100 Books Like Is Just a Movie

Yes, of course, just about everyone has heard of Roger Ebert (d. 2013), the great film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and co-host, with Gene Siskel of the PBS program Sneak Previews. But have you ever read any of his reviews? They’re delightful–smart, funny, touching, and thoroughly readable.

Ebert must have seen every film ever made (his reviews are arranged in these collections alphabetically by film title). In each short review he offered, not just his opinion of the film in question, but striking insights into the film’s themes, meanings, symbols, and underlying philosophy.

Any film lover should immediately obtain all four collections. 

When I decided to study Taiwan cinema more systematically, I tried to read as much on the subject as possible. I enjoyed this book because it offered me a broad overview of many kinds of questions that can be asked about and through Taiwan cinema.

For example, I realized that it is possible to try and understand Taiwanese domestic & international politics, cross-strait relations, colonial history, and the impact of globalization in a more relatable manner by reading films and documentaries as texts. It is also possible to analyze different festivals, genres, filmmakers, and individual films from the perspectives of the film industry and film artistry.

I was totally energized by the enormous potential the subject of Taiwan cinema can offer because of this book.     

A collection marking the fifty-year anniversary of the now famous Time magazine New Hollywood issue, published on December 8, 1967, featuring a gorgeous Robert Rauschenberg-designed, Bonnie and Clyde-inspired cover. The book, aptly subtitled, The New Hollywood Revisited, features essays by a who’s who of counterculture Hollywood’s most influential film reviewers, critics, and historians, including J. Hoberman, Molly Haskell, David Sterritt, and David Thomson.

Neal Gabler is one of our most astute cultural critics.

I met him when I invited him to be my guest in a Princeton seminar called “Writing about Popular Culture.”

He talked compellingly about his books like Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity and An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, which carefully examined the inner workings of entertainment and celebrity. 

In Life: The Movie, Gabler takes the argument even further, drawing on examples ranging from Elizabeth Taylor and Tom Cruise to Princess Diana and Oprah Winfrey to show how celebrity hagiography has turned everything from news to religion and politics into an inescapable public entertainment. 

This is a book that shares intimate glimpses into the lives of a handful of Native Americans living on an Indian Reservation in the late 20th century. The book is full of humor, irony, and wit and was later made into a popular film. There are moments that are amusing and funny, but loneliness and a sense of apathy make their way into the storyline as well, as Victor, the lead character, tries to navigate the unpredictable family life he finds himself in. As a small boy he witnesses the damaging effects of alcoholism and what it does to his father and other family members, much like Sherman Alexie did himself. Victor is deeply resentful of his father’s abandonment when he was a child, and resents his friend Thomas for admiring his father for things like eating 15 pieces of fry bread in one sitting.

Victor struggles to find his… show more.

David Curtis’ copiously illustrated book is a wide-ranging yet detailed introduction to the world of artists’ film, with over 400 filmmakers discussed. The survey is rooted in the historical avant-garde of the 1920s and ‘30s but covers work up to the present day. While major figures such as Steve McQueen and Bill Viola are mentioned, equal space is devoted to little-known filmmakers from France, Poland, and elsewhere.

So, after the first things, you need some actual instruction, and the great Russian filmmaker lays it all out here. The book is his memoir about filmmaking, but it’s really about art making, written as large or small as you can imagine. I wrote a review by request a few years ago.

Allow the tools he discusses here to free you from the oppression of lazy filmmaking, as well as your own timidity and fear. It works. Ask me how I know.

Though not a book, the film starring Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson borrowed heavily from "Niebla" by Miguel de Unamuno, a Spanish novel about a character who becomes aware he is being narrated by a writer and goes to visit the writer. This film lives rent-free in my heart because the style of self-awareness that Ferrell’s character experiences in this film is close to the way I conceived of the meta-awareness of the characters Forsyth and Kintyre in The Untold Tale. I love the idea of someone learning they are being puppeteered and breaking free of the expected, the prescribed, and the narrative laid out for them. Maybe that’s why I like the film The Truman Show so much, too.

I think the author is very clever by bringing in the trendy concept of soft power and thus opening a new window for our understanding of Taiwan cinema.

I found the book not the easiest to read if you are not particularly familiar with the language of cultural studies or with specific films and filmmakers in Taiwan. However, the author has presented a convincing and valuable argument by linking a cinematic output to the entire system, which enables the production, circulation, and distribution of this output.

In other words, Taiwan cinema is a result, but the system that enriches creativity is where Taiwan’s values and soft power lie.  

We, female film critics, are still underrepresented in the critical world but Pauline Kael found success and respect at a time when our numbers were even fewer.

This collection showcases her talent for writing and her keen eye for what makes a movie or a performance great or terrible.

From Bonnie and Clyde to Last Tango in Paris, Kael’s compelling cinematic observations make you want to rewatch these films while also highlighting how even the best of critics can fall foul to unconscious biases (just check out her Othello review!).

We can learn much further we’ve come when it comes to checking those blinkered perspectives.