This book offers all the reviews, good and bad, that Roger Ebert has produced in the last two years, plus other recent writings about the movies. It includes virtually every movie that has opened nationally in the last two years, including independent, foreign, art, and documentary films.
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Roger Ebert's movie reviews are extremely popular, and there are valid reasons for this. Ebert writes entertainingly, his movie assessments are generally spot-on, and he's able to explain, concretely and descriptively, the strengths and flaws of the movies he reviews. That said, there are all sorts of reasons to want Ebert's Movie Yearbook 1999. For one, it provides the same kind of wonderful reference service his Video Companion volumes did, only more so, including every review penned (or more likely, keyboarded) by Ebert in 1997 and 1998, about 500 in all, instead of the 150 reviews selected for each Video Companion. The good, the bad, and the indifferent, they're all there, with blockbusters and little-known independents, art films and documentaries, foreign films and Hollywood extravaganzas. It doesn't include a review for every film made since cinematography began, but, for each movie selected, there's a full-length review instead of the mini-reviews seen in more inclusive anthologies.
In addition, there's an appendix listing every movie review that ever appeared in an Ebert Video Companion (nearly 2,000 titles in all), with the star rating he assigned at the time, so while you don't get to read the reviews, you do get his valuable conclusions. The Yearbook also includes a summary of the best films of 1997, interviews with a number of movie hot shots (from Jim Carrey and Spike Lee to Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino), essays on David Brinkley, Frank Sinatra, Spielberg at 50, and the Titanic, as well as notes from film festivals in Toronto, Telluride, and Cannes. All this plus a comprehensive, cross-referenced index make the Movie Yearbook a superb cinema resource. Ebert fans already know the pleasures of Ebert's prose, but newcomers to Ebert's style will easily understand why he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his movie critiques. --Stephanie Gold
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Like to trash movies? Roger does. And, oh, boy, is he good,
By A Customer
This review is from: Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 1999 (Serial) (Paperback)
Movie reviews aren't always going to agree with your personal opinion. Sometimes you will like a movie and somebody like Mr. Ebert may think it isn't worth the celluloid it's printed on. But, when Ebert hates a film, he LOATHES it. The fun of this book is in seeing how he manages to tear down a film completely and so thoroughly in a single line. Who wants to read a glowing review of a film (especially if you thought it was dreck anyway?) But reading Ebert trash "The Jackal" as being the tale of "an over achiever" who would import bugspray from Iran if he were hired to kill a mosquito, is pure literary gold. In a time where most people are content to say a movie was either good or bad, depending on the mood they were in when they saw it, Ebert blows a great breath of fresh air into critical savagery. And if that's not worth the cover price, why do you want a movie review compendium in the first place?
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Insightful though limited reviews,
By Leon Stratikis (lstratik@utk.edu) (Knoxville, Tn) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 1999 (Serial) (Paperback)
"'You think people deceive, and do things for the satisfaction of their vanity, and only talk about what high standards they have?' 'Yes, yes I do actually.'" This is part of my favorite Roger Ebert review, of the film Valmont, which includes an insightful interview with the director, Milos Forman. Unfortunately, the interview can be found in the Ebert website archive, but not in the Movie Yearbook (at least not in the 1998 version which I have been consulting recently.) Roger Ebert is such a prolific film critic that his reviews would spill over into several volumes. Thus, his annual yearbook contains only a selection, and in the case of Valmont, a more compact though less interesting version than is elsewhere available. It is understandable, of course, that, as Ebert states in his introduction, his volume only provides a complete set of reviews for the films he has written about in the past two years or so, whereas the selection of previous films is changed yearly, particularly eliminating films in which interest has waned. It is a fair compromise considering the limited space available even in a bulky volume, but at the same time it produces a book which on the one hand is incomplete -- the introduction refers the reader to the website and to other authors' more exhaustive companions containing less substantial blurbs -- but on the other, there is considerable overlap from one year's edition to the next. It makes me wonder if perhaps it would be a better idea to publish an exhaustive multi-volume set of the old reviews, and then make each yearbook an annual supplement. This might satisfy die-hard Ebert fans who would be interested in the complete reviews, without needlessly filling their shelf space with the duplication in each new year's volume. Still, it is very difficult for me to give Mr. Ebert a negative review, since, through his "Sneak Previews" program he has been my virtual companion to the movies since I was a kid, and, for a film buff who has none of the past Ebert yearbooks, there is no more insightful collection of film criticism in a single volume than the 1999 yearbook. Marginal thumbs up.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
At last, a critic who enjoys movies!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 1999 (Serial) (Paperback)
This book is comprehensive, detailed, and humorous. Just the thing I was looking for in a video guide book. This book is one of the best, along with Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever 2000 and The Manly Movie Guide. For one of the best alternatives to the Internet Movie Database read Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 1999 (not to be confused with version 1998).
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