Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: Academic criticism by film scholars, who study the composition of film theory and publish their findings and essays in books and journals, and general journalistic criticism that appears regularly in press newspapers, magazines and other popular mass-media outlets. Academic film criticism rarely takes the form of a review; instead it is more likely to analyse the film and its place in the history of its genre, the industry and film history as a whole.

Film criticism is also labeled as a type of writing that perceives films as possible achievements and wishes to convey their differences, as well as the films being made in a level of quality that is satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Film criticism is also associated with the journalistic type of criticism, which is grounded in the media's effects being developed, and journalistic criticism resides in standard structures such as newspapers. Journal articles pertaining to films served as representatives for the film critics who desired to increase the amount of communication about movies to a high degree that ascended above content that was normally featured in popular publications. The critics who work in the media are normally commissionaires who affect culture, since the judgments and choices of critics have the effect of influencing what audience members perceive about objects that are supplied to them, and critics are also able to influence how the audience members choose to think about objects that are supplied to them.

In the current era of history, film criticism is rich in having digital devices that allow films to be analyzed through visual and auditory methods that involve critical strategies of creativity that allow people to become immersed in film criticism. Film criticism is also associated with the cultural type of criticism, which is also referred to as academic criticism, and academic criticism is able to primarily make interpretations of films from the viewpoint of directors while the interpretations place emphasis on parallels that films have with previous works that were deemed to be of high quality.

Film was introduced in the late 19th century. The earliest artistic criticism of film emerged in the early 1900s. The first paper to serve as a critique of the film came out of The Optical Lantern and Cinematograph Journal, followed by the Bioscope in 1908.^{[better source needed]}

Film is a relatively new form of art, in comparison to music, literature and painting which have existed since ancient times. Early writing on film sought to argue that films could also be considered a form of art. In 1911, Ricciotto Canudo wrote a manifesto proclaiming cinema to be the "Sixth Art" (later "Seventh Art"). For many decades after, film was still being accorded less prestige than longer-established art forms. In Sweden, serious film criticism was spearheaded by Bengt Idestam-Almquist, whom the Swedish Film Institute has called the father of Swedish film criticism.

By the 1920s, critics were analyzing film for its merit and value, and as more than just entertainment. The growing popularity of the medium caused major newspapers to start hiring film critics. In the 1930s, the film industry saw audiences grow increasingly silent as films were now accompanied by sound. However, in the late 1930s audiences became influenced by print news sources reporting on movies and criticism became largely centered around audience reactions within the theaters.

In the decades of the 1930s and the 1940s, the type of criticism pertaining to films had to overcome some difficult challenges. The first difficult challenge involves how film criticism in the 1930s decade did not have any stable foundations to reside on, and film criticism also involved critics having vocabularies that were limited. During the 1930s, the jobs of critics weren't perceived to be great and critics did not earn high wages for their work. The next difficult challenge involves the fact that the industry related to film even attempted to use intimidation as a way of making movie critics cease with reviewing films. In the year of 1948, a critic named Eileen Arnot Robertson was forcibly removed from her job as a critic. Despite the fact that she filed a lawsuit against the film industry, the film industry said that Robertson's firing did not occur out of maliciousness. These difficult challenges led to the existences of movie critics who had respect for films, and those new film critics sought to make film criticism be a respected job.

In the 1940s, new forms of criticism emerged. Essays analyzing films were written with a distinctive charm and style, and sought to persuade the reader to accept the critic's argument. This trend brought film criticism into the mainstream, gaining the attention of many popular magazines; this eventually made film reviews and critiques a staple among most print media. As the decades passed, some critics gained fame, and a few became household names, among them James Agee, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, and more recently Roger Ebert and Peter Travers.