James Berardinelli (born September 25, 1967) is an American film critic and former engineer. His reviews are mainly published on his blog ''ReelViews.'' Approved as a critic by the aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American 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, and Stephen Wan ...
, 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.''
Morristown, New Jersey
Morristown () is a town and the county seat of 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 within Camden County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the township had a population of 74,553, which reflected an increase of 3,508 (+4.94%) from the 71,045 counted in the 2010 census. ...
, where he attended
Cherry Hill High School East
Cherry Hill High School East (also known as Cherry Hill East or CHE) is a four-year comprehensive public high school serving students in ninth through twelfth grades in Cherry Hill, in Camden County, New Jersey, United States, operating as pa ...
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universit ...
from 1985 to 1990, obtaining both a bachelor's and master's degree in electrical engineering. After graduating he worked for Bellcore Company, now
Telcordia Technologies
iconectiv is a supplier of network planning and network management services to telecommunications providers. Known as Bellcore after its establishment in the United States in 1983 as part of the break-up of the Bell System, the company's name ...
. He worked during the next 15 years "in a variety of fields, including
fiber optics
An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means ...
, 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 in Burlington County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is a suburb of Philadelphia and part of the South Jersey region. As of the 2010 U.S. census, the township's population was 41,864, reflecting an increase of ...
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 (, yuf-x-yav, Wi:kaʼi:la, , Southern Paiute language: Paxa’uipi, ) 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 ...
''. His first review published to the Internet was of the 1992 drama '' Scent of a Woman'', which was posted both to
Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...
and his Colossus Inc-hosted website, ReelViews.
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
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 and is a
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American 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, and Stephen Wan ...
-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 September 2013, Berardinelli announced that he had been working on a trilogy of fantasy novels entitled ''The Last Whisper of the Gods''. The first book was published in November 2015, the second was released in January 2016, and 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'',