Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week: 52 Classic Films for One Full Year

Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week is a gem of a movie guide: a whole year of guaranteed good rentals. Bogdanovich takes the reader all the way through the calendar, recommending and commenting on a worthy film every week. (Not to worry if you're reading this mid-year; while the book is divided up by date, starting with January 1-7 as Week One, it's not year-specific, so feel free to jump in wherever you are and cycle back around.) Some weeks are themed for the time of year--the movie for December 19-25 is Holiday--but most just feature darn good movies that would be a pleasure to watch any time, with choices ranging from George Cukor to John Cassavetes. Each movie is followed helpfully by additional titles to rent, organized by genre and director-star combinations, and occasionally cross-referenced with other titles in the book.

The essays are a joy to read because Bogdanovich's deep love of movies and moviemaking shines through on every page. Far from dry film commentary, he clearly wants you to enjoy the movies just as much as he does. It's like having your best friend tell you about his favorite flicks. And an incredibly well-connected friend at that; Bogdanovich is an accomplished director in his own right (his credits include Paper Moon and The Last Picture Show), and he understands the process of getting script to screen inside and out. He also knows his film lore and includes entertaining anecdotes about the selected films (the opening night audience of The Rules of the Game hated it so much that they pulled out their chairs and hurled them at the screen), and is actually able to start sentences with phrases like, "When I asked Hitchcock about this sequence...." With all this going for it, Movie of the Week is a terrific collection of rental recommendations and a truly addictive read. --Ali Davis