Monday, March 3, 2008

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum, arguably the world's greatest film critic, retired from the Chicago Reader on February 27. His influence on film criticism cannot be understated. Some of his stances on film are so prominent now that we take them for granted. For instance, he was the first U.S film critic to register the previously minority opinions that the films of Abbas Kiarostami, Alain Resnais and Bela Tarr/Laszlo Krasnahorkai/Agnes Hranitky were masterworks and he was the first to openly question the canons of Woody Allen, John Ford, Ingmar Bergman & Eric Rohmer. His controversial criticisms of both the distribution of foreign films in the U.S. and the dectractors of modern filmmaking are finally starting to gain steam also.

Check out some of his old capsule reviews here

I owe Jonathan so much! He almost singlehandedly taught me how to think about films. I went from reading his reviews as an alternative to "mainstream" reviews, to aping his opinions and calling them my own, to finally being able to make my own opinions that I otherwise may've never attained without his pushing.

Thank you Jonathan and enjoy your new ventures!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

And I started reading him because of you! I will miss him too.

Mad Squabbles said...

I found him because he was the only person writing reviews for Sam Fuller and Antonioni on MRQE.