For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism

For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism is a 2009 documentary film dramatizing a hundred years of American film criticism through film clips, historic photographs, and on-camera interviews with many of today’s important reviewers, mostly print but also Internet. It was produced by Amy Geller, written and directed by long-time Boston Phoenix film critic Gerald Peary, and narrated by Patricia Clarkson. Critics featured include Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times, A.O. Scott of The New York Times, Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times, and Elvis Mitchell, host of the public radio show The Treatment. Many more critics, journalists, and writers from the present and past appear in film clips and interviews. Among them: Jami Bernard, Manny Farber, Andrew Sarris, Molly Haskell, J. Hoberman, Harlan Jacobson, Stanley Kauffmann, Stuart Klawans, Leonard Maltin, Janet Maslin, Wesley Morris, Rex Reed, B. Ruby Rich, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Richard Schickel, David Sterritt, Pauline Kael, Richard Corliss, and Gene Siskel. Other figures from film history appear in photographs and include Vincent Canby, Bosley Crowther, James Agee, Otis Ferguson, Vachel Lindsay, and Frank E. Woods. Bringing the history of film criticism up to the present, the film introduces internet-based critics Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News and Karina Longworth, who wrote at the time for spout.com.