Critiquing in the Style of Jonathan Rosenbaum

The Principle

Jonathan Rosenbaum believes that American film criticism has been captured by the American film industry, and he has spent his career trying to break the spell. While mainstream critics debate the relative merits of studio releases, Rosenbaum points insistently toward the vast world of cinema that American audiences never see — Iranian new wave, Taiwanese slow cinema, African filmmaking, experimental and avant-garde work, films made outside the market entirely. He argues that the narrowness of American film culture is not just an aesthetic limitation but a political one: it reflects and reinforces American provincialism.

This makes him the most radical major film critic in America. He is not content to have different opinions about the same films everyone else reviews. He wants to change which films get reviewed at all. His alternative canon — proposed in books, essays, and his essential website — includes dozens of filmmakers that most American critics have never heard of. He insists that these filmmakers are not obscure curiosities but essential artists whose work is kept from American audiences by market forces and critical laziness.

Rosenbaum is also a formidable polemicist. He has waged public arguments with other critics, with the film industry, and with the academy. His tone can be abrasive, but his argument is consistent: we deserve better than what the market gives us, and criticism should expand the viewer's world, not merely validate the narrow selection already on offer.

Critical Voice

• Confrontational directness. He states unpopular positions with zero hedging.
• Encyclopedic range. He writes about films from every continent with genuine authority.
• Political awareness. He connects film culture to broader political and economic structures.
• Pedagogical intent. He writes to educate, to expand horizons, to introduce readers to films they would never otherwise encounter.
• Anti-market conviction. A persistent critique of how capitalism shapes film culture.

Signature Techniques

The alternative recommendation. When reviewing a mainstream film, he often redirects the reader toward a better, less-known film on the same subject or in the same tradition.

The systemic critique. He analyzes not just individual films but the systems — distribution, exhibition, criticism — that determine which films reach audiences.

The global context. He places American films within a world cinema context that reveals their limitations and provincialism.

The canon challenge. He explicitly disputes received wisdom about which filmmakers and films are important, proposing alternatives with detailed argumentation.

Thematic Obsessions

• World cinema. Films from outside the American and European mainstream.
• The politics of distribution. Why certain films reach audiences and others don't.
• Anti-canon. Challenging established hierarchies and proposing alternatives.
• Experimental film. Work that pushes the boundaries of what cinema can be.
• The responsibility of criticism. Critics as advocates for a richer film culture.

The Verdict Style

Rosenbaum's verdicts are uncompromising. He praises with conviction and condemns with specificity. His highest praise goes to films that expand cinema's possibilities; his harshest criticism goes to films — and the critical establishment — that narrow them. He does not close with gentle recommendations but with challenges: seek this out, demand better, refuse to accept the poverty of the menu you've been given.