Includes index

Dave Kehr's writing about film has garnered high praise from both readers and fellow critics. Among his admirers are some of his most influential contemporaries. Roger Ebert called Kehr "one of the most gifted film critics in America." James Naremore thought he was "one of the best writers on film the country as a whole has ever produced." But aside from remarkably detailed but brief capsule reviews and top-ten lists, you won't find much of Kehr's work on the Internet, and many of the longer and more nuanced essays for which he is best known have not yet been published in book form. With When Movies Mattered, readers welcomed the first collection of Kehr's criticism, written during his time at the Chicago Reader. Movies That Mattered is its sequel, with fifty more reviews and essays drawn from the archives of both the Chicago Reader and Chicago magazine from 1974 to 1986. As with When Movies Mattered, the majority of the reviews offer in-depth analyses of individual films that are among Kehr's favorites, from a thoughtful discussion of the sobering Holocaust documentary Shoah to an irresistible celebration of the raucous comedy Used Cars. But fans of Kehr's work will be just as taken by his dissections of critically acclaimed films he found disappointing, including The Shining, Apocalypse Now, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Whether you're a long-time reader or just discovering Dave Kehr, the insights in Movies That Mattered will enhance your appreciation of the movies you already love--and may even make you think twice about one or two you hated

Part 1: From Chicago Magazine. Black Stallion (Carroll Ballard) -- Used Cars (Robert Zemeckis) -- Tess (Roman Polanski) -- Westerns -- Disney Films -- Budd Boetticher -- Mystery of Oberwald (Michelangelo Antonioni) -- French "Tradition of Quality" -- Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, by Donald Spoto -- Sequels -- Jacques Rivette -- Boat People (Ann Hui) -- L'Argent (Robert Bresson) -- A Sunday in the Country (Bertrand Tavernier) -- Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May) -- Coca-Cola Kid (Dušan Makavejev) -- Ran (Akira Kurosawa) -- Shoah (Claude Lanzmann) -- Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger -- Home Video -- Part 2: From the Top Ten (Reader). Supervixens (Russ Meyer) -- Robin and Marian (Richard Lester) -- Islands in the Stream (Franklin J. Schaffner) -- Moses and Aaron (Jean-Marie Straub) -- Blue Collar (Paul Schrader) -- Luna (Bernardo Bertolucci) -- Atlantic City (Louis Malle) -- Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman) -- Legend of Tianyun Mountain (Xie Jin) -- Pale Rider (Clint Eastwood) -- Part 3: Favorites (Reader). Twilight's Last Gleaming (Robert Aldrich) -- Movie Movie (Stanley Donen) -- Saint Jack (Peter Bogdanovich) -- Nosferatu (Werner Herzog) -- Knife in the Head (Reinhard Hauff) -- Macbeth (Orson Welles) -- Woman Next Door (François Truffaut) -- Lola (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) -- Valley Girl (Martha Coolidge) -- Gremlins (Joe Dante) -- Part 4: Autopsies/Minority Reports. Last Tycoon (Elia Kazan) (Reader) -- A Wedding (Robert Altman) (Reader) -- Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola) (Chicago) -- Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton) (Chicago) -- Shining (Stanley Kubrick) (Reader) -- Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma) (Reader) -- Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg) (Chicago) -- A Passage to India (David Lean) (Chicago) -- Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen) (Chicago) -- Salvador (Oliver Stone) (Reader)