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Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and published in journals.

Academic criticism

Some claim that journalist film critics should only be known as film reviewers, and that true film critics are those who take a more academic approach to films. This work is more often known as film theory or film studies. These film critics try to come to understand why film works, how it works, what it means, and what effects it has on people. Rather than write for mass-market publications their articles are published in scholarly journals, or sometimes in up-market magazines. They also tend to be affiliated with universities.

Further reading

  • Jonathan Rosenbaum, Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See, A Cappella Books 2000
  • Slavoj Žižek, The Žižek Reader (edited by Elizabeth Wright and Edmond Wright), Blackwell Publishing 1999
  • Maya Deren, Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film by Maya Deren (edited by Bruce R. McPherson), Documentext 2005
  • Raúl Ruiz, Poetics of Cinema (translated by Brian Holmes) Dis Voir 2005

Links

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: Roger Ebert - Archive Interview Excerpt on Film Criticism