Elvis Mitchell

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Elvis Mitchell (born 1958 in Detroit, Michigan) is an African-American public intellectual and a former film critic for The New York Times. Previously, he was a film critic for the Fort-Worth Star Telegram, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and The Detroit Free Press. He graduated from Wayne State University, where he majored in English.

Mitchell has become a recognizable figure in the popular film industry due in part to his work as a screenwriter, but also because of his six-foot frame and full head of dreadlocks.

In his reviews, he takes on a freewheeling, some might say stream of consciousness style, and works a lot of intertextuality into his work by referencing other films. As one of the most well-known African-American critics in the United States, Mitchell also incorporates various cultural issues into his reviews and essays.

He has recently been asked to be a visiting lecturer in film and African American Studies at Harvard University.

Elvis Mitchell was also part of a short-lived PBS show in the late 80s called The Edge. In it he did film commentarty and criticism. On one episode he did a quick run-down of all of director Oliver Stone's tropes, including "always keep that camera moving," which he said while moving a camcorder over a small model of a Vietnamese jungle and prison camp set up on a table.

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