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Intoductory books about film criticism? I want to be above the letterboxd one-liners, but I don't know how to put my feelings into words when a film has a visceral impact on my soul
Andrew Sarris' The American Cinema and Ebert 's Great Movies compilations
Pauline Kael, even when she seems incredibly wrong, has a way of bullying the reader into agreeing with her that I find charmingly fuck-you.
Sculpting in Time by Tarkovsky, it's less of an introductory text but imo it's really important for understand cinema and filmmaking, especially more abstract ones and even if it isn't that helpful for you you still get a great insight into all of Tarkovsky's major movies. https://monoskop.org/images/d/dd/Tarkovsky_Andrey_Sculpting_in_Time_Reflections_on_the_Cinema.pdf
I've heard of this! I've enjoyed the ones I've seen, so I'll check it out thanks
Reading film critics opinions can't hurt either. There's a ton of letterboxed accounts that take old reviewers and bring them on to the platform which I get a lot out of. https://letterboxd.com/notpaulinekael/
Wait this is such a cool concept
It isn't a novel, but a Youtube video that I think perfectly encapsulates what criticism is and is for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPrNWuppMcc
I think Closely Watched Films by Marilyn Fabe is basically as good an introduction as you can get and it's very commonly assigned to undergrads. Also What is Cinema? by Andre Bazin pretty much invented the genre of film studies outside of the Soviet Union.
That first one seems up my alley, thanks
Above what you're looking for but Paul Schrader's Transcendental Style in Film has a beautiful fervor and reverence for the medium of film in every word. On the lighter side, I consider Ebert the best film critic and also just a great American writer.