Replies to Commentators on Movies on Our Minds

Abstract

What a pleasure it is to have colleagues read Movies on Our Minds: The Evolution of Cinematic Engagement, to understand it, and to offer some praise and a panoply of diverse and penetrating criticisms. The perspectives and qualms raised in the four commentaries in the special section of this issue are well-worth considering in detail. My first reply concerns relations between cinematic narration and narrative, the second explores constraints on cinematic complexity and its assessment, the third addresses possible consequences of changing movie structure and our increased cognitive processing speed, and the fourth ramifies concepts I use to account for the historical changes in popular cinema.