James Berardinelli (born September 25, 1967) is an American film critic. His reviews are mainly published on his blog ''ReelViews.'' Approved as a critic by the aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, he has published two collections of reviews of movies on DVD and video. He is also a fantasy novelist, publishing a trilogy from 2015 through 2016 known as ''The Last Whisper of the Gods.''

Personal life

Berardinelli was born in

New Brunswick, New Jersey New Brunswick is a city (New Jersey), city in and the county seat of Middlesex County, New Jersey, Middlesex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Morristown, New Jersey Morristown () is a Town (New Jersey), town in and the county seat of Morris County, New Jersey, Morris County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.

. When he was nine, his family moved to the township of

Cherry Hill, New Jersey Cherry Hill is a Township (New Jersey), township within Camden County, New Jersey, Camden County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As a suburb of Philadelphia, the township is part of the South Jersey and Delaware Valley regions. Cherry Hill ...

, where he attended Cherry Hill High School East. Later he moved to Piscataway. He attended the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

from 1985 to 1990, obtaining both a bachelor's and master's degree in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

. After graduating he worked for Bellcore Company, now Telcordia Technologies. He worked during the next 15 years "in a variety of fields, including

fiber optics An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

, video testing, and software systems." Berardinelli has categorized himself as an agnostic and a libertarian. He resides in

Mount Laurel, New Jersey Mount Laurel is a Township (New Jersey), township in Burlington County, New Jersey, Burlington County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The township, and all of Burlington County, is a part of the Philadelphia-Reading, Pennsylvania, Reading-Camd ...

with his wife, Sheryl, whom he met through his website.Schneider, Dan
"The Dan Schneider Interview 16: James Berardinelli"
Cosmoetica.com, December 12, 2008. Accessed July 14, 2016. "I was born in New Brunswick, lived in Old Bridge for a year, then spent my childhood in Morristown and my teenage years in Cherry Hill. I went to college at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, then returned to New Jersey to live in Bridgewater, Hillsborough, and Mount Laurel, where I currently reside." They have two children: a son born in May 2010, and a daughter born in November 2019.

Career

Starting in January 1992, Berardinelli began writing movie reviews, his first being a review of the 1991 drama ''

Grand Canyon The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is long, up to wide and attains a depth of over a mile (). The canyon and adjacent rim are contained within Grand Canyon Nati ...

''. His first review published to the Internet was of the 1992 drama '' Scent of a Woman'', which was posted both to

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

and his Colossus Inc-hosted website, ReelViews.

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...

referred to Berardinelli as "the best of the Web-based critics" in 2001, and wrote a foreword for the 2003 book, ''Reelviews,'' a collection of Berardinelli's reviews. Berardinelli is a member of the

Broadcast Film Critics Association The Critics Choice Association (CCA), formerly the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) is an association of television, radio and online critics. Their membership includes critics who review film and television. Founded in 1995, it is the l ...

and is a

-approved critic. In January 2004, he began his blog ''ReelThoughts'', by which time his reviews could attract as many as 100,000 readers, up from around 1,400 weekly readers in 1997. In August 2006, the site moved to ReelViews.net, a domain Berardinelli had originally registered by late 2000. In November 2015, Berardinelli published the first book in a

fantasy novel Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. magic (paranormal), Magic, the supernatural and Legendary creature, magical creatures are common i ...

triology entitled ''The Last Whisper of the Gods''. The second book followed in January 2016, the third in March 2016. Berardinelli appears as a guest on the pop-culture radio program ''Fictional Frontiers'' every two weeks.

Annual film rankings

Bibliography

* Berardinelli, James (2003) ''ReelViews : The Ultimate Guide to the Best 1,000 Modern Movies on DVD and Video'', * Berardinelli, James (2005) ''ReelViews 2: The Ultimate Guide to the Best 1,000 Modern Movies on DVD and Video, 2005 Edition'', * Berardinelli, James (2015) ''The Last Whisper of the Gods'', ASIN B-016IWS-UN-M * Berardinelli, James (2016) ''The Curse of the Gift'', ASIN B-019CPR-EH-K * Berardinelli, James (2016) ''The Shadow of the Otherverse'', ASIN B-01BRSW-VH-S * Berardinelli, James (2017) ''The Lingering Haze'',

References

External links

ReelViews.net
(official site) {{DEFAULTSORT:Berardinelli, James 1967 births 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American novelists American agnostics American electrical engineers American film critics American libertarians American male bloggers American bloggers American male non-fiction writers American writers of Italian descent Cherry Hill High School East alumni Engineers from New Jersey Living people Novelists from New Jersey Online Film Critics Society Writers from Cherry Hill, New Jersey Writers from Morristown, New Jersey People from Mount Laurel, New Jersey University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Writers from New Brunswick, New Jersey Writers from Burlington County, New Jersey