James Berardinelli (born September 25, 1967)[1] 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, 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.
Berardinelli has categorized himself as an agnostic and a libertarian.[3] He resides in Mount Laurel, New Jersey with his wife, Sheryl, whom he met through his website.[3][5][6][7] They have two children: a son born in May 2010, and a daughter born in November 2019.[8][9]
Career
Starting in January 1992, Berardinelli began writing movie reviews, his first being a review of the 1991 drama Grand Canyon.[10] His first review published to the Internet was of the 1992 drama Scent of a Woman, which was posted both to Usenet and his Colossus Inc-hosted[11] website, ReelViews.[12]
In January 2004,[17] he began his blog ReelThoughts, by which time his reviews could attract as many as 100,000 readers,[18] up from around 1,400 weekly readers in 1997.[19] In August 2006,[20] the site moved to ReelViews.net, a domain Berardinelli had originally registered by late 2000.[21]
In September 2013, Berardinelli announced that he had been working on a trilogy of fantasy novels entitled The Last Whisper of the Gods.[22] The first book was published in November 2015, the second was released in January 2016, and the third in March 2016.[23]
Berardinelli appears as a guest on the pop-culture radio program Fictional Frontiers every two weeks.[24]
^Berardinelli, James (August 3, 2009). "1984". Reelviews.net. Archived from the original on June 15, 2015. Retrieved June 15, 2015. ...turning 17. Beginning September 25 [1984], I could drive and see R-rated movies without an accompanying adult.
^ abcSchneider, 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."
^Robert Stevens (June 27, 1997), "Amateur film reviewers take opinions to the Internet", Kansas City Star/ Los Angeles Times: 17, James Berardinelli is not a professional movie reviewer, but he plays one on the Net. Log onto his Web site ReelViews, and you'll find 1,200 film reviews that the Piscataway, N.J., electrical engineer has written since he started posting messages on Internet newsgroups in 1992.
^Berardinelli, James (June 11, 2010). "Welcome, Michael". Reelviews Movie Reviews. Retrieved June 21, 2015.
^Berardinelli, James (December 31, 2019). "Rewinding 2019: The Year in Review". Reelviews. Retrieved January 3, 2020. I missed a good part of November due to the birth of my daughter
^"ReelViews FAQ". movie-reviews.colossus.net. Archived from the original on December 21, 1997. Retrieved January 11, 2022.
^"Archived copy". movie-reviews.colossus.net. Archived from the original on May 26, 2005. Retrieved January 11, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
