Is the cinema, as writers from David Denby to Susan Sontag have claimed, really dead? Contrary to what we have been led to believe, films are better than ever—we just can't see the good ones. Movie Wars cogently explains how movies are packaged, distributed, and promoted, and how, at every stage of the process, the potential moviegoer is treated with contempt. Using examples ranging from the New York Times's coverage of the Cannes film festival to the anticommerci...

Eschewing the idea of film reviewer-as-solitary-expert, Jonathan Rosenbaum continues to advance his belief that a critic's ideal role is to mediate and facilitate our public discussion of cinema. Portraits and Polemics presents debate as an important form of cinematic encounter whether one argues with filmmakers themselves, on behalf of their work, or with one's self.Rosenbaum takes on filmmakers like Chantal Akerman, Richard Linklater, Manoel De Oliveira, Mark Rappaport, ...

Godard. Fuller. Rivette. Endfield. Tarr. In his celebrated career as a film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum has undertaken wide-ranging dialogues with many of the most daring and important auteurs of our time.Cinematic Encounters collects more than forty years of interviews that embrace Rosenbaum's vision of film criticism as a collaboration involving multiple voices. Rosenbaum accompanies Orson Welles on a journey back to Heart of Darkness, the unmade film meant to be...

Before his death in 2016, Abbas Kiarostami wrote or directed more than thirty films in a career that mirrored Iranian cinema's rise as an international force. His 1997 feature Taste of Cherry made him the first Iranian filmmaker to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Critics' polls continue to place Close-Up (1990) and Through the Olive Trees (1994) among the masterpieces of world cinema. Yet Kiarostami's naturalistic impulses and winding complexity made him one of the...

We all have images that we find unwatchable, whether for ethical, political, or sensory and affective reasons. From news coverage of terror attacks to viral videos of police brutality, and from graphic horror films to transgressive artworks, many of the images in our media culture might strike us as unsuitable for viewing. Yet what does it mean to proclaim something “unwatchable”: disturbing, revolting, poor, tedious, or literally inaccessible?With over 50 original essays by leadin...

In his astute and deeply informed film reviews and essays, Jonathan Rosenbaum regularly provides new and brilliant insights into the cinema as art, entertainment, and commerce. Guided by a personal canon of great films, Rosenbaum sees, in the ongoing hostility toward the idea of a canon shared by many within the field of film studies, a missed opportunity both to shape the discussion about cinema and to help inform and guide casual and serious filmgoers alike.In Essential Cinem...

The Knot Hare introduces himself to the reader as an undiscovered cryptid who no one can see. He invites the reader along on a journey to be discovered by the Professor, a famous cryptid hunter who is on a tour of the United States to discover cryptids. Using the Cryptid Weakly magazine, Knot Hare follows the Professor around the world in an attempt to be discovered. He regularly fails to be discovered in each location as the Professor confuses the chanting of "Knot Hare'' to be "Not here"...

When it was released in 1995, Dead Man puzzled many audiences and critics. Jim Jarmusch's reputation was for directing slick, hip contemporary films. And Dead Man was a black-and-white Western. As time has passed, though, the number of its admirers has grown rapidly. Indeed Dead Man, with its dark and unconventional treatment of violence, racism and capitalism, may be Jarmusch's finest work to date.This is Jonathan Rosenbaum's view. For him, Dead Man

The idea of cinephilia is a crucial one for students of the cinema, but it is often associated with a bygone arthouse era. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, corporatism, public relations and bottom-line accounting seem to govern mainstream film-making. Formula-driven Hollywood blockbusters dominate the world marketplace. In times like these can 'the love of cinema' still flourish? In fact contemporary cinema is stunningly varied and rich. From Taiwan and Iran to Brazil and the ...

Greed is a legendary film begun in 1923. It was to have been Erich von Stroheim's masterwork, but his colossal ambitions were to be his undoing. His obsession with realistic detail and determination to extract every ounce of drama from his source, Frank Norris's novel McTeague, stretched the shooting schedule to inordinate lengths, resulting in a film which ran for over seven hours.Jonathan Rosenbaum has made a meticulous study of all the sources. In a fascinating piece o...

A master film critic is at her witty, exhilarating, and opinionated best in this career-spanning collection featuring pieces on Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, and other modern movie classics“Film criticism is exciting just because there is no formula to apply,” Pauline Kael once observed, “just because you must use everything you are and everything you know.” Between 1968 and 1991, as regular film reviewer for The New Yorker, Kael used ...

From one of the most admired critics of our time, brilliant insights into the act of watching movies and an enlightening discussion about how to derive more from any film experience.Since first publishing his landmark Biographical Dictionary of Film in 1975 (recently released in its sixth edition), David Thomson has been one of our most provocative authorities on all things cinema. Now he offers his most inventive exploration of the medium yet: guiding us through each elem...