As Paul Brunick notes in the introduction to his list of top film criticism sites posted recently to the website of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, most commentary on the impact of the internet on film criticism is rather negative—forecasting a decline in quality in the face of a rapid increase in the quantity of available resources. However as Brunick points out, with the right guide to help you sort through the “head-spinning” amount of material out there, the internet has the potential to offer the savvy cinephile a heretofore unparalleled cornucopia of intelligent film criticism.
Amongst the many top on line resources on the list, Brunick cites several excellent film criticism sites from Chicago authors, (or soon-to-be Chicago authors) including Jonathan Rosenbaum’s site, http://jonathanrosenbaum.com/. When Rosenbaum, a long time film reviewer for the Chicago Reader‘s film section retired in ’08, the Reader took down most of his essays. Rosenbaum’s blog however, rescues the best of his reviews and commentary from the Reader, and his new book, Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition includes pieces both from the Reader and many other sources of his wide-ranging criticism. It should be noted that Rosenbaum also contributes to several other blogs on Brunick’s list including: the ArtForum film blog, Girish Shambu‘s website, and the Australia-based “Rouge“.

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson whose blog, Observations on Film Art, can be found at http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/, also share the distinction of being soon-to-be UCP authors, with their new book Minding Movies: Observations on the Art, Craft, and Business of Filmmaking scheduled for April of next year. A husband and wife team of film professors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as Brunick writes: “both are fine aesthetic observers as well as scholars, and they write the equivalent of full-fledged publishable essays, usually with plentiful and carefully placed frame enlargements” making their site an “essential stop” on Brunick’s list. Bordwell is also the author of the foreword to Roger Ebert’s The Great Movies III—a collection of the renowned critic’s writings on the landmark films of the first century of cinema to be published in October.
Last but not least Brunick points to Dave Kehr’s blog at http://www.davekehr.com/. Kehr, whose credentials include a stint as the president of the University of Chicago’s own student run film society Doc Films, and who is currently a film critic for DVD releases at the New York Times, will publish When Movies Mattered: Reviews from a Transformative Decade in April of next year. About his blog Brunick writes: “The blog’s backbone is formed by entries linking to his weekly column, but the real action occurs in the comments section, where discussions are sparked by Kehr’s remarks on everything from the state of film criticism to the careers of Nagisa Oshima and Sydney Pollack.”
Navigate to the Film Society of Lincoln Center website for the complete list.