Customer Reviews

Movies of the 80s (Midi)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is overall a good one, it has great pictures and some interesting, sometimes even insightful, commentaries. Too bad the text is minimal, could have more information, from where I am standing. Moreover, it also could have portrayed more marvelous movies of the 80's.

Where are, amongst other great titles missing, Raiders of The Lost Ark, The Return of Jedi, some of Fellini's pictures, the James Bond films? The lack of some major eighties films are inexcusable. It's clear that the book has been biased by the author, otherwise, which are the criteria for saying that those 145 films chosen were the major and most important productions of that decade? From which point of view are these films the most influencial, from the box office, from the public acclaim, from the critic?

Anyway, the edition has a gorgeous binding and the quality of the printing is also very fine, however, its flaws, besides the lack of some good films from the eighties, are the lack of more important information about each movie, namely: box office figures, premiére dates, entire credits list and so on. I think it also would be great if they could show the official poster of each film.

That's why it gets only 3 stars, but nevertheless, an enjoyable reading and a good addition to any movie aficionados.

I really love this book, it covers 145 of the most important movies of the 80's. The great amount of images really impress, but it is not a picture book, every image comes with comments and a lot of info's, and the movie with a list of actors, the awards received and a lot of valuable background information. Juergen Mueller works as an archivar, and you can easy see this in his choice of movies. Directors Spielberg, Lucas und Coppola are coverd, as well as the mafia movies like Sergio Leones 'Once upon a time in America'. This book is together with the book movies of the 70's a must have. The oscar nomination index, and the coverage of european movies makes it even more interesting. It is for me a very good guidance to buy some of my DVD's.
The only critic I have is the high gloss paper, where you see almost every fingerprint. Make shure you get the 800 page book, they later made a cheap copy with only 300+ pages

Taschen Books about the "Great movies of the xx Decade" are expensive but they're paid by themselves, if you are a movie fan these books should be in your personnal library.

Don't expect all the movies you like to appear in the book, that's my only complain, they don't specify how did the choose them, is it because they're important to the era? because the won a lot of awards? because they're personally mr. jurgen muller favorites? Well I guess it's hard to please everyone.

JPD