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Movies as Politics
In this new collection of reviews and essays, Jonathan Rosenbaum focuses on the political and social dynamics of the contemporary movie scene. Rosenbaum, widely regarded as the most gifted contemporary American commentator on the cinema, explores the many links between film and our ideological identities as individuals and as a society. Readers will find revealing examinations of, for example, racial stereotyping in the debates surrounding Do the Right Thing , key films from Africa, China, Japan, and Taiwan, Hollywood musicals and French serials, and the cultural amnesia accompanying cinematic treatments of the Russian Revolution, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War. From Schindler's List, Star Wars, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Piano , and Ace Pet Detective to the maverick careers of Orson Welles, Jacques Tati, Nicholas Ray, Chantal Akerman, Todd Haynes, and Andrei Tarkovsky, Rosenbaum offers a polemically pointed survey that makes clear the high stakes involved in every aspect of filmmaking and filmgoing.
376 pages, Paperback
First published May 31, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 31, 2022
what can i say, j ro is the goat. like a good critic should he goes fucking hard and elucidates well why things that suck suck and on the flip side brilliantly and economically with bon mots and many a well turned phrase why he loves what he loves. a self professed xenophile, a rescuer of erroneously proclaimed "bad" films, one of cinephilia's finest leftist / humanist critics, well versed in everything under the sun (also like any good critic), for so many reasons J Ro remains endlessly readable and the true north to go by for any cinephile with their heart in right place.
August 27, 2023
An excellent book of criticism from a leftist pov that tackles popular films for their politics. I saw a reviewer question who this book is written for, but if you are a cinephile then you should have some interest in thoughtful criticism of the films that dominate the movie landscape instead of only focusing in on the esoteric, hard to find, and/or art/foreign market (which Rosenbaum always dedicates space to anyhow). Like, if you aren’t a cinephile, you likely aren’t buying Rosenbaum’s books anyhow. A great collection. Love this wild and crazy guy.
October 7, 2025
Not as tight as Rosenbaum’s best work, Movies As Politics suffers from long stretches of dense scholarly pieces of academic interest and little else, and shorter stretches of reviewing blockbusters that are well outside his wheelhouse.
Rosenbaum can struggle to find his way into a film like Star Wars, in a similar way to how Roger Ebert can struggle to find his way in to now beloved genre or arthouse classics. Both men are talented writers not lacking in due diligence, but in these cases each hits a tone of “confused and treading water”.
With those caveats out of the way, even an uneven book by the greatest film critic of all time is pretty dang good. No matter what you’re interested in film criticism for, this book has it. Appreciations? I read the review of Three: Colors Red aloud to my father (a fellow disciple) and he was literally applauding from the couch. Pans more your cup of tea? His piece on Ace Ventura Pet Detective constitutes the only good essay owning millennials( “It’s easy to imagine that “Generation Y” will be defined by the video games they played, and “Generation Z” by their software programs”). What about nuanced takes™? Rosenbaum’s reading of Schindler’s List as the moving work of a conflicted jew who often identifies with gentiles is fascinating. I didn’t have to wait long for my favorite, catty sniping at other critics. In the first piece after the introduction Rosenbaum sets critics straight for not seeing the right things in Do the Right Thing.
The survey of Nicholas Ray’s oeuvre (tracing his lineage in every major director of the French New Wave) is the best piece of writing in the book. But the one that will stick with me the most is Rosenbaum’s pan of Mississippi Burning:
”The time in my youth when I was most physically afraid was a period of six weeks, during the summer of 1961, when I was 18. I was attending an interracial, coed camp at Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee — the place where the Montgomery bus boycott, the proper beginning of the civil rights movement, was planned by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks in the mid-50s. As a white native of Alabama, I had never before experienced the everyday dangers faced by southern blacks, much less those faced by activists who participated in Freedom Rides and similar demonstrations. But that summer, my coed camp was beset by people armed with rocks and guns.
I believe that we were the first group of people who ever sang an old hymn called “We Shall Overcome” as a civil rights anthem, thanks to the efforts of the camp’s musical director, Guy Carawan. But the songs, powerful as they were, weren’t the main thing that kept us together; it was the fear of dying”
I read those words the day America elected Donald Trump for a second time.
A-
Rosenbaum can struggle to find his way into a film like Star Wars, in a similar way to how Roger Ebert can struggle to find his way in to now beloved genre or arthouse classics. Both men are talented writers not lacking in due diligence, but in these cases each hits a tone of “confused and treading water”.
With those caveats out of the way, even an uneven book by the greatest film critic of all time is pretty dang good. No matter what you’re interested in film criticism for, this book has it. Appreciations? I read the review of Three: Colors Red aloud to my father (a fellow disciple) and he was literally applauding from the couch. Pans more your cup of tea? His piece on Ace Ventura Pet Detective constitutes the only good essay owning millennials( “It’s easy to imagine that “Generation Y” will be defined by the video games they played, and “Generation Z” by their software programs”). What about nuanced takes™? Rosenbaum’s reading of Schindler’s List as the moving work of a conflicted jew who often identifies with gentiles is fascinating. I didn’t have to wait long for my favorite, catty sniping at other critics. In the first piece after the introduction Rosenbaum sets critics straight for not seeing the right things in Do the Right Thing.
The survey of Nicholas Ray’s oeuvre (tracing his lineage in every major director of the French New Wave) is the best piece of writing in the book. But the one that will stick with me the most is Rosenbaum’s pan of Mississippi Burning:
”The time in my youth when I was most physically afraid was a period of six weeks, during the summer of 1961, when I was 18. I was attending an interracial, coed camp at Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee — the place where the Montgomery bus boycott, the proper beginning of the civil rights movement, was planned by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks in the mid-50s. As a white native of Alabama, I had never before experienced the everyday dangers faced by southern blacks, much less those faced by activists who participated in Freedom Rides and similar demonstrations. But that summer, my coed camp was beset by people armed with rocks and guns.
I believe that we were the first group of people who ever sang an old hymn called “We Shall Overcome” as a civil rights anthem, thanks to the efforts of the camp’s musical director, Guy Carawan. But the songs, powerful as they were, weren’t the main thing that kept us together; it was the fear of dying”
I read those words the day America elected Donald Trump for a second time.
A-
May 22, 2019
The shakiest tome of Rosenbaum writing.
March 13, 2024
3.5 / 5 - really great to read if you’re interested in leftist politics, cinema, and how they intertwine. Comprised of a collection of articles Rosenbaum wrote over 3 decades, many are intriguing exemplars of insightful film criticism, while some are impenetrable or questionable if you’re not intimately familiar with the subject matter. The highlight of this book is the hilarious review of ace Ventura, which I will never look at the same.
September 14, 2010
This book could be divided into three parts:
criticising mainstream media and movies from a leftist point of a view (a subject Rosenbaum will later dedicate a whole book: Movie Wars)analysing well known art house films and recommending and offering details about hard to find films.
His criticism of american media,ranging from critics to the distribution system didn't quite appeal to me as an european,and I think that if you are reading this book or are familliar with the this critic and his views you aren't likely the kind of man who likes Ace Ventura or will fooled by false ads.That is of course an important message but the author misses the crowd.
The articles dealing with movies you can easily find (Solaris,the films of Leo Caraux,Schindler's list,Playtime) are the best ones,because his insights on them are well researched and well written,offering us a new way of looking at them and at movies in general.
I haven't seen many of the more obscure treats so I can't judge those movies,but his writing on them is as good as in the rest of the book.I think for recommendations the internet is better source,as Rosenbaum writes colums on this subject both on his website and on DVD Beaver.
What's the best thing about the book ? It's writing style.The prose is rich and references encourage the reader to document them in other places.
It's weak side:it doesn't know for whom it's written for ? The casual watcher or the hardcore cinema fans ?
This book is worth reading,but I hope other books by this critic will be more universal in their treatment of "politics".
criticising mainstream media and movies from a leftist point of a view (a subject Rosenbaum will later dedicate a whole book: Movie Wars)analysing well known art house films and recommending and offering details about hard to find films.
His criticism of american media,ranging from critics to the distribution system didn't quite appeal to me as an european,and I think that if you are reading this book or are familliar with the this critic and his views you aren't likely the kind of man who likes Ace Ventura or will fooled by false ads.That is of course an important message but the author misses the crowd.
The articles dealing with movies you can easily find (Solaris,the films of Leo Caraux,Schindler's list,Playtime) are the best ones,because his insights on them are well researched and well written,offering us a new way of looking at them and at movies in general.
I haven't seen many of the more obscure treats so I can't judge those movies,but his writing on them is as good as in the rest of the book.I think for recommendations the internet is better source,as Rosenbaum writes colums on this subject both on his website and on DVD Beaver.
What's the best thing about the book ? It's writing style.The prose is rich and references encourage the reader to document them in other places.
It's weak side:it doesn't know for whom it's written for ? The casual watcher or the hardcore cinema fans ?
This book is worth reading,but I hope other books by this critic will be more universal in their treatment of "politics".
June 24, 2009
another rosenbaum collection of articles he's published from up to forty years back, he's my favorite critic in the world today. his essays on solaris, do the right thing and nicholas ray in particular changed the way i thought about those movies.
August 30, 2013
This collection changed the way I thought about fim criticism. I leaned on it HARD when I published my first essay, "In Defence Of Film Criticism". Rosenbaum is the Orwell of film criticism, in the sense of economy of language.
August 6, 2009
One of my favorite books about movies. Includes a hilariously scathing review of Star Wars, which always rings true even to a lifelong fan like myself.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews