Books like Nobody's Perfect by Anthony Lane

Mark Harris reveals how the five Best Picture nominees of 1967—*The Graduate*, *In the Heat of the Night*, *Doctor Dolittle*, *Guess Who's Coming to Dinner*, and *Bonnie and Clyde*—shattered Hollywood's studio system and mirrored America’s cultural upheaval.

Daniel Mendelsohn’s collection of essays spans film, theater, and literature, offering erudite yet conversational criticism that examines how contemporary attitudes reshape classics and how sentimentality affects post‑9/11 culture.

"In Nobody's Perfect, Billy Wilder speaks for himself, in what is as close to an autobiography as there ever will be. Charlotte Chandler, author of earlier authorized biographies of Groucho Marx and Federico Fellini, met Wilder in the mid-1970s and began a friendship that continued until his death. Over the course of more than twenty years, she interviewed not only Wilder, but many of the actors and other creative people who worked with him. The result is this remarkable book, a very personal look at one of Hollywood's creative geniuses."--BOOK JACKET.

"For over four decades, Stanley Kauffmann's skilled, cultivated, and impassioned film reviews in the New Republic have guided filmgoers and charted the development of the cinema arts. Over the course of his distinguished career, he has been an independent voice in film criticism, challenging preconceptions, skewering pretensions, and championing a wide diversity of films, from Hollywood blockbusters to over-looked gems.". "In his latest collection of film writings, Kauffmann discusses the most influential, exciting, and innovative films released since 1993, as well as less successful - sometimes disastrous - efforts. From major films by established Hollywood directors (Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and Oliver Stone's Nixon) to works from the iconoclastic world of independent American film (Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men and David O. Russell's Spanking the Monkey) to the best of world cinema (Abbas Kiarostami's A Taste of Cherry and Erick Zonca's The Dreamlife of Angels), Kauffmann offers his lively and considered views of over sixty films. In other essays, he compares cinematic adaptations of Mozart's operas, explores changing public attitudes toward film as an art form, assesses the possibilities of accurately dramatizing the Holocaust, and recalls the careers of such important figures in film history as David Lean, Billy Wilder, and Akira Kurosawa. A model of provocative writing about the liveliest art, Regarding Film will delight ardent movie lovers everywhere."--BOOK JACKET.

The peerless, fearless, inimitable Pauline Kael singlehandedly turned movie reviewing into a popular art form in 1965 with I Lost it at the Movies. As critic of The New Yorker she has been going full tilt ever since. Hooked is her ninth collection (and eleventh book), and it brings together all her reviews from July 1985 to June 1988. The scope is wide—Out of Africa, The Color Purple, Dirty Dancing, Radio Days, Hannah and Her Sisters, Platoon, Hope and Glory, Broadcast News, Top Gun, Fatal Attraction, The Last Emperor, A World Apart, Bull Durham . . . more than 175 movies in all. Thus she continues with what turns out to be the longest running, most entertaining, and most illuminating career in the history of movie reviewing. Readers coming to Pauline Kael for the first time will soon discover that her reviews belong in a category uniquely hers. As Anatole Broyard remarked in a review of her "Deeper into Movies" in The New York Times: "Her typical piece not only evaluates the movie itself . . . Reading a Pauline Kael review gives you a pretty good idea of the current state of our morality, our politics—and, yes, I might as well say it: our souls."

A collection of 100 essays by Roger Ebert, each offering insightful analysis and historical context for celebrated films such as Citizen Kane, The Godfather, and Casablanca.