Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Movies We Can See

I'm going to be short because others have done him justice already. At last someone has put together a thorough, cogent, and richly illustrated argument explaining why Hollywood studios have been so bad for the movies in recent years. One of Rosenbaum's main themes is that Hollywood isn't even "giving the people what they want." The hare-brained garbage the big studios regularly produce is the product of a completely self-contained, self-referential industry that is driven by marketing ("push" in business terminology) far more than it is driven by customer demand (i.e., "pull."). One of my favorite examples is Rosenbaum's discussion of the extraordinary success of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, a massive box office success that many, if not most, people thought was just extraordinarily bad. Rosenbaum goes into great detail about how marketing deals ensured the extraordinary financial success and long movie house runs of this almost complete loser. In a wonderfully ironic support of Rosenbaum's thesis, try typing "movie wars" into [a bookeseller's] search engine. At least when I tried it (10/20/02), the first roughly 50 books the search engine returns are collateral materials for Star Wars, none of whose titles contain the phrase "movie wars." Hollywood marketing strikes again as thoughtful criticism is, as usual, pushed into obscurity.

If you've ever wondered why terrible movies are being shown on thousands of screens while Abbas Kiarostami's latest gem is barely seen, or thought that the latest Mirimax pablum is getting inexplicably positive reviews, or simply wondered whether or not movies were getting worse and worse (they're not--it's just that the good ones are harder and harder to see), this book is for you.Rosenbaum magnificently skewers studio conglomorates and overrated critics in equal measure--David Denby in particular is taken out to the woodshed--and passionately defends the oeuvres of everyone from Robert Bresson to Joe Dante.Although Rosenbaum may seem to be tilting at windmills at times, the final chapter--about what can actually be done to correct the situation--is daringly optimistic, a nice change from most polemics. If you care about movies, read this book.

Movie Wars is a powerful and lucid corrective to the intellectual laziness that distinguishes 90% of film commentary in North America. As the chief film review of Chicago Reader, Rosenbaum is one of the few sources of lengthy, intelligible prose (as opposed to the tenure seeking obscurantism that distinguishes so much of contemporary film studies) about world cinema. What I like about Rosenbaum's writing is that he makes you want to seek out films that may eventually surface on video and DVD if you live outside the Festival-Cinematheque circuit because he communicates the beauty, intelligence, integrity and mystery of these films through his writing (keep a notepad handy when reading this book to jot down titles). Rosenbaum is never an art-house snob in his approach. His appreciation of Joe Dante's Small Soldiers in this book reveals that Rosenbaum is happy to pay credit to a genre-busting auteur when the work merits it. Movie Wars deftly analyses the collusion between studios and mainstream critics to limit viewer choices. It is a polemic informed by a profound knowledge of film history and a keen sense of what film (US, European, Third World, etc.) can be when audiences aren't underestimated. Above all, this is a book for film lovers who haven't let their cinephilia blind them to the fact that the best films always connect with the world beyond the screen.

For anyone who cares about film as an art form (even if that seems like a quaint concept these days), Jonathan Rosenbaum's MOVIE WARS is must reading. Rosenbaum incisively and wittily dissects the way that the large body of filmgoers have become little more than puppets of studio marketing departments, manipulated, pandered to, treated with contempt and condescension, and ultimately given fewer and fewer real choices about which movies to watch. This is a disturbing and darkly humorous book that says a great deal about our materialistic society. It should serve as a cautionary tale as we ponder the future of culture in this new millennium. Will films survive as an art form? Read Rosenbaum and think seriously about the question.

Jonathan Rosenbaum takes cinema for what it is and what it could be. The author is a passionate movie critic, who believes passionately in the power of the "movement-image." He writes weekly reviews in the Chicago Reader. He might be the only critic I know of in the US who actually DEFENDS certain movies. His highly vitriolic discussion of the practices of major movie studios is refreshing and right on target. Rosenbaum's exploration of the socio-economic and cultural reasons why US audiences cannot easily access foreign movies leads him to a larger reflection on the very nature and/or possibility of an "American" cinema in the age of globalization. Rosenbaum vehemently criticizes the current status quo and the US film industry for treating movies as disposable commodities and the audiences as hapless consumers. He also shows how the "entertainment-industrial complex" has taken over the shaping of the public's taste through mainstream media outlets. Rosenbaum argues forcefully against the cliche that so-called art movies - and those who enjoy them - are hopeless elitists. As a matter of fact, in the book he discusses Starship Troopers and Orson Welles' Ambersons with equal interest. He makes the case that movies can tell us crucial things about the world we live in, or in other words that movies - foreign, US, artsy, indie, whatever - matter because of their ethical value. A vital, and extremely minoritarian position nowadays. In summary, a very lively and at times very funny book, which considerably enriches the discussion on cinema. Invaluable in the era of the E! channnel.