Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum is retiring. I've been reading him for years, and back when I lived in Chicago I saw him speak a couple times.

He's one of the great scholars in the critical community. His work on Orson Welles, for example, is encycopledic. (Here he is talking about Welles.)

Rosenbaum often allowed his politics to intrude on his critical scrutiny. This led him into interesting--and nutty--areas. A good example is his double review of Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and Joe Dante's Small Soldiers. The former gets one star, the latter, four. Or look at his alternate list to AFI's top 100 American movies. And here's his top ten list for 2007--how many have you heard of?

I always thought he was Chicago's best film critic.