About Me

Joshua Polanski is a film and culture writer currently based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is a cinematic globetrotter whose interests include the technical elements of filmmaking & exhibition, slow & digital cinemas, cinematic sexuality, as well as Baltic, East Asian, & Middle Eastern film. He is an individually accredited Tomatometer approved critic and a member of the Michigan Movie Critics Guild. His blog on Baltic cinema is the only recurring still-active blog on Baltic cinema in English.

Joshua has a background in the academic study of religion. In grad school, he studied political theology and religious history (mostly Islamic and Christian) at Boston University. His two interests flirt with and inform each other, and he uses the tools from his education—philosophies of beauty, theological aesthetics, political theories, etc—to help make sense of the cinematic world. An example of this is the two-part series on the theological filmmaking and visual style of Paul WS Anderson.

Frequent Bylines: Boston Hassle, Offscreen, In Review Online, Bay Area Reporter, DMovies, and Midwest Film Journal.