Boston Phoenix Film Critic on the State of Film Criticism
      
      
      
      
      
        
        
          By AAN Staff
        
        
      
      
        november 13, 2008  11:26 am
      
      
      
      
            
      
        
          
        
      
      
        
          Gerald Peary, who has been a critic for more 30 years, celebrated his career last night with a special screening of his three favorite films at a Cambridge theater. To mark that occasion, he spoke with BU Daily about how film criticism has changed over the years, his film-crit documentary 
For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, and the difference between reviewing and criticism. "Reviewing is the basic lunch bucket job that everybody does, which is consumer reporting," Peary says. "But what a critic does in addition is contextualize the movie in terms of history, politics, a filmmaker's career, and genre. A film critic sees the movie as just a starting point for a more general discussion."