Movies that mattered : more reviews from a transformative decade /

"Movies That Mattered" is a sequel to "When Movies Mattered" (2011). Together, the books mostly collect Kehr's reviews from The Chicago Reader and Chicago magazine, published between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s. In a glowing foreword, Jonathan Rosenbaum, himself a distinguished reviewer-cum-film scholar, calls Kehr's reviews "the most remarkable extended stretch of auteurist criticism in American journalism," and then proceeds to thank him for ensuring that Rosenbaum inherited his slot at The Reader when Kehr left. But this turns out to be a false alarm. Rosenbaum is right: Kehr's writing on film is extraordinary. Now a film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, Kehr displays a broad and varied taste, ranging from the high (Robert Bresson's "L'Argent") to the low (Russ Meyer's "Supervixens") and everything in between. He displays a keen grasp of the ways in which films work - the play of images, words, gestures and pacing - without losing sight of the historical context in which they live and breathe. In an essay on the death of the western, for example, he rightly identifies the paradox of the genre as the employment of the lawless to establish the law, a contradiction that was done in by the cynicism that followed in the wake of the Vietnam War, when both the law and the lawless lost their appeal. Kehr covers some 40 films, interspersing them with think pieces, a book review and career assessments of his favorite auteurs. The 1980s were not the most salubrious decade in which to shine as a movie reviewer. Movies plummeted from the peaks they reached in the 1970s, but as with all the great reviewers - Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Manny Färber - Kehr's reviews fly free from their ostensible subjects to become species of cultural criticism. Agree with his opinions or not, they're always smart, lucid, well argued and witty. This book is a pleasure to read. peter biskind is the author of several books on Hollywood and American film.

Kehr, a curator for the Museum of Modern Art's Film Department, follows his first collection of reviews, When Movies Mattered, with a volume that follows the same format as its predecessor. This outing reprints more work from his past career as a critic, mostly reviews of individual films published between 1974 and 1986, either in the Chicago Reader or Chicago Magazine. Kehr brings a rigorous intellect to bear on all his subjects, but of particular interest is a final section, "Autopsies/Minority Reports," that collects Kehr's dissenting views on highly regarded titles. His deconstruction of Apocalypse Now shows that the conversations being had around that film-namely, about whether its visual virtuosity expresses any moral core-haven't changed all that much in almost 40 years; his take on Raiders of the Lost Ark is withering. The inclusion of several review-length mini-essays on general film topics, including "Sequels" and "Home Video," highlights Kehr's range as a thinker. Kehr is a prodigious critic and this collection is an excellent sampling of his voice. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.