The Frame

by Tom Weiner

I didn’t read every word of this, but since I managed to make it through the month of December without reading a single book completely, I figured I could at least recommend this one. In this book of film recommendations, Wiener considers anything not primarily financed by one of the major Hollywood studios. Basically, then, anything independently produced in any country or financed by any country other than the United States is fair game. This approach means that the book is very wide-ranging in scope, including absolute classic foreign films like those of Bergman, Fellini, Godard, and Kurosawa, as well as lesser-known independents. It really shows the tremendous variety that exists outside of the multiplex mainstream, so if you’d like to see what all your local multiplex doesn’t play, Wiener’s book is a good place to start. His write-ups of each film are quite well-written, and I ended up burdening my Netflix queue even further with films that I otherwise wouldn’t have considered simply because his entries intrigued me.