Ty Burr (born August 17, 1957) is an American film critic, columnist, and author who currently reviews films for The Washington Post and writes the film and popular culture newsletter "Ty Burr's Watchlist". Burr previously served as film critic at The Boston Globe from 2002 until 2021.[1]
From 1982 to 1987, Burr worked at Home Box Office, where he helped program the Cinemax pay cable service as a film evaluator.
From 1990 to 2002, he was a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly, where he primarily covered films, video, music, and digital media. An early interest in the Internet led to his hand-coding the first EW web page and introducing and editing the magazine's New Media section.
For two decades, until July 2021, Burr served as the film critic for The Boston Globe. Beginning in January 2015, he also wrote a weekly Sunday column on a wide variety of pop culture subjects. His columns on breaking cultural issues frequently appeared on the paper's front page. In 2017, Burr was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism.[2]
In July 2021, Burr left the Globe to start "Ty Burr's Watch List", an online newsletter devoted to reviews of and commentary on theatrical and streaming films, TV, and other popular culture. Initially published on Substack, the Watch List switched to the Ghost platform in early 2024 when it became known that Substack was publishing and profiting from white supremacist writers.
Burr has written or contributed to five books. The Hundred Greatest Stars of All Time (1998) and The Hundred Greatest Movies of All Time (1999) are Entertainment Weekly "bookazines," written largely by Burr (with additional material by other staff writers) during his tenure at the magazine.
In 2007, Burr wrote The Best Old Movies for Families: A Guide to Watching Together, an essay-based reference book for parents and grandparents seeking to introduce young children to classic films. It received uniformly positive reviews from critics and readers. In 2012, Burr wrote Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame, a critical study of celebrity over a hundred years of film and cultural history. It was widely and positively reviewed, with The New York Times saying, "not many film historians can see the whole equation as Ty Burr does in Gods Like Us,"[3] and the Buffalo News calling it "A brilliant and even profound history of stardom."[4]
In 2012, Burr published the e-Book The 50 Movie Starter Kit: What You Need to Know if You Want to Know What You're Talking About, a guide for beginning film lovers.
