Owen Gleiberman is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 film critic for Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

, a position he has held since the magazine's launch in 1990. From 1981–89, he worked at the Boston Phoenix.

Besides Entertainment Weekly, his work has been published in Film Comment

Film Comment

Film Comment is an arts and culture magazine published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, of which it is the official publication. Film Comment features critical reviews and in-depth analysis of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world...

, and collected in the film criticism anthology Love and Hisses. Gleiberman reviews movies for National Public Radio and for NY1, New York City's 24-hour

24-hour news cycle

The 24-hour news cycle arrived with the advent of television channels dedicated to news, and brought about a much faster pace of news production with increased demand for stories that can be presented as news, as opposed to the day-by-day pace of the news cycle of printed daily newspapers...

 cable news

United States cable news

Cable news refers to television channels devoted to television news broadcasts, with the name deriving from the proliferation of such networks during the 1980s with the advent of cable television. In the United States, early networks included CNN in 1980, Financial News Network in 1981, and CNN2 ...

 television station and is a member and former chair of the New York Film Critics Circle. He is one of the critics featured in Gerald Peary

Gerald Peary

Gerald Peary is an American film critic, who has been a reviewer and columnist for the Boston Phoenix since 1996. He was formerly the Acting Curator of the Harvard Film Archive and is currently the General Editor of the University Press of Mississippi Conversations with Filmmakers Series...

's 2009 documentary film For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism

For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism

For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism is a 2009 documentary film dramatizing a hundred years of American film criticism through film clips, historic photographs, and on-camera interviews with many of today’s important reviewers, mostly print but also Internet...

.

Biography

Gleiberman's first foray into journalism came at Ann Arbor Pioneer High School while working as the film critic for The Optimist, the student newspaper. There, he gained notoriety for his review of The Apple Dumpling Gang

The Apple Dumpling Gang (film)

The Apple Dumpling Gang is a 1975 Disney film about slick gambler Russel Donavan who is duped into taking care of a group of orphan children who eventually strike gold during the California Gold Rush....

(1975), in an article entitled "Dumplings of Justice" wherein he praised the eponymous "gang" as a "proto-typical revolutionary People's movement opposing the forces of crypto-fascist capitalism as represented by Don Knotts

Don Knotts

Jesse Donald "Don" Knotts was an American comedic actor best known for his portrayal of Barney Fife on the 1960s television sitcom The Andy Griffith Show, a role which earned him five Emmy Awards...

."

A group of his most loyal friends and admirers in high school formed "The Owen Gleiberman Club", and dressed for functions wearing Gleiberman's trademark University of Michigan sweatshirt.

He graduated from the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 with a degree in English.

Performance

Gleiberman has acknowledged that he has difficulty dealing with the grading system at EW and that it has "never been [his] favorite thing."

Owen Gleiberman is featured in For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism

For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism

For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism is a 2009 documentary film dramatizing a hundred years of American film criticism through film clips, historic photographs, and on-camera interviews with many of today’s important reviewers, mostly print but also Internet...

discussing the implications of being a young critic championed by Pauline Kael

Pauline Kael

Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....

, and also explaining the impact on him as child watching Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary's Baby (film)

Rosemary's Baby is a 1968 American horror film written and directed by Roman Polanski, based on the bestselling 1967 novel Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin...

: "Ruth Gordon

Ruth Gordon

Ruth Gordon Jones , better known as Ruth Gordon, was an American actress and writer. She was perhaps best known for her film roles such as Minnie Castevet, Rosemary's overly solicitous neighbor in Rosemary's Baby, as the eccentric Maude in Harold and Maude and as the mother of Orville Boggs in the...

 really freaked me out in that movie."

On the film review website Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

, Gleibermann agrees with the Tomatometer (proportion of critics who label the movie "fresh" or "rotten") 74% of the time.

External links

• Owen Gleiberman's Listing, New York Film Critics Circle