James Berardinelli


James Berardinelli is an American film critic based on the Web, who produces the blog ReelThoughts. 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 known as 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 and spent his early childhood in Morristown, New Jersey. When he was nine, his family moved to the township of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where he attended Cherry Hill High School East. Later he moved to Piscataway.
He attended the University of Pennsylvania from 1985 to 1990, obtaining both a Bachelor of Science and Master's degree in Electrical Engineering. 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, video testing, and software systems."
Berardinelli has categorized himself as an agnostic and a libertarian. He resides in Mount Laurel, New Jersey with his wife, Sheryl, whom he met through his website. They have two children: a son born in May 2010, and a daughter born in November 2019.

Career

Starting in 1993, Berardinelli started publishing reviews in Usenet by reviewing Scent of a Woman. Berardinelli also writes the blog ReelThoughts at Reelviews.net.
Professional critic Roger Ebert referred to Berardinelli as "the best of the Web-based critics", and wrote a foreword for Berardinelli's book, Reelviews, a collection of his reviews. Berardinelli is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic.
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