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The 50 Movie Starter Kit

The 50 Movie Starter Kit

What You Need to Know if You Want to Know What You're Talking About

About the Book

In this ebook exclusive, Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr introduces the fifty films every movie lover must know.

This carefully curated list of great movies spans over a century of filmmaking, from the silent era to the last decade, from American favorites to international classics. Including recognized masterpieces such as "City Lights" and "Casablanca," as well as more recent movies like "Aliens" and "Fight Club," Burr has given readers what is essentially an engaging, accessible Film 101 class. Short entries discuss the significance of each movie, the reason for its greatness, and why it has become a part of our shared culture of movie-making. He also includes suggestions for further viewing, delving deeper into the works of featured directors like Hitchcock, Fellini, Sturges, and Kurosawa. In a media environment that gives endless entertainment options—including an intimidating amount of medicore films—Ty Burr has written an expert guide to the movies that are guaranteed to please readers, and increase their cinematic knowledge. It is a perfect book for movie-lovers who are just getting acquainted with the immense catalog of great cinema available to us today.
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Praise for The 50 Movie Starter Kit

Praise for Ty Burr's The Best Old Movies for Families:

"Every parent has asked for Ty Burr's book. Every movie-mad child will steal it from the parents. This is a guide to classic movies for kids, written with verve, humor, and pep. A winner."
—David Thomson, author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film

"Terrific, necessary, and carried out with integrity, intelligence, sensitivity, and totally without condescension. Ty Burr's book can lead to a lot of pleasure—of the life-long kind."
—Peter Bogdanovich

"A treasure, a delight, and quite possibly a marriage-saver as well. Ty Burr's advice on when, how, and even why to share with our children the movies we cherish from our own youth is funny, hip, and wise. My ten-year-old stole the book right out of my hands."
—Julia Glass, National Book Award-Winning Author of Three Junes

Praise for Ty Burr's Gods Like Us:

"Gods Like Us is an entertaining, wide-ranging account of the way movies created a new kind of fame, and changed the world in the process. Ty Burr's encyclopedic history of movie stardom is gossipy (in the best of sense of the word) and insightful, and his cultural analysis is as provocative as it persuasive."
—Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children and The Leftovers

"The sharp, illuminating Gods Like Us is as enjoyable and addictive as the greatest bucket of movie popcorn you've ever had. For anyone who loves cinema, this is a 'must own' book."
—Dennis Lehane, author of Live by Night and Mystic River

"[A] solid analysis of celebrity. . . . In this fascinating cultural study, film critic Burr explores the rise of stars in the early film industry.... Burr chronicles the star system—silents, talkies, movie factories, postwar studios—while citing factors such as television ('evoked not glamour, but ordinariness'), music (Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna), MTV, HBO, and YouTube ('teenagers have at their disposal the fundamental moviemaking facilities of a Hollywood studio in the 1930s')."
—Publishers Weekly
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About the Author

Ty Burr

Ty Burr is the film critic for The Boston Globe. For more than a decade he wrote about movies for Entertainment Weekly, and he has also served in the film acquisitions department of HBO. He estimates that after thirty years of serious movie-watching, he has seen on the order of 10,680 films. On a good day, he remembers 7,000 of them.

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