About Joan Ellis

Scratch a genuine movie fan and you will uncover a hooky-playing youth. Joan Ellis is one. In a Midwestern grade school she began slipping off to the make-believe world of the local movie house, and a lifelong romance began. At Vassar College she was again diverted from schoolwork, this time by a Yale man with a taste for adventure. At 19 and 21 the bride and groom signed onto another make-believe world: the CIA, where they trained for assignments as deep cover agents. The experience made of Ellis a skeptic, a liberal, and a passionate opponent of censorship.

After the CIA she raised three children, helped to build an electronics company with her husband, and took on a bit of unfinished business. Twenty-seven years after entering Vassar she took her senior year at Princeton University.

Then the movies began to exert their old pull. Intrigued by the way film reflects our culture (or is it the other way around?), she slipped into full-time reviewing. Her reviews earned a Critical Writing Award from the New Jersey Press Association.

The film of choice is what this homepage is about. Her opinions are yours to savor, even quote, but please be sure to credit your source.

You can Email Joan Ellis at fergle@aol.com

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