<i>1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die</i> a Must-Read for Film Buffs

Cinema is an art form that's over 100 years old. Hundreds of thousands of films have been produced of all shapes and sizes and of all genres all over the world. As lovers of cinema, we are often confused and dumbfounded as to which films to watch. As an answer, Stephen Jay Schneider and a group of film critics and theorists around the world put together this compilation of 1,001 culturally, technologically, artistically and historically significant films.

Arranged in chronological order and covering over 100 years worth of history in film, from the early 1902 Georges Milies science-fiction film "A Voyage to the Moon" to last year's Oscar Best Picture winner "Million Dollar Baby", the book covers a very wide range of forms and genres of film: From huge Hollywood epic spectacles like "Gone with the Wind" and "Spartacus" to gritty independent pictures like John Cassavetes's "Faces" and Samuel Fuller's "Shock Corridor"; from famous mainstream blockbuster features like "Titanic" and "Jurassic Park" to obscure, daring short films like "Blonde Cobra" and Luis Bunuel's "Un Chien Andalou"; from kid-friendly "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" to disturbing, daring films like "Salo" and "In the Realm of the Senses". Significant effort was made by the editors and the contributing writers to represent nearly every genre of film out there. In addition to featuring the well-known, highly regarded classics of horror, drama, comedy, science fiction, fantasy, etc. sub-genres as varied as Chinese kung fu movies ("Shaolin Master Killer"), blaxploitation ("Sweet Sweetbacks Baaadaassssssss Song") and mockumentaries ("This Is Spinal Tap") are also represented. Also impressive in this book is that it took the effort to feature significant films from all over the world even in countries which are not primarily known for their film industry like Senegal, Egypt and Jamaica. All in an apparent effort to cover as wide a range of the art of film as possible.

All the great directors, both of the past and of contemporary times, have several of their films on this book: John Ford, Steven Spielberg, Billy Wilder, Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Luis Bunuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Pedro Almodovar, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman etc. among others. Alfred Hitchcock has the distinction of having the most films with 15 from his oeuvre profiled. Each film is given an essay written by the various contributors detailing the film's significance, it's history and various interesting tidbits of trivia as well as a critique of the film in an intelligent non-pretentious or overly scholarly manner. Though the book is by no means perfect, the questionable inclusion of "Meet the Parents" is one of the more glaring of its flaws and arguments can be made for the inclusion and exclusion of several other movies, this book probably comes the closest to being the most definitive list available that's accessible even to the average film goer. Quite a number of films featured in this book are not currently available on video or DVD. Perhaps their inclusion in this book would help them get released on DVD and thus finding a wider audience.

Whether you are a budding teenage film buff or a veteran film scholar, there is plenty to love about this book which gives a straight-forward, non-snobbish take on film history that would make the art of watching movies truly enjoyable. This is the book all lovers of film should have on their bookshelves.