The Rhapsodes


Book Description

Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, and Roger Ebert were three of America's most revered and widely read film critics, more famous than many of the movies they wrote about. But their remarkable contributions to the burgeoning American film criticism of the 1960s and beyond were deeply influenced by four earlier critics: Otis Ferguson, James Agee, Manny Farber, and Parker Tyler. Film scholar and critic David Bordwell restores to a wider audience the work of Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler, critics he calls the 'Rhapsodes' for the passionate and deliberately offbeat nature of their vernacular prose.




I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie


Book Description

The Pulitzer Prize–winning film critics offers up more reviews of horrible films. Roger Ebert awards at least two out of four stars to most of the more than 150 movies he reviews each year. But when the noted film critic does pan a movie, the result is a humorous, scathing critique far more entertaining than the movie itself. I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie is a collection of more than 200 of Ebert’s most biting and entertaining reviews of films receiving a mere star or less from the only film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize. Ebert has no patience for these atrocious movies and minces no words in skewering the offenders. Witness: Armageddon * (1998)—The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense, and the human desire to be entertained. No matter what they’re charging to get in, it’s worth more to get out. The Beverly Hillbillies * (1993)—Imagine the dumbest half-hour sitcom you’ve ever seen, spin it out to ninety-three minutes by making it even more thin and shallow, and you have this movie. It’s appalling. North no stars (1994)—I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it. Police Academy no stars (1984)—It’s so bad, maybe you should pool your money and draw straws and send one of the guys off to rent it so that in the future, whenever you think you’re sitting through a bad comedy, he could shake his head, chuckle tolerantly, and explain that you don't know what bad is. Dear God * (1996)—Dear God is the kind of movie where you walk out repeating the title, but not with a smile. The movies reviewed within I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie are motion pictures you’ll want to distance yourself from, but Roger Ebert’s creative and comical musings on those films make for a book no movie fan should miss.




The Great Movies


Book Description

America’s most trusted and best-known film critic Roger Ebert presents one hundred brilliant essays on some of the best movies ever made. Roger Ebert, the famed film writer and critic, wrote biweekly essays for a feature called "The Great Movies," in which he offered a fresh and fervent appreciation of a great film. The Great Movies collects one hundred of these essays, each one of them a gem of critical appreciation and an amalgam of love, analysis, and history that will send readers back to that film with a fresh set of eyes and renewed enthusiasm–or perhaps to an avid first-time viewing. Ebert’s selections range widely across genres, periods, and nationalities, and from the highest achievements in film art to justly beloved and wildly successful popular entertainments. Roger Ebert manages in these essays to combine a truly populist appreciation for our most important form of popular art with a scholar’s erudition and depth of knowledge and a sure aesthetic sense. Wonderfully enhanced by stills selected by Mary Corliss, the film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, The Great Movies is a treasure trove for film lovers of all persuasions, an unrivaled guide for viewers, and a book to return to again and again. The Great Movies includes: All About Eve • Bonnie and Clyde • Casablanca • Citizen Kane • The Godfather • Jaws • La Dolce Vita • Metropolis • On the Waterfront • Psycho • The Seventh Seal • Sweet Smell of Success • Taxi Driver • The Third Man • The Wizard of Oz • and eighty-five more films.




Roger Ebert's Book of Film


Book Description

The Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic assembles and introduces more than one hundred essays and articles about film, with entries by and about movie stars, famous directors, industry executives, and critics. Tour.




A List


Book Description

People love movies. People love lists. So The A-List is a natural. While there are plenty of encyclopedic lists of films, this compulsively readable book of 100 essays -- most written expressly for this volume-flags the best of the best as chosen by a consensus of the National Society of Film Critics. The Society is a world-renowned, marquee -- name organization embracing some of America's most distinguished critics: more than forty writers who have national followings as well as devoted local constituencies in such major cities as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Minneapolis. But make no mistake about it: This isn't a collection of esoteric "critic's choice" movies. The Society has made its selections based on a film's intrinsic merits, its role in the development of the motion-picture art, and its impact on culture and society. Some of the choices are controversial. So are some of the omissions. It will be a jumping-off point for discussions for years to come. And since the volume spans all international films from the very beginning, it will act as a balance to recent guides dominated by films of the last two decades (hardly film's golden age). Here is a book that is definitely ready for its close-up.




Placing Movies


Book Description

Jonathan Rosenbaum, longtime contributor to such publications as Film Quarterly, Sight and Sound, and The Village Voice, is arguably the most eloquent, insightful film critic writing in America today. Placing Movies, the first collection of his work, gathers together thirty of his most distinctive and illuminating pieces. Written over a span of twenty-one years, these essays cover an extraordinarily broad range of films—from Hollywood blockbusters to foreign art movies to experimental cinema. They include not just reviews but perceptive commentary on directors, actors, and trends; and thoughtful analysis of the practice of film criticism. It is this last element—Rosenbaum's reflections on the art of film criticism—that sets this collection apart from other volumes of film writing. Both in the essays themselves and in the section introductions, Rosenbaum provides a rare insider's view of his profession: the backstage politics, the formulation of critical judgments, the function of film commentary. Taken together, these pieces serve as a guided tour of the profession of film criticism. They also serve as representative samples of Rosenbaum's unique brand of film writing. Among the highlights are memoirs of director Jacques Tati and maverick critic Manny Farber, celebrations of classics such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Manchurian Candidate, and considered reevaluations of Orson Welles and Woody Allen.




The Analysis of Film


Book Description

The Analysis of Film brings together the authors studies of classic Hollywood film. It is a book about the methods of close film analysis, the narrative structure of Hollwood film, Hitchcock's work and the role of women.




How to Be a Film Critic in Five Easy Lessons


Book Description

How to Be a Film Critic in Five Easy Lessons addresses the serious matter of the increasing gap between the published opinions of professional film critics and the reception of popular film by traditional movie-goers, especially millennial movie fans. Recent reactions to the low grades emanating from Rotten Tomatoes, the iconic film review aggregation site, have inspired various constituencies to call for significant changes, including some major studio CEOs, some actors, and the readers of reviews themselves. A new generation and breed of film critics is needed, not raised to please baby boomers or Generation X movie fans, but younger viewers who make up 30% of ticket buyers. This study examines all this and offers five categories of film reviewers plying their trade as models of consistency. New critics have to start somewhere, most often in college film classes, and deciding what type of critic one wants to be begins here.




Film Criticism in the Digital Age


Book Description

Over the past decade, as digital media has expanded and print outlets have declined, pundits have bemoaned a “crisis of criticism” and mourned the “death of the critic.” Now that well-paying jobs in film criticism have largely evaporated, while blogs, message boards, and social media have given new meaning to the saying that “everyone’s a critic,” urgent questions have emerged about the status and purpose of film criticism in the twenty-first century. In Film Criticism in the Digital Age, ten scholars from across the globe come together to consider whether we are witnessing the extinction of serious film criticism or seeing the start of its rebirth in a new form. Drawing from a wide variety of case studies and methodological perspectives, the book’s contributors find many signs of the film critic’s declining clout, but they also locate surprising examples of how critics—whether moonlighting bloggers or salaried writers—have been able to intervene in current popular discourse about arts and culture. In addition to collecting a plethora of scholarly perspectives, Film Criticism in the Digital Age includes statements from key bloggers and print critics, like Armond White and Nick James. Neither an uncritical celebration of digital culture nor a jeremiad against it, this anthology offers a comprehensive look at the challenges and possibilities that the Internet brings to the evaluation, promotion, and explanation of artistic works.




It's Only a Movie!


Book Description

Once derided as senseless entertainment, movies have gradually assumed a place among the arts. Raymond Haberski's provocative and insightful book traces the trajectory of this evolution throughout the twentieth century, from nickelodeon amusements to the age of the financial blockbuster. Haberski begins by looking at the barriers to film's acceptance as an art form, including the Chicago Motion Picture Commission hearings of 1918--1920, one of the most revealing confrontations over the use of censorship in the motion picture industry. He then examines how movies overcame the stigma attached to popular entertainment through such watershed events as the creation of the Museum of Modern Art's Film Library in the 1920s. The arguments between Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris's heralded a golden age of criticism, and Haberski focuses on the roles of Kael, Sarris, James Agee, Roger Ebert, and others, in the creation of "cinephilia." Described by Susan Sontag as "born of the conviction that cinema was an art unlike any other," this love of cinema centered on coffee houses, universities, art theaters, film festivals, and, of course, foreign films. The lively debates over the place of movies in American culture began to wane in the 1970s. Haberski places the blame on the loss of cultural authority and on the increasing irrelevance of the meaning of art. He concludes with a persuasive call for the re-emergence of a middle ground between art and entertainment, "something more complex, ambiguous, and vexing -- something worth thought."