In many CSUSM courses, movies are used as teaching
tools and texts. You may be asked to locate a review of
a particular movie in support of your studies. Not every
movie review will be of equal value to your research
needs as your instructor will expect you to find more
than simple opinion. Here are some tips on locating
reviews and determining which will be the
best for your needs. If you are still not sure about
what you
are finding, check with your professor or a librarian
for more help.
Searching the library catalog for is a good place to find
if we own a copy of the movie, but won't lead you directly
to a review. Think of a review as an article in a magazine
or journal. Our catalog does not go to that detail, but the
research databases do. Films produced prior to 1990 will
generally be reviewed in print resources,
while newer reviews (generally 1990-on) will be found in the
online research databases.
Reviews will be held
in larger collections and anthologies, here are some titles
to start with:
Film Review Annual REF PN1995
.F465 (covers the years 1991-2002)
American Film Criticism, From the
Beginnings to Citizen Kane: Reviews of Significant
Films... STACKS
PN1995 .K293 (up to 1970)
The New York Times Film Reviews: A One-Volume
Selection, 1913-1970 STACKS PN1995 .A43
Index to Critical Film Reviews in British and
American Film Periodicals... STACKS
Z5784.M9 B64
More sources can be found in our library catalog using these subject headings as search
strategies, especially when looking for a film genre, rather
than specific title:
The research databases provide access to individual
articles published in journals. A large number of journals
include movie reviews. Listed here are the more scholarly
databases to look at first with search tips specific to that
database. Is the article NOT available in full text? Use the 
button to see if another database or print resource has the full
text you need.
Academic Search Premier
Not
all reviews will be scholarly in this
collection, so assess the results carefully. In the
Advanced
Search screen, type the movie title in double
quotes. Look down the screen to Document Type and
select "Entertainment Review".
Communication & Mass Media Complete
A limited
number of results. Not all reviews will be
scholarly in this collection, so assess the results
carefully. In the Basic
Search screen, type the movie title in double quotes
followed by the words AND REVIEW.
Ethnic NewsWatch
The reviews are not scholarly in this collection, so assess the results carefully. In the Basic
Search screen, type the movie title in double quotes
followed by the words AND REVIEW.
MAS Ultra - School Edition
Not all
reviews will be scholarly in this collection, so
assess the results carefully. In the Basic
Search screen, type the movie title in double quotes
followed by the words AND REVIEW.
MLA
(Modern Language Association)
Primarily scholarly materials in this collection. In the Basic
Search screen, type the movie title in double quotes
in the KEYWORD box followed by the words AND REVIEW.
ProQuest Direct
Not all reviews will be
scholarly in this collection, so assess the results
carefully. In the Basic
Search screen, type the movie title in double quotes
followed by the words AND REVIEW. Most materials
will be from newspapers, so check the box next to "Scholarly
journals, including peer-reviewed" to narrow
the results.
Lexis Nexis Academic
Not all reviews will be
scholarly in this collection, so assess the
results carefully. Use the Guided Search option to
search General News (news category) and choose either
Major Papers or Magazines and Journals in the news
source category. Type your movie title in the first
search term box and REVIEW in the second. You may need
to broaden the date range as the default is for the
latest 6 months. They do offer some 'direct link'
searches for CSUSM users:
If your search by movie title is not returning
results, you might try searching for the director's
name. The index-only databases may not have the film
title in the abstract, but if you find an article
critiquing a director's body of work, the full text
(available elsewhere via the GET IT button) could
still have sufficient material
on the movie you are looking for.
Reviews on the
internet
There are a number of internet movie review
sites, but you need to be cautious about who wrote
the review (it could be the director's cousin or a
fan who sees no weaknesses in any work done by their
favorite director or star.)
Movie Review Query
Engine provides links to both popular and scholarly
online reviews.
Internet Movie Database (IMDB) a wide range of quality.
CineFiles (hosted at UC Berkeley, best results seem
to be in the FILMOGRAPHIC SEARCH.)
MetaCritic.com offers a collection of reviews of
theatrical release films, generally non-scholarly.
To determine the review's
value to your research needs means that you go beyond information found in
the review's content.
-
How old is the review? Reviews published at the time
of release will reflect immediate opinion rather
than careful scholarly analysis. What is it that
your instructor asked for?
-
Where was the review published? An open-web resource
will not have gone through the editorial review
process that a review from a scholarly journal will
have. Anyone can say anything on the internet
without much serious thought, but
thoughtful analysis, albeit critical or positive, is the rule
in scholarly print and research databases.
-
Who is the author? The review should be written by a
scholar who is considered an expert in the
topic/genre of the film. Open-web authors may know
their stuff, but could also be the director's mother
with a personal bias that is not suited for
scholarly research papers.
- Wording of the review. A
scholarly review is meant for
serious researchers and uses the language of the
discipline, rather than slang or casual terms.
Compare the titles of these two reviews of the same
work (Boys Don't Cry, 1999)
- Actually,
that WAS a banana in her pocket... is a
opinion-based work found on the internet through
movies.yahoo.com.
- Boys Don't Cry by Rachel
Swan in Film
Quarterly Vol. 54, No. 3 (Spring, 2001),
pp. 47-52 is a scholarly work found in
the JSTOR research database.
At this point, you should
be able to determine the scholarly and research value of the
work and continue with your research process.
When you write your paper, you must credit the sources used for ideas, paraphrases and direct quotations.
You will need to provide a citation
for the review as part of your research record. The
disciplines at CSUSM commonly use APA, MLA or Chicago/Turabian,
although there are others. Your professor should specify
which citation style to use. Here are samples of movie
review citations including the electronic database
information required if you retrieved the review from a
research database. The style link will take you to
related information at Diana Hacker's site on Research
and Documentation. Note that indentations
are NOT represented here as it varies with the style.
APA (from Academic Search Premier Database)
Griffin, A.
(2006, June). River deep, mountain high [Review of the motion picture Brokeback Mountain, 2006]. Sound & Vision, 71(5),
87. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier.
MLA (From print journal)
Olsen, Mark. "Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind." Rev. of Eternal Sunshine of
the Spotless Mind, dir. Michel Gondry. Sight and
Sound May 2004: 57. Print.
Chicago (From newspaper in Proquest Direct Database
where review title is different than the film being
reviewed.)
Meyer, Carla. 2007. "Out to launch 'The Astronaut Farmer' warmly goes
where no film has gone before." Review of The Astronaut Farmer (Warner Brothers movie). Sacramento Bee, Feb. 23,
TK 15, http://proquest.umi.com.
