A Movie about people who write about Movies.

Most people don't realize that film is still young. Only about a century old. In that time, hundreds of thousands of movies have been produced. The vast majority of them have never been and will never be seen by even a relatively small audience. I myself have made a film that has only been seen by a few hundred people. There's an argument to be made that this wilderness would be unnavigable without a guide, and that therefore we need film critics to tell us which way to go. But much like the skill that would be involved with leading bewildered travellers through hostile territory, film criticism is in itself an art, a skill, and one that has its own history that has mutated and changed just as films, and the audience's taste in them, has grown over the short first century of these twin art forms. Gerald Peary's breezy new documentary For the Love of Movies manages to condense these last hundred-odd years of movie writing into a lightfooted 80 minutes, perfect for audiences who may be generally uninformed about what they're reading when they look for movie reviews. Starting in the silent era, where little movie magazines were used primarily to drum up advertising dollars from the studios, it runs the time line all the way up to today's Internet-based work. Peary has gathered a massive roster of both current and former film critics to discuss their craft and its past. Roger Ebert, Harry Knowles, Andrew Sarris, Ken Turan, Elvis Mitchell, Karina Longworth et al. The list goes on. These are all extremely articulate, opinionated people who have a great deal to say about what they do, most frequently with regard to the incredible luck they feel at being paid to perform such an envious task. As Mitchell says, and I'm paraphrasing: "Going to the movies for free? That's like an express train to heaven." For the Love of Movies is probably perfect for the layman (or woman), especially one who may be unfamiliar with the names at the top of their weekly movie reviews. The basics of critical history are laid out here, with special emphasis on the Pauline Kael/Andrew Sarris auteurist feud of the 70's and 80's, which of course coincided with the rise of Siskel & Ebert. Those two elements are most likely the best-known and most accessible, and they get the lion's share of the time here. If anything, the film is too cursory. From the perspective of someone who's seen a great many more films than even some dedicated viewers (and has read even more reviews), this documentary may seem to leave out a lot. Most notably missing is any real in-depth discussion of the various critics' personal tastes and greater examples of their work. But 80 minutes is just about the ideal length for a film of this type, and there isn't a lot of room in there for fat, so the omissions are certainly justified. And frankly, most viewers probably wouldn't be too interested in Richard Schickel's sycophantic obsession with Eastwood. And things get a little precarious at the end with a not-too-evenhanded examination of criticism's "retreat" to the Internet, where seemingly anyone with an opinion, no matter how ill-informed, can voice it. I personally don't consider Harry Knowles to be a paragon of cineastes, but to Peary's credit, he manages to conceal a general distaste for a somewhat disorganized new guard, portraying Knowles and his colleagues as motivated, devoted to film and determined to reach an audience, much like this film itself. For the Love of Movies plays only once, on Thursday, February 18 at 8pm at the Northwest Film Forum. Peary is scheduled to be in attendance. It's a fine starting point for folks looking to expand their critical horizons.