomed campaign to save the lawless town from annexation by the United States and exploitation by robber barons served as a brilliant allegory for the evolution of American capitalism." The Wire was Johnston's top pick for 2006. He wrote "The first three seasons of David Simon's epic meditations on urban America established The Wire as one of the best series of the decade, and with season four—centered on the heart-breaking tale of four eighth-graders whose prospects are limited by public-school bureaucracy—it officially became one for the ages." Friday Night Lights was also among Johnston's top ten. Writing about this, he noted: "Who'd have thought a tribute to heartland values would turn out to be the most avant-garde show on TV? The music and random close-ups said