There are movies we love, but only one movie in a thousand actually changes the way we live, the way we look at life, or the way we define entertainment. Broadcast journalist Nick Clooney, best known as the silver-haired movie host on the cable channel American Movie Classics, has selected twenty movies that changed us, some for the better, some for the worse. He starts with the recent past: Saving Private Ryan, a movie that changed the way people across the world view the American generation that fought World War Two; Star Wars, a motion picture so important that a missile defense system was named for it; and The Birth of a Nation, not only the first film to be hailed as the artistic equivalent to opera, literature, and painting, but also the first film to give a cloak of respectability to racial prejudice. Clooney's debate-starting distinctions will engage, delight, and challenge everyone who loves movies: Did Taxi Driver change the way we view individual violence? Did The Graduate change the way we view romance? Did Dr. Strangelove change the way we contemplate mass destruction? Did The Best Years of Our Lives alter our behavior toward veterans? And did Triumph of the Will almost help the Nazis win the war? Clooney ends with an epilogue on "The Movie That Never Was": the film that could have spurred the civil rights movement if only it had been made. "Sports changed things, the military changed things, and eventually the federal government changed things," Clooney writes, but in the matter of race, he concludes, the movies changed nothing. Thought-provoking, entertaining, and compulsively readable, The Movies That Changed Us will delight film fans of every generation.

The Movies That Changed Us: Reflections on the Screen

Clooney, Nick

History

Atria

Nick Clooney, one of America's most respected film critics and historians, presents a distinctive catalog of movies that have influenced and altered not only the world of cinema, but also the world in which we live. Since the advent of moving pictures, there have been films that exist as more than just entertainment. These rare movies have touched the collective soul of the public with such passion and artistic skill that they have actually changed the way we view life, history, and ourselves. Some have transformed the way movies are made and viewed - and some have actually transformed us. In The Movies That Changed Us, Clooney explores, explains, and theorizes upon twenty films - reaching from 1998 back to 1915 - that forever shifted our perceptions about race, religion, sex, politics, and the very definition of humanity. From the ambitiously epic - though manifestly racist - Birth of a Nation, to the controversial violence of Taxi Driver, to the mythic idealism and visual cornucopia of 2001:A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, Clooney relates the stories behind the camera in an informative, engaging, and personal chronicle of cinema and society.

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Atria Books

Cincinnati: City of Charm : A Love Story

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Towery Pub

Nick: Collected Columns of Nick Clooney

Biographies & Memoirs

Irena Hochman Fine Art Ltd

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