Jonathan Rosenbaum Tagged Articles at Cinematical

How about this wild-eyed and enthusiastic photo of pretty much the most intelligent film critic in America? Unfortunately, Jonathan Rosenbaum has served notice that he's leaving his staff position at the Chicago Reader after 20 years, in favor of more occasional appearances in print and on the Internet, and the chance to write about other matters besides movies. It's a good time to retire; cinema, once the bravest of the popular arts, is now too often just a part of the entertainment bandwidth, sampling itself relentlessly, following trends like it used to set them.

The 65-year-old critic has been a long-time champion of foreign film, particularly when they're handled poorly by distributors, shelved or re-cut (as Miramax did so many times during the 1990s). His book Movie Wars is essential reading about how studios lead the critics and mislead the public; as he puts it in his 2007 top ten list, the problem is that "each film is supposed to be important when it comes out and is then forgotten soon afterwards." The books Placing Movies and Movies as Politics are two excellent introductions to Rosenbaum's well-informed polemics.

He is, perhaps, at his best when doing a minority report; his essay on Eyes Wide Shut, reprinted in Philip Lopate's collection American Movie Critics, needs to be read by anyone who feels Kubrick's last film is a neglected masterpiece. Rosenbaum dared to fight a lot of the accepted wisdom of his day, such as the suggestion that Woody Allen was better than Jerry Lewis or that Clint Eastwood's Bird is a masterpiece. An exit interview is visible on YouTube, with Rosenbaum describing his plans for the future, elevating the reputation of Ishtar and cutting There Will Be Blood down to size. It's the critic in me that makes me say that this two-part YouTube video goes on for a couple of minutes too long. ...

One of the coolest things that Slate does every year is present a virtual movie roundtable each December, during which a group of well-known film critics discuss the previous 12 months. Though it's ostensibly focused on Top 10s, the conversations, which have been taking place since 1998, usually go off into all sorts of interesting directions - and this year's is no exception.

The participants in the 2005 Movie Club are an impressive crew: Slate critic David Edelstein (who is heading off to New York Magazine in 2006), the Chicago Reader's brilliant Jonathan Rosenbaum, the incredibly busy Scott Foundas (who writes for Variety and about about 100 other publications), and A. O. Scott of the New York Times. The discussion between the four (which takes the form of email messages) starts off with a bang, with Rosenbaum immediately diving into a discussion of film criticism in general, and what "best" really means. Don't be scared off by the theory, though – there's plenty of chatter about specific films as well, and the next three days of emails will surely offer intelligent, passionate disagreements. The chance to eavesdrop on these guys makes it well worth checking the link below every day (at least until Friday, when the 2005 Movie Club sadly comes to an end).