The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made (Paperback)

by Vincent Canby (Author), Janet Maslin (Author), Peter M. Nichols (Editor) "It is not astonishing that Rene Clair's picture, A Nous, la Liberte, which came to the Europa yesterday, mystified its first-night audience in Paris, for..." (more)
Key Phrases: world premiere last night, regular commercial engagement, art designer, New York, Warner Brothers, United Artists (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Everyone knows that a good canon debate doesn't get interesting until you reach the realm of the top 100. But by listing the top 1,000 movies, as the editors of The New York Times have done with this fat, readable collection of reviews, you get to skip all that huffing and puffing about quality and head straight for the fun. With a little elbow room, there's space for ineffable stuff like Mr. Hulot's Holiday and The Match Factory Girl. Room, too, for the nuance-free Mrs. Doubtfire and the free-falling Die Hard (which makes it, yep, right next to Diner). Pillow Talk squeezes in just one down from The Piano. What's really new about this book, though, is that the reviews have been culled from the Times's archive--reaching back to 1931. So you can read Vincent Canby reacting to Taxi Driver in 1976, just days after first seeing it: "The steam billowing up around the manhole cover in the street is a dead giveaway. Manhattan is a thin cement lid over the entrance to hell, and the lid is full of cracks." Not bad for a guy on deadline. Bosley Crowther, who preceded Canby, fares less well, waving off Rear Window as Hitchcock's "new melodrama, " and Psycho with, "It does seem slowly paced." By contrast, Janet Maslin's more recent reviews hum and gush, unraveling the merits of Pulp Fiction and Lone Star. At collected-Shakespeare size (999 pages), the title is probably too vast for schlepping around, but go ahead, try reading just one. With plenty of international selections, including usual suspects from France (Truffaut), Italy (Fellini), and Japan (Itami), as well as some unusual ones from Brazil, Mexico, India, and Czechoslovakia, there's enough canon fodder here for at least five "Top 100" books. --Lyall Bush

From Library Journal
This volume compiles alphabetically the original reviews of the 1000 "best" films as selected by New York Times critics from 1927 to 1998. The selections come largely from the "Ten Best Films" chosen at the end of each year. Not all "best" films have a review in this book, though, because many films have been re-evaluated over time; other films, deemed more worthy from today's critical perspective, have been retrofitted. The result is fascinating in two respects. First, the book provides easy access to historical criticism: What did the Times say about Les Enfants du Paradis in 1947 or A Clockwork Orange in 1971? Second, it encourages reflection on the politics of taste. Thoughtful readers will delight in scanning the original "Ten Best Films" lists at the end of the book and comparing them to what has since been deemed meritorious. Recommended for all libraries.ANeal Baker, Earlham Coll., Richmond, IN
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1024 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (November 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812930010
• ISBN-13: 978-0812930016
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #540,595 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars well worth owning, January 1, 2000

By	mingus500 "mingus500" (Nashville, TN United States) - See all my reviews

Give the Times credit for having the guts to reprint the original reviews. Several films that are regarded as classic today, such as "Psycho", received lukewarm responses in their original release. Most other music and movie review guides (The Rolling Stone guide for one) overlook their past 'mistakes'. Because the reviews were written at the movies' release, they rarely suffer from the stale air of reverence given to classic films.

The length of the reviews is perfect. Longer than the 3 or 4 sentence plot summaries of most guides, they give the reader a better sense of the character of the film, while still remaining short enough to peruse the book before going to the video store.

I recommend a Maltin guide to begin with, since it covers more films. I think this would be a fine second film guide.

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The new Golden Age of Cinema, April 26, 2003

By	Randy Keehn (Williston, ND United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book is an excellent resource for those who are looking for a good movie to watch. Like any other "list" it has its' limits. No two peoples likes and dislikes are exactly the same. Thus there will be disagreements over what is included in the "Best 1000 Movies". Frankly though, the disagreements will probably be over what was included in this book rather than what was excluded; the top 1000 certainly covers a lot of ground. As I came across a movie I thought was undeserving, I thought to myself, "How could they include this movie and leave out..." Strangely enough, every movie I thought to finish the sentence with turned out to be in the book. OK, so it IS short on some of the great comedy of the past; I believe "Duck Soup" is the only Marx Brothers entry. But, then, I didn't need this book to tell me how good the Marx Brother movies are.

What is has done for me, once I stopped gawking and started to put it to work, is introduce me to a lot of good movies that I would have missed otherwise. I've been going to the video stores lately looking for the "older" movies of the 80's and 90's rather that the meager selections of new releases. Agreed, most of the ones I've checked out have not been on anyone's top ten list. However, they have been enjoyable and better than most of the movies I've seen on TV of late.

I do have a couple of mild criticisms of this book. The first thing I would "criticize" is the format. (It may also be its' strength so I proceed caustiously along this line). The format is to list the movies with their original New York Times review. That's very well except that the "Times" panned a number of these movies in their reviews. "Bonnie and Clyde" comes to mind as a movie that received a particularly bad review. Now we all know that "Bonnie and Clyde" is a deserving member of the Top 1000 because we've either seen it or know its' reputation. But what about the lesser movies that we've neither seen nor heard much about. How are we to be inspired to go out and watch based solely on a negative review. Some historical perspective could have helped. However, if that were the case, they'd probably still be writing the book. Another "criticism" I have is how I was struck with the notion that most of the movies are of a more recent vintage. I actually sat down and totalled the number of movies in the list by decade (yes, I DO have other things to do with my life). I had always heard that the 1930's were the Golden Age of Cinema but the results suggest otherwise (at least in the eyes of these NY Times editors). There were two movies in the 1920's (kudos to "Disraeli" and "The Jazz Singer"), 92 in the 30's, 129 in the 40's, 146 in the 50's, 150 in the 60's, 156 in the 70's, 200 in the 80's and 128 in the 90's (the latest movies I noticed were in 1998). Thus the new Golden Age would seem to be the 1980's. Why doesn't seem that way in reality? There was an art to movie-making in the pre-1970's that challenged the productions to use more symbolism. Now that we have the technology and lack of inhibitions to show just about anything and everything on film, there seems to be little reason to be suggestive rather than blunt. I suspect that the reason the number are so slanted towards recent vintage may be the failure of the editors to have seen more of the great movies of the past. Having said that, I close with thanks for the effort that went into this book and the excellent resource it will serve for anyone who's looking for a good movie to watch.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Totally fascinating, March 21, 2000

By	Sean Hanley (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

The coolest thing about this book is that the Times reprinted all of their original reviews of the movies. I've read many books that go into a detailed dissection of a given movie, but I've never read someone's immediate reaction to, say, "Citizen Kane." I really admire that the Times would be so forthcoming in showing us how they trashed, or misunderstood some of the greatest movies of all time. For example, "The Godfather, Part II" gets a *bomb* review, (the quote was something to the effect of "The only notable thing about the movie is how much better the first one was by comparison.") and "Kane" is criticized for not fully explaining Kane's character. Of course, one of the major themes of "Citizen Kane" is that no man can be fully explained, a point is made clearly and directly by the reporter in the finale, but somehow the critic missed this. A very interesting part about movies is how they were received at the time they were released, and how that perception has or hasn't changed over the years. This film gives you that, plus you're bound to find movies that you haven't seen or even heard of, and will wind up with some great rentals. My only quibble is with some of the movies that weren't in the book, for example, "The Color Purple," and the recent and hilarious "Flirting with Disaster." Both, if I remember correctly, made it into their top ten of their respective years list, which is in the back of the book.