The Reader is one of the few alternative newsweeklies that still publishes long-form film criticism, and sometimes I wonder why. Sites like Rotten Tomatoes, which drive a ton of traffic to the Reader website, are not interested in ideas but in quick-hit evaluations—and, more to the point, numerical indexing—of a medium that should be appreciated in degrees and digressions, hypotheses and hypnosis.

As part of the Reader's new online presence, we've been developing an alphabetical index of all the long-form reviews published over the last 40 years. This will take a while—especially prior to the mid-80s, when the Reader's content was first digitized—but we think this is an archive well worth accessing, especially because so many of the films reviewed can, generally speaking, be more easily viewed now than when the reviews were first published. So check out the inimitable Cliff Doerksen on Alien vs. Predator; myself on The Adjustment Bureau, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, and D.W. Griffith's America; and Jonathan Rosenbaum on Ali, Army of Shadows, and The Aviator. That's just the A's.

Many thanks to Reader stalwarts Drew Hunt and Asher Klein for helping launch this great database of literary movie criticism.