Devoted exclusively to reviews of independent films, VideoHound's guide offers 1,000 video reviews arranged in an A to Z format plus insight into some of the people in the industry. 125 photos & 60 sidebars.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
VideoHound's Independent Film Guide is exclusively for lovers of independent cinema, movies made outside the Hollywood mainstream. If you're a fan of epics such as Burnt by the Sun and The English Patient, obscure black-and-white classics such as Dead of Night and He Ran All the Way, foreign oddities such as Matador and The Lair of the White Worm, or contemporary cult favorites such as Crash and Fargo, you'll find much to treasure here and some good tips on what to see next.
Most movie guides are group efforts, but this book was composed by a single author. Monica Sullivan's prose is as free spirited and idiosyncratic as the films she reviews. In reading the volume you'll become well enough acquainted with the author's enthusiasm for the cinema and her personal likes and dislikes to measure your own tastes by them. Digressive, idiosyncratic, but nevertheless rewarding, VideoHound's Independent Film Guide is as much a movie reference as it is an autobiography, the chronicle of one reviewer's personal engagement with some of the most extraordinary films ever made. The guide opens with an introduction by indie actress Mare Winningham and concludes with indices of actors, directors, and alternate titles for the films reviewed as well as a list of indie film Web sites, a guide to movie distributors, and the specialty of the VideoHound house: a quirky category index that classifies the films in the book under traditional headings such as "Action Adventure," "Comedy," and "Foreign," and also under a variety of atypical headings, including "Showbiz Dramas," "Female Bonding," and "Religion"--even "Killer Bugs"! --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Wish There Was an Another Guide to Independent Film,
By A Customer
This review is from: Videohound's Independent Film Guide (Paperback)
Read through some of the reviews in this book before you buy it!!! There are a number of things about this guide that are disappointing, so it's all the more pity that it seems to be the only published collection on independent films. (Let me preface my complaints by saying that, as with all film guides, the degree to which your taste lines up with the writer's makes a huge difference. Perhaps if I found this guide to be more consistent with my own taste, the other issues would not have bothered me so much.) Aside from the author's taste, here are some things about the guide that might bother you. First, although the guide uses a rating system (from 4 "bones" [good] to a "woof" [bad]); you might be surprised, however, at how often the author will devote half a page describing a "woof" of a movie, and a mere few sentences describing a "four bone" film. Second, although there are a number of useful appendices (films listed by director, cast member, category), there is no listing by rating; you'd think if they bother to rank films according to their bones system, at least they'd give us the chance to flip to the back and see a listing of what the author considers the best independent films. Third, the author certainly knows film history, but it's annoying to have her rambling non-sequiters take the place of description or evaluation of a film (example: the entire "review" of "La Femme Nikita" is devoted to a tirade about how the American version of the film is a rip-off -- and how the tv series continues this corruption. Even if you agree with her, as I do, you may wish she at least described the orignal movie for those who have never seen it -- and gave some sense of what is interesting about it.) Fourth, the physical format of the book is annoying; it is larger and "floppier" than other guides (such as the Time Out guide) and quite unwieldy (you won't find it is easy to sit and read, let alone carry into your video store). Fifth, since Video Hound also publishes a companion guide to World Cinema, and since it's not clear what criteria are being used to include "foreign" (ie, non-English language) films in the current guide (the fact they are foreign? or famous? or the reviewer has seen them?), it's somewhat frustrating that there are a number of foreign films listed in this Independent Film Guide -- rather than more unknown or little-known indies.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Fair Attempt And Worthy Of Purchase, But Not Comprehensive,
By A Customer
This review is from: Videohound's Independent Film Guide (Paperback)
For those who have been waiting for a reference guide to independent films, your time has come. Unfortunately, you will most likely be disappointed as the author of the book's reviews, Monica Johnson, occasionally rambles without giving much or any information on the film's plot, as noted by another customer reviewer. There are also some glaring omissions from the book, such as three fairly well-known indies from the summer of 1998, "Slums of Beverly Hills", "Buffalo 66", and "Your Friends and Neighbors". Why these films were not included is beyond me. Overall, the book is fairly satisfactory but I was left still hoping for a more comprehensive guide to this ever-changing outlet of American and world cinema.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Stay Away From This Waste Of Time And Money,
By A Customer
This review is from: Videohound's Independent Film Guide (Paperback)
Just because a male has a lack of appreciation for something written by a female does not make him a sexist or a leather-jacketed thug. As a near-lifelong film buff, I know how to separate the wheat (James Agee, Pauline Kael, and Roger Ebert, to name a few) from the chaff (Kevin Thomas of the LA Times, for example) and, Ms. Sullivan, your writing falls into the latter category. There are several glaring ommissions, as noted in a previous review, from this compilation and a handful of the 'reviews' neglect to mention plot elements; instead, the reader finds rants where they hope to learn about what exact strands, characters, or aspects of the film are flawed. Therein, the main element that makes the writings of Agee and Kael, for starters, so readable and cogent years after they ceased writing (death in the case of Agee and health problems for Kael) is missing. Great film criticism has an endless shelf life; this collection will soon find its place on the latter half of two-for-one deals at yard sales once a far superior guide comes about.
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