What I Love about Movies

Despite its alluring illustrations and promising premise%E2%80%94cinematic artists of all varieties musing on what film means to them%E2%80%94the final product reads like an unedited interview transcript in need of polishing. Little White Lies editors Woodward and Jenkins cover a wide spectrum of cinematic luminaries, from long-established directors like Francis Ford Coppola and the Coen Brothers to newer faces like Kristen Stewart and Ryan Gosling. The collection hinges on the answers to a seemingly straightforward question: "what do you love about movies?" While there are some intriguing and almost philosophical answers%E2%80%94Helen Mirren enjoys the intimacy of watching a film "when it's just me and the screen" and Juliet Binoche loves "the freedom of cinema [and] the anarchy"%E2%80%94the majority of responses are paragraph-length versions of conversational space filler, peppered with "you know" and half-finished thoughts. The most striking parts of the collection are the illustrations depicting the movie star, made by a variety of artists, each in a slightly different style. The entry from the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, to whom the book is dedicated, is one of the more frustrating examples of the decision to seemingly leave the responses in their unedited form. While Hoffman astutely notes cinema's dichotomy of community and isolation, the power of his words is diminished by the choice to open his section with "Umm%E2%80%A6I think%E2%80%A6that%E2%80%A6I don't know" instead of zeroing in on the meaning of his words. (Nov.)