What do you think?
Rate this book
What I Love About Movies
During the first eight years of its existence, Little White Lies magazine has published countless interviews with some of the biggest names in the movies. Yet staff and collaborators have all been encouraged to round-off these interviews by posing a single, searching question: 'What do you love about movies?' The answers have been entertaining, profound, personal, ridiculous, revealing and unexpected, but always unique. Now for the first time, these declarations of movie passion have been collected into the ultimate one-stop celebration of cinema.
This lovingly crafted compendium offers a fascinating and insightful look at the movies through the eyes of 50 of its brightest stars, with subjects including legendary directors (Francis Ford Coppola, the Coen brothers, Wes Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, Pedro Almod�var, Darren Aronofsky, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Jonze) alongside A-list icons (Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender, Kristen Stewart, Jake Gyllenhaal, Tom Hardy, Javier Bardem).
Alongside these star-spangled testimonies are newly commissioned illustrations and immaculate art direction care of the award-winning LWLies creative team.
This lovingly crafted compendium offers a fascinating and insightful look at the movies through the eyes of 50 of its brightest stars, with subjects including legendary directors (Francis Ford Coppola, the Coen brothers, Wes Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, Pedro Almod�var, Darren Aronofsky, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Jonze) alongside A-list icons (Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender, Kristen Stewart, Jake Gyllenhaal, Tom Hardy, Javier Bardem).
Alongside these star-spangled testimonies are newly commissioned illustrations and immaculate art direction care of the award-winning LWLies creative team.
112 pages, Hardcover
First published November 7, 2014
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 8, 2015
Was pretty disappointed in this book, which is filled with quotes from film artists and celebrities on why they love the movies.
Being a person who adores movies myself, I enjoyed maybe 3 of the explanations. Most of the entries in the book seemed incidental, as if a celebrity was interrupted on the street and asked the question, "what do you love about movies?" The book included mostly stilted, hasty and undeveloped answers.
And if anyone's asking, here's why I love movies:
I can map out nearly my entire life based on movies, plots and characters of film. From sobbing in the cinema watching The Color Purple (which was maybe the third movie I saw on the big screen) and trying to understand abuse and control as a young girl, to a serendipitous viewing of Raise the Red Lantern in high school while flipping through the channels on TV and being mesmerized to an introduction of a completely unknown-to-me history and culture; movies connect me emotionally with people and places much like characters in a book do. I terrified myself by sneaking peeks from the forbidden Salem’s Lot showing in my family room as a young girl – I can still see that vamp at the window scratching. Being a teenage girl watching A Room with a View and laughing hysterically with my friend at seeing three men run around naked for the first time – and then watching Moonstruck so many times I could nearly recite the entire thing. Those movies are what I remember most about my best friend Alisa…and remind me of our own coming of age stories.
Then in college, being asked out on a date with (oh, what was his name) to see the romantic comedy A Clockwork Orange; perfectly depicts my naïveté as a freshman. A few years later – knowing The Color Purple so well, strengthened my friendships with Chris and Lila…while we reenacted scenes and threw out quotes across campus to one another and generally confused the entire population of students at Ball State University. Fast forward a few more years…I happen upon the 1996 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice when I was home on maternity leave with my first kid and I remembered how I talked Ms. Cappuccilli out of me reading the assigned Jane Austen title in high school if I would read the longer book The Hobbit, because the Jane Austen book seemed so stuffy. I regret never telling Mrs. Capp that she was right all along to have assigned me that book; it’s one of my favorites now and it helped redefine romance for me.
Movies have shocked me to the point I’ve shouted out a sob and had to leave the theatre or room because a scene would twist my entire being into someplace I couldn’t stand (Monster’s Ball, Mysterious Skin, Hick and on and on) or completely put me at ease or bolster me when the world seems set against me (Persuasion, 300, Anne of Green Gables, Babette’s Feast, To Live, Wives and Daughters, and on and on).
And I fell in love with Nick pretty much after our first conversation when he said Sunshine (the one set in Hungary, not outer space) was one of his top favorite movies. He was the only man I’d ever met who’d even seen that movie, let alone adore it as much as I did. My love for Nick grows from movies too…he sees worth in them in artistic direction and the way music is used and I value the acting, story and plot lines and the scenery (I’ll watch absolutely any period drama that has good jewelry). So —when the two of us adore a film, I pretty much feel it must be one of the greatest films of all times (Sucker Punch, Nebraska, The Fighter, End of Watch, Sense and Sensibility, A Very Long Engagement, Sidewalls, The Counterfeiters, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, and on and on). And when our fabulous family of four all loves a movie (Bernie, Mad Max:Fury Road, The Trip, Snowpiercer), it's pretty much a home run.
Movies have been my inspiration, my education, my therapy and my green-girl buster. I simply cannot imagine growing up or growing old without them.
Being a person who adores movies myself, I enjoyed maybe 3 of the explanations. Most of the entries in the book seemed incidental, as if a celebrity was interrupted on the street and asked the question, "what do you love about movies?" The book included mostly stilted, hasty and undeveloped answers.
And if anyone's asking, here's why I love movies:
I can map out nearly my entire life based on movies, plots and characters of film. From sobbing in the cinema watching The Color Purple (which was maybe the third movie I saw on the big screen) and trying to understand abuse and control as a young girl, to a serendipitous viewing of Raise the Red Lantern in high school while flipping through the channels on TV and being mesmerized to an introduction of a completely unknown-to-me history and culture; movies connect me emotionally with people and places much like characters in a book do. I terrified myself by sneaking peeks from the forbidden Salem’s Lot showing in my family room as a young girl – I can still see that vamp at the window scratching. Being a teenage girl watching A Room with a View and laughing hysterically with my friend at seeing three men run around naked for the first time – and then watching Moonstruck so many times I could nearly recite the entire thing. Those movies are what I remember most about my best friend Alisa…and remind me of our own coming of age stories.
Then in college, being asked out on a date with (oh, what was his name) to see the romantic comedy A Clockwork Orange; perfectly depicts my naïveté as a freshman. A few years later – knowing The Color Purple so well, strengthened my friendships with Chris and Lila…while we reenacted scenes and threw out quotes across campus to one another and generally confused the entire population of students at Ball State University. Fast forward a few more years…I happen upon the 1996 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice when I was home on maternity leave with my first kid and I remembered how I talked Ms. Cappuccilli out of me reading the assigned Jane Austen title in high school if I would read the longer book The Hobbit, because the Jane Austen book seemed so stuffy. I regret never telling Mrs. Capp that she was right all along to have assigned me that book; it’s one of my favorites now and it helped redefine romance for me.
Movies have shocked me to the point I’ve shouted out a sob and had to leave the theatre or room because a scene would twist my entire being into someplace I couldn’t stand (Monster’s Ball, Mysterious Skin, Hick and on and on) or completely put me at ease or bolster me when the world seems set against me (Persuasion, 300, Anne of Green Gables, Babette’s Feast, To Live, Wives and Daughters, and on and on).
And I fell in love with Nick pretty much after our first conversation when he said Sunshine (the one set in Hungary, not outer space) was one of his top favorite movies. He was the only man I’d ever met who’d even seen that movie, let alone adore it as much as I did. My love for Nick grows from movies too…he sees worth in them in artistic direction and the way music is used and I value the acting, story and plot lines and the scenery (I’ll watch absolutely any period drama that has good jewelry). So —when the two of us adore a film, I pretty much feel it must be one of the greatest films of all times (Sucker Punch, Nebraska, The Fighter, End of Watch, Sense and Sensibility, A Very Long Engagement, Sidewalls, The Counterfeiters, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, and on and on). And when our fabulous family of four all loves a movie (Bernie, Mad Max:Fury Road, The Trip, Snowpiercer), it's pretty much a home run.
Movies have been my inspiration, my education, my therapy and my green-girl buster. I simply cannot imagine growing up or growing old without them.
September 22, 2019
Well, the content of this book is curious and the design puzzling.
The premise is simple. At the end of their interview, subjects of the British review magazine Little White Lies are asked ‘What do you love about movies?’ no doubt adding to the richness of the exchange. This collection, however, consists entirely of responses to this one question, so the whole becomes limited and repetitious; ‘movies take you to another place…’ or ‘movies take us out of ourselves’.
In fairness, there are some thoughtful insights: Francis Ford Coppola talks of movies as ‘the most diverse and complete art form that I know of- that uses everything: uses music, uses emotion, uses image, uses writing and structure…a divine collection of all human aspiration and art forms.’
My favourite observation comes from Richard Ayoade: ‘…you can register a change in thought in a face contemporaneously with other people’s ability to take in that information. It actually allows you a level of objectivity that is almost instantaneous … there’s a scene [in Persona] where Bibi Anderson hides some glass and is waiting for Liv Ullman’s character to step on it…and that is a brilliant example of the subjectivity of seeing it through Bibi Anderson’s eyes and also being able to feel for Liv Ullman and see it unfold.’
The illustration by Oivind Hovland for the Richard Ayoade piece by is inspired. The drawing of Mila Kunis by Bec Winnel is striking and Sam Dunn’s impression of Daniel Radcliffe is appropriately schizophrenic but otherwise the artwork varies enormously.
But the layout has me baffled. It smacks of padding to get beyond the 200 page mark. Each entry starts on the right hand page with a full page ‘movie ticket’ with the subject’s name, which is followed overleaf by a full page illustration, then the answer to the question ‘What do you love about movies?’ in a huge font. On the next page there’s a potted biography, usually hagiographic. The effect of this spacing is disjointed. These four pages would be better with one turn rather than two. Even better - condense the four into two pages by reducing the text size with the illustration opposite.
I think I have spent far too much time on this review and used too many words...
The premise is simple. At the end of their interview, subjects of the British review magazine Little White Lies are asked ‘What do you love about movies?’ no doubt adding to the richness of the exchange. This collection, however, consists entirely of responses to this one question, so the whole becomes limited and repetitious; ‘movies take you to another place…’ or ‘movies take us out of ourselves’.
In fairness, there are some thoughtful insights: Francis Ford Coppola talks of movies as ‘the most diverse and complete art form that I know of- that uses everything: uses music, uses emotion, uses image, uses writing and structure…a divine collection of all human aspiration and art forms.’
My favourite observation comes from Richard Ayoade: ‘…you can register a change in thought in a face contemporaneously with other people’s ability to take in that information. It actually allows you a level of objectivity that is almost instantaneous … there’s a scene [in Persona] where Bibi Anderson hides some glass and is waiting for Liv Ullman’s character to step on it…and that is a brilliant example of the subjectivity of seeing it through Bibi Anderson’s eyes and also being able to feel for Liv Ullman and see it unfold.’
The illustration by Oivind Hovland for the Richard Ayoade piece by is inspired. The drawing of Mila Kunis by Bec Winnel is striking and Sam Dunn’s impression of Daniel Radcliffe is appropriately schizophrenic but otherwise the artwork varies enormously.
But the layout has me baffled. It smacks of padding to get beyond the 200 page mark. Each entry starts on the right hand page with a full page ‘movie ticket’ with the subject’s name, which is followed overleaf by a full page illustration, then the answer to the question ‘What do you love about movies?’ in a huge font. On the next page there’s a potted biography, usually hagiographic. The effect of this spacing is disjointed. These four pages would be better with one turn rather than two. Even better - condense the four into two pages by reducing the text size with the illustration opposite.
I think I have spent far too much time on this review and used too many words...
July 9, 2021
Good coffee table stuff here - I can see why they started with Coppola quote, it’s a stunner and 100% correct.
December 28, 2025
beautiful editing and design. charming idea. maybe expected some more content but it was enjoyable.
December 13, 2015
What I Love about Movies is a good little book; it's very well illustrated, and features a choice of film industry insiders that will please both regular movie-goers and film aficionados.
Nonetheless, don't wish for too much. Following Jenkins' strong introduction (in which he gives his own answer – one which was written and prepared) are the answers of 50 people who were all speaking on-the-spot. It is not, to put it concisely, 50 essays or 50 written reflections; it's 50 answers of a question from an interview. These are accompanied by career capsules which provide good overviews of the artists' careers (as of late 2014).
Nonetheless, don't wish for too much. Following Jenkins' strong introduction (in which he gives his own answer – one which was written and prepared) are the answers of 50 people who were all speaking on-the-spot. It is not, to put it concisely, 50 essays or 50 written reflections; it's 50 answers of a question from an interview. These are accompanied by career capsules which provide good overviews of the artists' careers (as of late 2014).
April 14, 2015
Wonderfully illustrated book with short, off-the-cuff opinions from an assortment of film related people--actors, directors for the most part--followed by capsules that review high points in their careers. For me, the best part of this was the illustrations & the quotes by the people--the career capsules were less interesting.
January 8, 2015
Charming.
November 27, 2016
disappointed. Some quotes plus very superficial analysis... Well illustrated though.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews