All right, referring to the same project I've been working on...

Does anyone know of any good sites that offer film criticisms? I'm speaking criticisms, keep in mind. Not reviews. I've been searching for quite some time and keep coming up with... pretty much nothing. Lots and lots of reviews, yes, but criticisms, no.

Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" essays seem to be the only ones I can find, but even those seem to be more review and less 'scholarly.'

I am so... frustrated.

Define more clearly what you are looking for? What do you mean by critisisms?

Film theory you mean? Discussions about technical, philosophical, the business of movies? Its fairly easy to go to a book store and pull up genre based theory/criticisms. Like "French New-Wave" "Italian Neo-Realists," of, well any book on Ridley Scott. That the question right?

Do you have access to college online journals? Those can give you access to them.

If not, try to access online databases via your public library (electronically, so you can prolly do it from home), or as dolecvita said, pay a visit to the big house itself.


Film criticism at its best can be very rewarding, at worst can suck the life out of a film or genre.

I recommend beginning with topics that interest you greatly (say, cinematography in Seabiscuit or the concept of time in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), or critical schools that you can apply to films yourself (say, for example, viewing The Grapes of Wrath from the viewpoint of Marxist criticism). Also, looking at critical analysis of one filmmaker's or artist's work can be illuminating and exciting in itself. For example, Fellini and how he rleates to literature (such as Petronius' Satyricon vs. Fellini's own, or Dante's influence on Fellini's imagination), or how Hitchcock the artist, the ateur, works.

I am going to be spending part of my summer approaching cinema from a critical angle. If I come across some websites or publications of particular note then, I will be sure to notify you concerning them.

Cheers, and good luck in your search :wink:

The site I've found describes film criticisms as:

Scholarly or focused critical writing about particular films--both current and historical--can be found in an amazingly wide variety of sources, including film journals, and publications devoted to theater, history, literature, women's studies, ethnic studies, and other disciplines. Critical/analytic film articles tend to be more academic and substantive than reviews. These articles often discuss particular films in broad social, political, and historical context. Many times the focus of these articles is on a fairly specific aspect of a film or a film genre.

Whereas...

Film reviews are assessments of the aesthetic, entertainment, social and cultural merits and significance of a current film or video. Reviews tend to be short to medium length articles, often written by a single staff writer for a particular publication. Although reviews are usually fairly "quick takes" on a movie, they can, in some instances, be lengthy, substantive, and very insightful. The writing of notable critics such as Pauline Kael (The New Yorker), James Agee (The Nation), Andrew Sarris (The Village Voice), blur the line between popular reviews and the more lengthy type of analysis described below.

I actually did access a college database as well as a public library databse this morning. I wasn't too thorough in my searches, though. I need to try again.

The 5 films we're using for our project are The Passion of Joan of Arc, Patton, Lawrence of Arabia, Ed Wood, and A Beautiful Mind. Joan of Arc, Patton, and Lawrence I have already found articles for on Ebert's site (though I would still like to do more searching), but Ed Wood and A Beautiful Mind... not so much.