No Reel Complaints   

Boston Globe film critic Jay Carr retires after reviewing some 10,000 films in his 45-year newspaper career.

Boston Globe film critic Jay Carr calls it a wrap, ending a 45-year newspaper career that has included, by his estimate, more than 10,000 film reviews. An award-winning theater critic, Carr, 65, first caught the culture-crit bug as a college part-timer at the New York Post, which led him to spend 19 years reviewing theater, classical music and films for the Detroit News. In film, and somewhat less so these days in theater, Carr says, "You get this tremendous flow of everything from all over the world.... It's not just thought. It's also the energies and the concerns of an age. It's where the dialogue exists that has to do with meeting the needs and expectations of the age." Carr edited the recently published book "The A List: The National Society of Film Critics' 100 Essential Films." Despite writing an average of six film reviews a week during his 19 years at the Globe, it's clear Carr never lost his enthusiasm, even for writing about films he didn't like. Here's how he ended his review of "Queen of the Damned": "The best things in this thoroughly disposable effort are the grandly gloomy production design by Graham Walker, the velvety cinematography of...Ian Baker, and the huge mascara budget."