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Anatomy of Film Perfection: Over 400 Lessons From Movies Around Screenwriting and Filmmaking
For the past five years, I've made videos drawing positive and negative lessons from movies on my Youtube channel. This book holds them all plus more. There's about half a thousand educational points around screenwriting here, all condensed and structured for easy and effective navigation and ingestion.
Whether you're looking to improve in writing characters or plot or blockbusters or in specific genres or whatever else, there is something here for that. I'd buy this.
Whether you're looking to improve in writing characters or plot or blockbusters or in specific genres or whatever else, there is something here for that. I'd buy this.
- GenresFilm
368 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 10, 2023
40 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 16, 2025
I picked up Anatomy of Film Perfection: Over 400 Lessons From Movies Around Screenwriting and Filmmaking because I’ve been a longtime fan of Filip “Filmento” Mentos’ YouTube channel—but while the book is great, it doesn’t quite hold a candle to his video content, for obvious reasons.
The breakdowns here are insightful, but when you can watch 10- to 20-minute videos on each film or TV show covered—complete with supplemental footage and expository narration—it’s like comparing an interactive Audible experience to a static text. There’s no real competition between which one is more engaging.
That said, this book is dense, and reading it in just a couple of days (like I did) makes it tough to retain everything. It’s best consumed in bite-sized quantities, especially for those actively writing or filming and looking for guidance on a specific problem. It won’t necessarily tell you how to fix that issue, but it will help you recognize that it exists—which is often the most important step.
Overall, it’s solid, but if you want the best version of Filmento’s insights, just subscribe to his channel. If that’s not your thing, then by all means, pick up the book—it still has plenty to offer.
The breakdowns here are insightful, but when you can watch 10- to 20-minute videos on each film or TV show covered—complete with supplemental footage and expository narration—it’s like comparing an interactive Audible experience to a static text. There’s no real competition between which one is more engaging.
That said, this book is dense, and reading it in just a couple of days (like I did) makes it tough to retain everything. It’s best consumed in bite-sized quantities, especially for those actively writing or filming and looking for guidance on a specific problem. It won’t necessarily tell you how to fix that issue, but it will help you recognize that it exists—which is often the most important step.
Overall, it’s solid, but if you want the best version of Filmento’s insights, just subscribe to his channel. If that’s not your thing, then by all means, pick up the book—it still has plenty to offer.
May 23, 2024
The Krakhozian expat Filip Mentos, currently inhabiting the offshores of Youtube, has collated his movie analysis scripts into one electric book spanning hundreds of one-page lessons on the art of moviemaking. One will find tropes, characters, plot, theme as well as cinematic anatomy and techniques in bite-size form.
Albeit mostly introductory, Mentos' work makes the life of greenhorn storytellers easier and gives some brain food to develop one's own plotting skills. The pages are at times brimming with basic storytelling and/or movie-making concepts, so just interacting with the material already helps to get a grasp of them. At least I wouldn't know where to find a popularization of this information anywhere, except for the story-writing classics like Bell's conflict and Suspense.
Right now, Filmento is in a phase of synthesis with his basic elements, which enables him to combine them into more complex concepts (the only limiting factor being the movies he covers with the formats of Film Perfection, Anatomy of a Failure and the newest addition Alternate Cinema). It will be nice to see how his skills develop throughout the years.
Albeit mostly introductory, Mentos' work makes the life of greenhorn storytellers easier and gives some brain food to develop one's own plotting skills. The pages are at times brimming with basic storytelling and/or movie-making concepts, so just interacting with the material already helps to get a grasp of them. At least I wouldn't know where to find a popularization of this information anywhere, except for the story-writing classics like Bell's conflict and Suspense.
Right now, Filmento is in a phase of synthesis with his basic elements, which enables him to combine them into more complex concepts (the only limiting factor being the movies he covers with the formats of Film Perfection, Anatomy of a Failure and the newest addition Alternate Cinema). It will be nice to see how his skills develop throughout the years.
abandoned
April 17, 2024Stopped at 38% (Pg.145)
Book provides very quick and superficial movie critics. Some are insightful, most are repetitive.
Book provides very quick and superficial movie critics. Some are insightful, most are repetitive.
July 31, 2024
The book is similar to his YouTube channel
Each movie review is formatted similar to Filmento's YouTube reviews. And just like his YouTube reviews, he easily describes the positives and negatives from a filmmakers point of view.
He also provides a lot of good pointers that can be applied to storytelling in every type of medium, not just screenwriting.
Each movie review is formatted similar to Filmento's YouTube reviews. And just like his YouTube reviews, he easily describes the positives and negatives from a filmmakers point of view.
He also provides a lot of good pointers that can be applied to storytelling in every type of medium, not just screenwriting.
October 2, 2025
Too much focus on negative examples. Felt more like opinions than criticism at some point. Also too much focus on mid superhero movies - I wanted more classical movies and more "cinema perfection" examples and what makes a good film good. Some jokes are a bit dated.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews