From a legendary film critic and movie fan extraordinaire, the highlights reel of a life spent at the movies Richard Schickel has seen, by his own estimate, more than twenty thousand films. He has been a reviewer since 1965 long for Time magazine, has written almost forty books on the subject, and has produced and directed thirty documentaries. He has counted as personal friends many of the leading filmmakers of the twentieth century. Call it obsession, lunacy, or a grand passion Schickel grants all three, but theres simply no one who knows film better. Now Schickel gives us the ultimate summing up a history of film as hes seen—and lived—it, a tour of his favorites, a master class in what makes a film soar or flop. Schickels no-holds-barred, often raucously irreverent opinions can range from panning classics, to spotlighting forgotten treasures, to defending the art of popular genres such as horror, westerns, screwball comedy, and noir.
