Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide 2000 (Paperback)

by Leonard Maltin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Film historian and critic Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide 2000 is incredibly extensive, offering summaries and ratings of movies from Aaron Loves Angela to Zuma Beach. Each movie gets a wry comment from Maltin (the 1981 teen sex comedy Private Lessons is summed up as "a mild piece of sleaze") and a rating from "****" to "BOMB." The Movie and Video Guide 2000 is also meticulously updated--Maltin and his editors are careful to note the bit part appearances of actors who later became stars, allowing you to keep an eye peeled for Charlize Theron in Children of the Corn and Ben Affleck in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you're looking for that movie that you can't remember the name of but you know Laurence Fishburne was in it, fear not--there's also a star index in the back. The book has several other thoughtful features: a guide to the old wide-screen formats like Panavision and Vistascope; a list of 100 must-see films of the 20th century; and grouped box listings of movies that belong to the same series but don't start with the same word, saving a great deal of flipping around. This book is both a fun browser's read and a valuable helpmate at the video store. --Ali Davis

Product Description
The #1 Bestseller

It's the year 2000. Time to buy a new video guide.

* Special new feature: Maltin's 100 "must-see" movies of the century
* 400 new entries, more than 20,000 in all
* Symbols to flag 14,000+ films available on video, 9,000+ on laser disc, and 1,000+ on DVD
* Updated and expanded index of stars

"The best movie and video guide just got better."--Chicago Tribune

"Head and shoulders above the rest."--New York Times

"Easily the most comprehensive work of its kind anywhere. It belongs next to every TV and VCR in every home."--USA Today

"Inch for inch, dollar for dollar, Maltin's book gives you the most."--Boston Sunday Herald

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 1664 pages
• Publisher: Signet (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451198379
• ISBN-13: 978-0451198372
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.5 x 2.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (245 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,906,316 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eternally handy, June 26, 2000

By	Jerry "argonaut" (Pacific Northwest) - See all my reviews

Leonard Maltin's Film Guide premiered in 1969, pre-dating the now crowded market of contemporary movie database books. It's still the best and most clearly organized of these types of references...essentially what people utilized back in ancient times before the Internet Movie Database. For in-depth film analysis one should look to Pauline Kael's 5001 Nights at The Movies, David Thomson's A Biographical Dictionary of Film or The Time Out Film Guide...this book is not film analysis and never was intended to serve this function. It's a comprehensive listing of all major films released worldwide including running time, date of release, film aspect ratio and other technical details. There is a brief one or at most two sentence review and then a star rating. This is not film analysis (which requires more than two sentences), it's simply the subjective rating system used by every other film guide on the market. Most of the time Leonard is on the mark although with over 20,000 entries there will inevitably be discrepencies. I recommend the larger format Plume paperback over the mass-market size as the typeface is more readable.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Maltin is great--but 2001 edition not quite up-to-par, May 23, 2001

By	John F. Isham (Kenosha, WI) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Leonard Maltin's 2001 Movie & Video Guide (Signet) (Mass Market Paperback)

Maltin's approach and format are superior to any of the other movie guides I've encountered. His capsule reviews are a study in conciseness and they give you a very good idea whether you would want to see a particular film or not. Best of all, his reviews discuss the movies *without* running through the plot (whereas the overlong and rather poorly written reviews in Videohound's Guide almost inevitably revert to plot summarizing).

Maltin's rating system (ranging from BOMB to four stars) manages somehow to surprise without being inconsistent. After a while you'll be able to determine in what ways your tastes diverge from the Maltin staff's and thereby know whether a two- or two-and-a-half star movie may be exactly what you're looking for. In general, the staff's taste is a tad mainstream & uninspired, but their ratings and evaluations are almost always well substantiated.

(Incidentally, you will find yourself spending hour upon hour browsing through this book, looking up every movie you've ever seen in order to find out "how many stars Maltin gives it." )

Unfortunately, this 2001 paperback edition seems to have been rather hastily thrown together. The print on certain pages is so light & thin that it can really strain already overworked eyes. Also, the 2001 lacks an Index of Directors at the end (my 1999 had this right after the Index of Stars). Also, the list of "100+ Recommended Family Films" toward the front of the book is fairly unsurprising, unhelpful and uninteresting.

So, for indexes of directors, actors, etc., your best bet by far is Videohound. (Videohound also has a list of suggested movies at the front that provides a good combination of the quirky and the classic.) For unbeatably useful and interesting reviews, however, get Maltin (preferably a slightly older edition if you're not overly concerned with movies made in the last couple years). On the other hand, get both Videohound *and* Maltin... and then you'll be set! The two sources complement each other remarkably well. It's a shame the merits of each can't be combined into a single volume.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't pay attention to the last three reviews, April 12, 2000

By	Craig C. Kling (New Mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide 1999 (Serial) (Paperback)

The most complete and accurate movie analysis out there. Though I do not agree with every review of every movie, no one can. My experience with every addition of this book since 1990 has been that it is a genuine help in determining which films are four stars and which films are bombs. An additional feature of the 2000 edition is the list of Leonard Maltin's must see movies of the 20th century. As he noted at the outset, no one is going to completely agree with this type of list, but I also must say that in my opinion there is no movie on that list that is not worth seeing, and most are must see for the genuine movie aficianado(though there are a few surprisingly not on the list i.e., Touch of Evil). Additionally, if you need Leonard Maltin's book to tell you whether or not you want to see Titanic then you really can't be helped. Also if your taste is in bad movies, you probably won't like the book because they are routinely panned. Finally, as to Roger Ebert, though I find his advice helpful in choosing new movies, I think he is under too much pressure to recommend some film for people to see every week, which can affect his objectivity. Leonard Maltin, on the other hand, works woth an editorial staff, and can determine each review based upon a number of opinions. In any event, it is difficult to give too much credence to a reviewer such as Ebert who gave "thumbs up" to Home Alone 3.