Jonathan Rosenbaum > Quotes

“But the strength that remains, which is principally destructive, is the film's dialectical relationship to most of the other movies that we see, its capacity to make their most time-honored conventions seem tedious, shopworn, and unnecessary. This originality often seems to be driven by hatred and anger, emotions that are undervalued in more cowardly periods such as the present...”
― Jonathan Rosenbaum, Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism

“To write criticism that places itself beyond verification or challenge is to define criticism as an art, not a science, and to define that art in terms of art rather than scientifically. Exercised on its own terms, without reference to business or scholarship, such a practice defies the use of pull-quotes and advertising blurbs as much as term papers and dissertations; it usually becomes impossible, in fact, to appropiate or adapt it for any purpose other than its own. Refusing to reach for final conclusions about anything⁠—the ultimate aim of marketplace and university criticism alike⁠—it can only revel and luxuriate in its own activity, hoping at best merely to keep up with rather than master the art that it engages.”
― Jonathan Rosenbaum, Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism