I picked this book up at the campus library because I've recently become quite interested in silent cinema and this book has several brief sections on it, including a quick summary of the theories of folks like Jean Epstein and Sergei Eisenstein. I thought these sections were decent if somewhat sketchy, personally I would have liked to see more focus here but I guess brevity was necessary in order for Stam to cover an entire century of theory.
The other thing I found appealing about this book was the inclusion of some of the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, my favorite literary critic. The discussion of Bakhtin was somewhat unfocused, however, and I was never sure exactly how his ideas were being applied. Still, Bakhtin is perhaps the most quoted theorist here so Stam inevitably managed to include some sections on him that I found satisfying.
Anyway, I found myself skimming over the post-silent sections of the book and only reading long passages when Stam hit on an area that I was particularly interested in. This seemed to happen less frequently as time went on, which I think is probably more due to my lack of interest in certain theories (I have little use for Structuralism or its related theories in literature or film, for instance) than any problems inherent in Stam's work.
Overall, this offers a decent introduction to a diverse field. This could surely help someone ease into a less general work on film theory, depending on the interests of the individual. Unlike some other reviewers, I was glad that Stam offered summaries of the work of many theorists rather than extensive excerpts from a few in this introduction.