Thinking about Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying

A complete introduction to analyzing and enjoying a wide variety of movies, for film students and movie lovers alike

Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying, Fourth Edition is a thorough overview of movie analysis designed to enlighten both students and enthusiasts, and heighten their enjoyment of films. Readers will delve into the process of thinking about movies critically and analytically, and find how doing so can greatly enhance the pleasure of watching movies. Divided roughly into two parts, the book addresses film studies within the context of the dynamics of cinema, before moving on to a broader analysis of the relationship of films to the larger social, cultural, and industrial issues informing them.

This updated fourth edition includes an entirely new section devoted to a complete analysis of the film adaptation The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, along with in–depth discussions on important films from Citizen Kane to Silence of the Lambs. The authors clearly present various methodologies for analyzing movies and illustrate them with detailed, well–illustrated examples from a range of films from cult classics to big–budget, award–winning movies. This helps viewers see new things in movies and also better understand and explain why they like some better than others.

Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying, Fourth Edition is ideal for film students immersed in the study of this important, contemporary medium and art form as well as individuals who have never taken a class on cinema before.

List of Figures

How to Use This Book

Acknowledgments

About the companion website  

1 Introduction: Fatal Attraction and Scarface

2 Narrative Structure:Jurassic Park and Rashomon

3 Formal Analysis: Rules of the Game and The Sixth Sense

4 Authorship: The Searchers and Jungle Fever

5 Genres: Sin City and Gunfight at the OK Corral

6 Series, Sequels, and Remakes: Goldfinger and King Kong 1933 and 2005

7 Actors and Stars: Morocco and Dirty Harry

8 Audiences and Reception: A Woman of Paris and The Crying Game

9 Film and the Other Arts: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

10 Film and its Relation to Radio and Television: Richard Diamond, Private Detective; Peter Gunn, Victor/Victoria, 24 and Homeland

11 Realism and Theories of Film: The Battleship Potemkin and Umberto D

12 Gender and Sexuality: The Silence of the Lambs and American Gigolo

13 Race: Out of the Past, LA Confidential, and Boyz N the Hood

14 Class: Pretty Woman and The People Under the Stairs

15 Citizen Kane: An Analysis Citizen Kane

16 Current Trends: Globalization and China, 3D, IMAX, Internet TV 

Glossary

Peter Lehman is professor of Film and Media Studies in English and Director of the Center for Film, Media and Popular Culture at Arizona State University. He is author, coauthor, and editor of 12 books and a former president of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. He is also the Founding Editor of Wide Angle: A Film Quarterly of Theory, Criticism, and Practice. He lectures widely, nationally and internationally.

William Luhr is professor of English and Film at Saint Peter s University and Co–Chair of the faculty–level Columbia University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation. He has published over a dozen books as well as numerous articles and interviews primarily concerned with film studies, the most recent being Film Noir, published by Wiley–Blackwell in 2012 (Chinese language edition, 2014). He has lectured widely, both nationally and internationally.