Customer Reviews

Time Out Film Guide 2007 (Time Out Guides)

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I've bought them all, Ebert's movie guide, the ones by Maltin and Mick Martin, and the Videohound book. This one is the best of these. This is a huge book (and five pounds heavy) of 1800 or so pages and a large footprint. What makes it so good is that the reviews are not only longer than those in other books (except for Roger Ebert's), but they are more sophisticated in their analyses of the movies. They don't use a star system, but by the time you have read the review you know exactly what the author thinks of the film. The cast lists for each movie are reasonably comprehensive.

The special features include 27 appendixes of movies by category, i.e. drama, thrillers, comedies, Italian movies, etc. There is also a cast and director list. The best thing about the cast list is that it lists all the movies that an actor was in by the year of release, and that is not done in the other books. Sometimes I want to know the most recent movies that an actor was in, and this book tells you all you want to know in this regard. On the negative side a lot of minor and not so minor actors don't make the list. A further index lists movies by subject, i.e. if you have a fixation regarding lighthouses you might want to see "The Oyster and the Wind" or "The Phantom Light.

I still buy the other books so I can compare some of the reviews, but this is the one I always pick up first.

Time Out book guides are impressive but with a website, Time Out Film, readily available, and other sites like IMDB and Box Office Mojo that provide virtually all the information you need to know about movies, books like these are irrelevant, unless you just like the feel of leafing through thin pages to check out how your favorite movies rate.