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Michigan State University

Film Criticism and Reviews: Articles

Popular or Scholarly?

Video tutorial to help you tell the difference between three major types of articles, and tips for using each one.

A chart comparing popular and scholarly articles

Article Searching

Here are some good, but very general places to begin searching for articles:

Going Deeper

Can't find what you're looking for? Try these more specific, scholarly sources:

  • America History and Life      Edit or Delete link_1565350  Get Quick Stats
    Citations and some full-text of articles, book reviews, and dissertations in American and Canadian history.
  • Sociological Abstracts      Edit or Delete link_1565381  Get Quick Stats
    Citations and abstracts of articles in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.
  • Ethnic NewsWatch       Edit or Delete link_1655469  Get Quick Stats
    Minority magazine, journal, and newspapers articles from the perspective of American ethnic groups.
  • LION (Literature Online)

    Contemporary criticism is available through the MLA International Bibliography (MLAIB) and the full text of 120 current literature journals that can be accessed through the literary index, Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL), which contains over 880,000 records of literary criticism from 1920 to current. LION (Literature Online) contains a full library of up-to-date, fully searchable criticism and reference sources in addition to the full text of poetry, drama, and prose fiction from the seventh century to the present day.
  • ProQuest

    For contemporary criticism. ProQuest Research Library contains over 2,000 periodicals (nearly 1,000 of them in ASCII full-text or full-image formats) in a wide range of subject areas. In addition to general interest publications, ProQuest Research Library covers titles in the following areas: arts, business, children, education, general interest, health, humanities, international, law, military, multicultural, psychology, sciences, social sciences, and women's interests.
  • Humanities Abstracts

    Index to articles in over 400 humanities periodicals in archaeology, art, classics, film, folklore, journalism, linguistics, music, the performing arts, philosophy, religion, world history, and world literature.
  • Gale Virtual Reference Library

    Includes many reference resources in the Humanities. "Front end" searching will search across all titles.
  • Gale Literature Resource Center

    Many film director biographies (with bibliographies for further reading) because of the full-text of CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS, and contains some full-text of contemporary film criticism.
  • Communication & Mass Media Complete

    Provides indexing and abstracting for more than 600 publications, and includes selected full-text coverage for more than 240 journals in communications, mass media, and related fields. Topics include (among many others) health communication, gender and communication, communication theory, and mass media.
  • Film Indexes Online

    Film Indexes Online is a portal allowing simultaneous or independent searching of these resources:

    AFI ( American Film Institute) Catalog:
    Established by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1967, the AFI is a national organization dedicated to advancing and preserving the art of film, television and other forms of the moving image. AFI�s programs promote innovation and excellence through teaching, presenting, preserving and redefining the moving image.

    The AFI Catalog provides comprehensive filmographic information on over 45,000 films, including more than 17,500 made in the early years of film from 1893 to 1910. The database includes approximately one million personal name entries - including more than 500,000 actor entries and 27,000 director entries.

    FII (Film Index International):
    Access the world�s most comprehensive film database. Produced in collaboration with the British Film Institute and based on their Summary of Information on Film and Television (SIFT) database collated over the past 70 years, Film Index International is a major information resource for entertainment films and personalities.
  • Film Literature Index

    A print-only index. See catalog record for access.
  • America History and Life

    America History and Life provides access to the citations of contemporary articles (and in some cases, the full text of articles), book reviews, and dissertations in American and Canadian history.
  • Art Abstracts

    A fairly comprehensive and authoritative information source about the world of the arts from architecture to video. Covers 222 leading art publications from around the world and serves as a comprehensive record of art reproductions that appear in the indexed publications.
  • Periodicals Index Online

    Periodicals Contents Index (PCI) contains more than 1 million citations to articles in more than 3,000 journals from 1770-1995. These journals represent popular and scholarly titles in the humanities and social sciences. 1,000,000 citations are added annually. Although it is not yet complete, PCI Full Text is a growing repository of full-text articles enabling one to go directly from the bibliographic citation to the full text article.
  • Blackwell Reference Online

    Blackwell Reference Online contains online versions of authoritative reference publications in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, Cultural Studies, History, Business, Economics, Sociology, Psychology, and Linguistics.
  • Black Studies Center

    The index to periodicals in international in scope. Also included are Schomburg essays.
Have an even more specific topic? Try searching in a subject index: