Finding Film Reviews  

A film review is an evaluation of the many elements that make up a film, such as its aesthetic, entertainment, social and cultural value. Film reviews appear regularly in a range of sources. You can find reviews in newspapers and popular journals like The Age or Rolling Stone and you can find reviews in scholarly cinema journals such as Screen, Film Quarterly or Continuum. Film reviews also appear on a wide range of internet sites.

This guide lists information on how to find specific film reviews using the library's online databases.

Before you start

Before you begin searching it's a good idea to find out the release date of the film. This will help limit your search to reviews that appeared when the film was first released. Search the Internet Movie Database for the name of the film. Once you have found the entry for your film, scroll down the column on the left hand side. You will find a link for the release dates of the film.

It's also a good idea to identify the director of the film. This can be really useful for limiting the results to articles specifically on that film. For instance if you do a keyword search for The Piano, you would retrieve anything with the word Piano in it. If you searched The Piano and Jane Campion, you should retrieve far more relevant results.

See also the Cinema Studies library guide and the Media Studies library guide.