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Waidner-Spahr Library

Reviews: Book, Film & Theatre: Film Reviews

Film Reviews

A film review is an evaluative oral or written judgment about the quality of a movie, based upon various assumptions, facts, biases, etc. Professional film reviewers are known as critics; a film review usually includes a brief synopsis (avoiding spoilers, usually), a balanced notation of both the film's pros and cons, quotable wording, and some judgments. More extensive, in-depth film evaluations are called analytical essays.

Film Review Journals and Periodicals

Film Review Indexes

An index is a specialized database that organizes information about the locations of articles in journals/magazines, reports and newspapers; and book chapters, papers in conference proceedings, and book reviews.

  • Indexes provide the complete bibliographic citation of an article, including the title of the article, author, name of the journal, volume number, the pages of the journal in which the article can be found, and a short summary, or abstract, of the article.
  • Some indexes are in book form, and some are electronic databases. Some eletronic databases do NOT provide the complete text of articles.

 

Electronic Resources:

The best way to start searching for a review of a film in the following databases is to type the title of the work as a keyword, and add "review" to the search as another keyword. Searching this way is likely to exclude works that are not critical reviews of the film.