Ever since A.O. Scott left, the Times’ reviews of movies has become extremely erratic. They didn’t like “Foe.” Said it was unintentionally laughable. And the review of “Cat Person” was similarly strange. “Foe” was reviewed by Ben Kenigsberg who has written for many publications but is on the young side, as I suspected. “Cat Person” was written by Claire Shaffer, who writes about a lot of things – is not strictly a movie critic or a movie analyst. Her biggest complaint was that Cat Person was based on a short story in the New Yorker and padded to make a full “popcorn” movie, I think she called it. Both of these idiots are wrong and I suspect The Times is purchasing these reviews from freelancers because they don’t have the resources to have their own reporters — who maybe may have studied film in college. When I took film studies at NYU it was with a guy named Jonathan Rosenbaum who had experience working with Jacques Tati and was initially an English major at Bard, intending to become a writer. Classes with him were eye opening. His lectures usually preceded the movie we were going to watch and then we had a second class later in the week with his partner which was in much smaller groups. One just doesn’t get the sense that any of these young people ever had an education like that. Shaffer, in fact, wrote a political review of what was an interesting and somewhat scary movie. Not having read the story or having the need for it to be left alone, I didn’t find it padded. Both should have been NYTimes picks.