1998 Videohound's Guide to Three- and Four-Star Movies

by Videohound

Only the best--discerning reviews of more than 3,000 great movies, from the classics to the latest releases.



VideoHound, the people who know how to nose out movies for viewers who appreciate excellence, are back with a brand-new edition of their one-of-a-kind guide. In an easy-to-use alphabetical format, VideoHound's Guide to Three- and Four-Star Movies--1998 presents the vital facts about each film, including plot summary, cast, length, director, awards, and more, and offers insights into what makes the film special, comparisons to other films of the same period or genre, and other tidbits of information and opinion. Extensive indexes help readers select movies in a variety of ways: by the stars they want to see; the directors whose work interests them; or the genre that suits their mood--be it "Monster Moms," "Musicals," "Tearjerkers" or "Teen Angst."

640 pages, Paperback

First published September 2, 1997

Reviews

[Michael]

In the years before imdb, print video guides were an important asset to the film geek, who would need to chart which items he had seen, wanted to see, and wanted to avoid. Specialized guides remain somewhat helpful in drawing attention to specific genres, and to movies that might otherwise be missed. The concept of a guide to highly-rated films is an interesting one. If you generally agree with videohound's ratings, this could be helpful in drawing your attention to the "good" movies - but I think for most people their reviews would be too "safe" to be reliable. In general, they play to the lowest common denominator, thus really recommending films to people who don't know much about film, so this book will mostly be of interest to see which movies made the cut and which didn't. The book's usefulness is increased by the wealth of information included - for example every nomination for an award a movie got (which can be pretty daunting, in the context of highly-rated films) is listed with each entry. Today, of course, that would be more easily found on the internet, which is also true of the various indexes at the back. One of those is an interesting early example of "tagging" - the "Categories" index which lists movies under such headings as "Down Under" and "Funerals" - much as imdb today allows users to tag movies with brief descriptors. On the whole, this is mostly a conversation piece today, but it was of moderate interest at the time it was published.