Rainer on Film: Thirty Years of Film Writing in a Turbulent and Transformative Era

by Peter Rainer

From American Beauty (overrated) to The Night of the Hunter (masterpiece), this collection of Peter Rainer's film criticism spans the course of his illustrious thirty-year career, which dates back to the early 1980s. It is drawn from a wide range of publications, including the Christian Science Monitor , the Los Angeles Herald Examiner , Los Angeles magazine, the Los Angeles Times, New Times , and New York magazine, and is arranged thematically with chapters such as "Overrated, Underseen," "Some Masterpieces," "Documentaries," "Issues (Mostly Hot Button)," "Comedies (Intentional and Unintentional)," and "Literary and Theatrical Adaptations."

Rainer covers films both well-known and obscure and writes in depth about many film auteurs—Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, the Coen brothers, Mike Leigh—and New Generation icons, such as Sofia Coppola and Paul Thomas Anderson. The careers of actors ranging from Marlon Brando to Jessica Lange to Robert De Niro are also given an extensive examination. No film buff's collection is complete without this comprehensive compilation that showcases the best work from a master contemporary film critic.

576 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peter Rainer has always been a consistently reliable film critic and a thoughtful, articulate writer. But I can't read a volume like this without thinking of Pauline Kael's infinitely more compelling and compulsively readable collections. Rainer's style apes hers without being anywhere near as much fun or authoritative. Rainer remains one of the better critics out there, but on the printed page in a massive volume like this he simply doesn't have Kael's gravitas.

[Ray Beasley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cogent analysis of various films and actors, and their impact on popular culture over the past thirty years, written by one of my favorite film critics.