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Home > For Undergraduates > How to > Find Film Reviews and Criticism

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Find Film Reviews and Criticism

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Film criticism, analyses of films written by academics and film scholars, are usually published in scholarly journals. Film criticism can be written at any time, often years after a film is released. Film reviews, written by journalists or lay people, are published in various sources including newspapers, magazines and online. These are usually published when the film is released so keep release dates in mind when you are searching for reviews.

Databases

Use the following databases to find film reviews or film criticism. Some contain the full text, and others will give you a citation which you can use to find the criticism or review in print in the library.

Academic Search Complete
Find film criticism and reviews from both scholarly and popular sources. Includes full-text articles.
Hint: Enter the title of the film in quotes. eg. “American in Paris”

International Index to the Performing Arts (IIPA)
Find film criticism and reviews from scholarly film journals and trade journals. Includes full-text articles.

• Step 1: Select “Search”
• Step 2: Enter title of film in the Title box or, for a more general search, the Keyword box
• Step 3: Enter the terms "film review" in the Document Type box

LexisNexis Academic
Find reviews from popular sources such as newspapers and some magazines. Includes the New York Times.

1. Choose News from the tabs at the top of the screen.
2. Enter the title of the movie and director, if known, connected by “AND.”
3. Sources: Choose “Book, Movie, Music, Play, and Video Reviews.”
4. Specify Date: Choose the date range that includes the date the movie was released. Notice that the default date range is only the previous 3 months. (If you’re not sure of a film release date, check the Internet Movie Database.)

MLA International Bibliography
Find film criticism from scholarly sources. Includes full-text articles.

Web Sites

Visit the following web sites for film reviews . Keep in mind that film reviews on many web sites are not reviewed by scholars or editors.

Internet Movie Database
http://www.imdb.com/
Find reviews, cast and crew details, and awards. “User comments” can be submitted by any visitor to the site and are not edited or checked for accuracy. The “external reviews” links you to reviews found in magazines or on other web sites.

Movie Review Query Engine
http://www.mrqe.com
A searchable database of more than 300,000 movie reviews from over a hundred Internet sources, including newspapers and magazines. Covers both modern and older films.

FAQs

The review I found isn't full text online.

Search for the title of the journal in the Library Catalog, to see if the review is available in full text elsewhere online or in print in the library.

How do I find reviews of older movies?

Try searching Historical Newspapers, in particular the Proquest collections for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post.  Reader’s Guide Retrospective, spanning magazines published from 1890 to1982, will give you citations to reviews that you can find online or in print in the Libraries.

 

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