Books by Kristin Thompson

'Defamiliarizes' the reader with eleven different films. This book argues that critics often use cut-and-dried methods and choose films that easily fit those methods. It also argues that neoformalism, on the other hand, encourages the critic to deal with each film differently and to modify his or her analytical assumptions continually.

Derided as simple, dismissed as inferior to film, characterized as a vast wasteland, television nonetheless exerts an undeniable, apparently inescapable power. The secret of television's success may lie in the narrative complexities underlying its seeming simplicity, complexities the author unmasks in her analysis here.

Drawing on a wide range of films from the 1920s to the 1990s-from Keaton's Our Hospitality to Casablanca to Terminator 2, Kristin Thompson offers the first in-depth analysis of Hollywood's storytelling techniques and how they are used to make complex, easily comprehensible, entertaining films.