Rating: 
Summary: Not that useful or enjoyable a reference tool
Review: While its potentially very interesting to see what the Paper of Record thought about the great films of the last seventy-five years, it's in reality often not very useful, since Bosley Crowther, the main Times reviewer for decades, was the most middlebrow of reviewers. He seemed baffled or unaffected by most of the films later scholars and even the better contemporary critics (like Sarris or Kael) have found important. His successor, Vincent Canby, was better, but again had very predictable enthusiasms (including his notorious fondness for Woody Allen, whom he seemed to believe could do no wrong). Only Canby's successor Janet Maslin seems a reviewer whose writings are worth collecting, and her takes on films of the Eighties and Nineties are what makes this collection in the end worth owning.
Rating:
Summary: An Overreach
Review: Wow! -- Did Times critic Bosley Crowther blow his June, 1960 review of Psycho, as Janet Maslin candidly confesses in her brief Foreward. There are other missed opportunities among scattered triumphs spanning 70 years and 1,000 reviews from the stoutly conventional New York Times. And that's where the main interest in this otherwise compromised compilation lies. It's a catalog of quick reactions, before collective opinion has had a chance to harden and received wisdom to settle in. From the power of hindsight, It gives readers a chance to rate the professional taste-makers, those who make a living at arbitering what's good at the boxoffice and what isn't. Since the source is the Times, the entries not only reflect the cultural climate of the time, but engineer it as well. Thus, the critics' obtuse reaction to the seminal James Dean conveys something more profound than what might otherwise seem mere generational disconnect . If the overall impression is one of stilted stodginess, there are some notable exceptions: Vincent Canby's revealing approach to Stranger than Paradise, for one. And to be fair, it's difficult to overcome the limitations of a rigid format and a confined space to produce anything that really probes the movie in question. My real gripe lies with the inflated title, "Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made". Oh really! Who else but a dollar-chasing merchandiser would make such an extravagant claim. And how would a publication that systematically excluded from its pages the treasure trove of B-movies of the 30's, 40's, and 50's pretend to such status. It's like running a race and listing among the losers those who never ran.Thus such consensus classics as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kiss Me Deadly, I Walked with a Zombie, etc., are excluded from the outset, because of poor pedigree and catch-penny title. No list that replaces them with the likes of such certified clunkers as Anastasia or Suddenly Last Summer can or ought to be taken seriously. Of course, no daily newspaper can review every film that comes down the pipe. Choices have to be made. But it should be understood that an act of pre-emptory exclusion biases any list from the outset. More honest and less misleading, would have been a more modest title, like "Best 1,000 Movies The New York Times Saw Fit To Review". For movie lovers not laboring under this albatross of respectability, I suggest the works of Danny Peary as a more inclusive and reliable guide.
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