How To Find Film Reviews and Criticism

Things To Consider

Authorship: Film criticism is written by academics for a scholarly audience. Film reviews are often written by journalists or other non-academics.

Time Frame: Reviews are usually published around the time a movie was released, while film criticism may be published years or decades later.

Publication Type: Film criticism will usually appear in scholarly journals, while reviews will more often appear in the popular press. However, some popular publications, such as the New Yorker and the Village Voice, publish reviews that are also strong critical pieces.

Alternate Titles: Some films (usually foreign) have more than one title, i.e. Breathless and A Bout de Souffle, so search for both. Multiple films may share at title, i.e. Ben-Hur (1925) and Ben-Hur (1959), so use date and director to narrow your search.

Resources

For films that came out between 1882 and 1985, the best place to start is the Film Review Index Sawyer REF PN 1995.F513 1986. This reference book lists articles, chapters, and books which review a particular film, as shown in the example at right.

Once you have the citation to an item, you can search FRANCIS for the publication or request it from another library using Williams InterLibrary Loan.

International Index to the Performing Arts (1998-Present; some coverage 1864-1998)
This will have more scholarly reviews. You can limit your search in this database to film reviews, but you may want to leave the search broader if you're having trouble finding results.

ProQuest National Newspapers (Current News), ProQuest Historical Newspapers (US)
This resource is good for finding reviews, especially of films that might not be found in more scholarly sources. When searching, limit your Document Type to "Review" for better results.

Readers' Guide Abstracts (1983-Present ), Readers' Guide Retrospective (1890-1982)
Covering popular literature, this database will have reviews meant largely for the general public. In Readers' Guide Abstracts you can limit your Publication Type to "Film Review".

MLA International Bibliography (1926-Present)
This resource will give you film criticism from scholarly sources.

You can search FRANCIS for a film or director as a subject to find additional criticism, for example Steven Spielberg.

Finally, consult the Article Databases by Subject under any subject that could deal with the film in question. For example, to find an article like "Kung fu masters: stardom, performances and 'authenticity' in Hong Kong martial arts films", search the Bibliography of Asian Studies. To find "Raising minstrelsy: humor, satire and the stereotype in The Birth of a Nation and Bamboozled", try America: History and Life. In many of these databases, putting the movie title in quotes when you search is enough to bring up several scholarly articles.

Background on Films

International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers - not really a dictionary at all, it provides good synopses of films and extensive bibliographies of writings about the film.

Internet Movie Database - while not scholarly, this website can be useful for a quick overview of a movie (release date, director, cast, etc.). As with any questionable source, you should verify information found on this site through more authoritative sources.