Sources of Film Resources and Useful Information

Reference websites for film

• www.bfi.org.uk
  Official website of the British Film Institute. Gives limited access to archived film reviews from the fabulous Sight and Sound.
  
  
• www.bbfc.co.uk
  Excellent for finding plot summaries, cast lists, movie ratings, (often different on the original movie release from subsequent DVD / video etc.) and for finding out what's about to be released.
  
  
• www.chicagoreader.com/movies/
  Chicago Reader on Film: 10,000 movie reviews...
  
  
• www.empireonline.co.uk
  Website of Empire film magazine.
  
  
• www.filmeducation.org
  Provides resources (inc. free study guides) and information on the annual National Schools Film Week (October). Also contains guidance articles e.g. how to start and organise your own After School Club.
  
  
• www.imdb.com
  Fabulous resource with thousands of film reviews, credit lists and other relevant info (also American version: www.us.imdb.com although the information seems to be mainly common to both).
  
  
• www.metacritic.com/film/
  "Metacritic's mission is to help you make an informed decision about how to spend your money on entertainment." To that end if you go to the film section you can see a short review of any given film / dvd / video release plus a summary of the critics' responses to the film. If you want you can then access any one of the reviews for full details on what the critics did or didn't like. If you want an immediate response from the US film critics on what any new release is like then this is the place to start!
  
  
• www.mrqe.com/lookup
  Movie Review Query Engine is a useful search engine but also offers interesting lists e.g.'latest UK releases', films shown at Cannes, Montreal and all the major film festivals. Not just US focussed.
  
  
• www.suntimes.com/ebert.html
  Roger Ebert, Film Critic of the Chicago Sun Times and winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for his film criticism the previous year - an institution! Ebert is thought provoking and sensitive to religious issues and themes in film.
  
  
• www.upcomingmovies.com
  The Yahoo! Movies! site written by Greg Dean Schmitz, previews upcoming new releases giving info on cast, crew, plot and some commentary. Easily searchable by title / director etc., also has lots of hyper-links if you want to follow a film up in more detail.