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The Film buff's checklist of motion pictures
Movie title, leads, and rating, in one or two lines of a column. It has a strong emphasis on Hollywood movies. The ratings are from 1 to 10, where the lower ratings tend to be the most reliable, and top ratings are just dumb repeats of Oscar-type thinking. It doesn't list much before 1932, and nothing after 1979. When you start browsing, it doesn't take you long to start drooling.
321 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
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January 23, 2019
A truly whacked guide/catalog to/of (then)-available motion pictures up till about the mid-1970s. It's hard to know quite what the purpose of this guide was. I got a copy, because old movie guides like this are curios that I collect. Most of this book is just a barebones listing of titles and sparse credits.
The author and the staff who worked with him evidently didn't deem it necessary to actually view half the movies rated; based on guessing (and he ADMITS it) they came up with ratings and put them in parentheses, thus indicating they hadn't actually seen the film in question!
Oddly, the thing seems to have been written by people who HATED movies, because 99 percent of the titles are given low ratings indicating they're not worth seeing. Anything old and foreign were relegated to the nonsensical or irrelevant and anything new and shiny, eg, Hollywood films of the late '60s and early to mid '70s were considered the greatest films ever made. In fact, only about 20 films are actually given excellent ratings out of the thousands covered. It's quite bizarre and snooty in a backhanded lowbrow sort of way. The highest criteria for quality is that a movie have a story with a beginning, middle and an end. I kid you not. So much for the endless possibilities of the art of motion pictures.
I think the highest rated movie in this guide was "Cabaret." That's right, Cabaret is the greatest movie ever made. WTF?
kr/eg
The author and the staff who worked with him evidently didn't deem it necessary to actually view half the movies rated; based on guessing (and he ADMITS it) they came up with ratings and put them in parentheses, thus indicating they hadn't actually seen the film in question!
Oddly, the thing seems to have been written by people who HATED movies, because 99 percent of the titles are given low ratings indicating they're not worth seeing. Anything old and foreign were relegated to the nonsensical or irrelevant and anything new and shiny, eg, Hollywood films of the late '60s and early to mid '70s were considered the greatest films ever made. In fact, only about 20 films are actually given excellent ratings out of the thousands covered. It's quite bizarre and snooty in a backhanded lowbrow sort of way. The highest criteria for quality is that a movie have a story with a beginning, middle and an end. I kid you not. So much for the endless possibilities of the art of motion pictures.
I think the highest rated movie in this guide was "Cabaret." That's right, Cabaret is the greatest movie ever made. WTF?
kr/eg
Displaying 1 of 1 review