Engaging Film Criticism

Film History and Contemporary American Cinema

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examines recent American cinema in relationship to its «imaginative intertexts», films from earlier decades that engage similar political and cultural themes. This historical encounter provides an unexpected and exciting way of reading popular contemporary films. Eclectic pairings include the Schwarzenegger action film with the Hitchcock classic , as well as the lampooned Will Smith comedy with Buster Keaton’s silent feature . Using a theoretically and historically informed brand of criticism, suggests that today’s Hollywood cinema is every bit as worthy of study as the classics.