Ann Hornaday, Longtime Washington Post Film Critic, Dies at 66. She Showed Criticism Can Be Kind.

The facts come first below. My opinion follows in the section marked as opinion.

Ann Hornaday, the longtime chief film critic of The Washington Post and a 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalist for criticism, died Sunday. She was 66.

The cause was glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, her husband, Dennis Greenia, told the Baltimore Banner. She died at their home in North Baltimore. She first noticed vision problems in June 2025 and was diagnosed before the summer was over, the Banner reported.

A critic for the everyday moviegoer

Hornaday joined the Post in 2002, replacing critic Rita Kempley, after working at the Austin American-Statesman and The Baltimore Sun, The Hollywood Reporter reported. At the Post she became a national figure in film criticism, writing hundreds of reviews known for being accessible and free of pretension. She left the paper in 2025 after taking a buyout. Her 2017 book, "Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies," was a practical guide for moviegoers, and she had finished a book about the making of the 1976 political thriller "All the President's Men." That book is set to be published in 2028.

Former colleagues told the Banner she wrote carefully considered criticism with the everyday moviegoer in mind. "Ann was a beautiful writer but she was also an extremely accessible writer," said Liz Seymour, a former managing editor at the Post, who called her "salt of the earth." Seymour added: "She was very willing to give a great review to a genre she wasn't interested in if she thought it was a well-done movie."

Greenia said she always put the reader first but also felt for the filmmakers, casts and crews behind each picture. "She was really kind in the way that she approached the art of criticism," he told the Banner.

Iowa, New York and Baltimore

Hornaday was born March 9, 1960, in Iowa City, Iowa, and grew up in Des Moines. She graduated from Smith College in 1982 and moved to New York, where she worked at Ms. Magazine as Gloria Steinem's administrative assistant. A journalism fellowship later took her to Athens, Georgia, where she met Greenia, her husband of 26 years, at a listening party for an R.E.M. album, the Banner reported.

She loved Baltimore too much to move to Washington for a shorter commute, according to the Banner. After her brain surgery in August 2025, she and Greenia went back to her favorite activity, walking around Lake Montebello. "At one point she said, 'Disneyland is wrong. Lake Montebello is the happiest place on earth,'" he said. She is survived by Greenia, their daughter Victoria Greenia, a stepdaughter, Leila Greenia, and a brother, William Hornaday III, the Banner reported.

Opinion: Criticism can be kind

A film critic's job is to judge, and judging is not the same as tearing down. By the accounts of the people who knew her best, Hornaday understood the difference. She wrote for ordinary readers, not for other critics. She gave genres she did not care for a fair hearing. Her husband's summary of her work was simple: she was kind.

That is rarer than it should be, in criticism and everywhere else. Our public conversation rewards the cruelest line and the quickest dismissal. Scripture sets a higher bar: "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying." Proverbs describes a woman of worth this way: "She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness."

Honest judgment and kindness can live in the same sentence. Hornaday spent two decades proving it on deadline. We pray for comfort for her husband, daughters and brother. Dock Line marked another long career in media this week in Christiane Amanpour Leaving CNN After 43 Years.