Dave Kehr wrote film criticism for the Chicago Reader and Chicago magazine during the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1986, he became the principal film critic for the Chicago Tribune, where he worked until 1992, when he became a film critic for the New York Daily News. He then wrote a weekly DVD column for the New York Times until 2013. He is now a curator in the Film Department at the Museum of Modern Art. His previous collection, When Movies Mattered, was also published by the University of Chicago Press.