For The Love Of Movies

“For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism” is the first documentary to dramatize the rich saga of American movie reviewing. Directed by The Boston Phoenix critic, Gerald Peary, “For the Love of Movies” offers an insider’s view of the critics’ profession, with commentary from America’s best-regarded reviewers, Roger Ebert (The Chicago Sun-Times), A.O. Scott (The New York Times), Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly), Kenneth Turan (The Los Angeles Times)
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Amy and Gerry were thrilled to be honored by our peers, the Boston Society of Film Critics (BSFC), for our movie “For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism.” The Awards Ceremony took place on Sunday, February 6 at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Harvard Square.

We were in excellent company, too! Jeremy Renner, star of the acclaimed Iraqi war drama The Hurt Locker, was in Cambridge to claim his Best Actor honor from the BSFC, several weeks prior to the actual Oscars. Philadelphia Cousins, niece of celebrated chef and author Julia Child, accepted the BSFC Best Actress award for Meryl Streep, for Streep’s performance as Child in Julie & Julia.

Other local honorees include: Haden Guest, David Pendleton and the Harvard Film Archive; and David Bramante of the Stuart Street Playhouse.

You can see it all on YouTube here!

We slowed down on purpose this fall, but still showed For the Love of Movies at selected film festivals, such as our Canadian screenings at the Montreal World Film Festival and then, 3,000 miles away, at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Gerry was at both, the receptions were great, and, for the first time, our DVD was sold at the screenings. It was amazing to see Vancouverites lined up after, and we actually ran out of DVDs!

After that, Gerry traveled with the film to the Starz Center in Denver and to the St. Louis Film Festival, and, on both occasions, he was part of a panel with local reviewers about the state of film criticism. He also returned to Boston raving about both of these livable cities, which he’d never visited before.  He said: check out Denver for some fabulous used bookstores, and you haven’t lived until you’ve stood under the totally incredible St. Louis Arch.
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The New England premiere of “For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism” at the Independent Film Festival Boston (IFFB) was a great occasion. An audience of 275 came to the ICA/Boston on a Monday night, April 27, and about 25 of the crowd stayed on for an after-the-show gathering at the nearby Barking Crab restaurant: conversation, beer, and fried seafood.

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