The Great Movies
by Roger Ebert
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Book Summary Information
Author: Roger EbertEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-11-11
ISBN: 0767910389
Number of pages: 544
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Book Reviews of The Great Movies
Book Review: A Book That Has Both Widened My Knowledge and Deepened My Appreciation of Cinema
Summary: 5 Stars
Movies have been a passion of mine ever since I was a small child and I have seen more movies than most people my age have even heard of. This book, the first to collect 100 of Ebert's bi-weekly essays, was one of the most important and influential books I ever stumbled upon. A bold statement? Yes. This is not necessarily a reflection of the book itself, so much as what it opened my eyes to upon discovering it. Yes, the essays lead me to discover films I'd never heard of and had a rather profound effect on my love of cinema...But, even now, three years later, I still find these essays to be well-written, enlightening, and eye-opening.
I was fifteen when I picked this book up and initially only read the essays on films I'd seen or heard of (Apocalypse Now, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, E.T., The Godfather, and Pulp Fiction being the obvious ones). Boredom lead me to read on and I ended up reading every essay in the book. It's worth noting that if you're bothered by spoilers, you may not want to read every essay...Ebert tends to give away much of the plot. Ebert's love for each of these films make his writing very persuasive and I found many of these films soon topping my must-see list. Some of the films (Aguirre, Beauty and the Beast, My Life to Live, The Third Man, and many others) have become some of my all-time favorite movies.
Ebert is famously not a fan of lists and he does not consider his books a definitive list of the greatest films ever made. In his introduction he says "if you want to take a tour of the landmarks of the first century of cinema, start here." He's not kidding. He covers films that have already been celebrated in various outlets, but you'll find many hidden gems as well.
Ebert has now released three volumes of these books and there isn't one better than the other. All are terrific, fascinating, and enlightening. While Ebert is human and he occasionally makes a mistake (I've noticed several instances in the volumes where he gets a bit of dialogue wrong, attributes it to the wrong character, gives the wrong title of a song in the film, etc.) in his writing, I consider these books perfect.
While you may not agree with all of Ebert's selections, you can't deny that Ebert knows what he's talking about, and he's persuasive enough to get you to re-visit films you may not have initially enjoyed. Without this book, an entire world of cinema would not exist for me. My familiarity with cinema didn't extend far past what played at the local multiplex, but Ebert's book opened my eyes to films I'd never seen as well as to why the films I had seen were so great. This book and it's subsequent volumes are a must for any budding or certified lover of cinema.
GRADE: A
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