Film and Media Studies: Film + TV Reviews

Performing Arts Periodicals Database 

• Articles and reviews from a broad spectrum of the arts and entertainment industry in dance, film, and theater. NOTE: limit by document type and select "film review" from drop down list. Not good for TV reviews.

Art Source  

• Indexes articles on film as well as art, 1929-current. NOTE: limit search by document type and select "film review." Not good for TV reviews.

International Film Archive Database (FIAF)  

• Best for film reviews. Scroll down to document type and choose "review" from drop down list.

Nexis Uni Reviews  

• Useful for locating television reviews.

Los Angeles Times, 1985-present  

• Search for articles in recent editions of the LA Times.

New York Times, 1980-present  

• Search for articles in recent editions of the New York Times.

Ethnic Newswatch  

• Articles from newspapers and periodicals published by the ethnic, minority, and native press in America.

Movie Reviews Query Engine 

• One of the largest film reviews sources on the Web, the MRQE claims reviews of over 28,000 titles. Critic reviews are mixed with user reviews so make sure to check your source!

The Daily Variety Archives contain almost every issue Variety has ever published — that's every page, including articles and ads, front pages and back covers. Each page is a watermarked PDF file. Variety began as a weekly publication December 16, 1905. Currently, the archives begin March 18, 1906. The archive is currently missing: March 29, 1932-June 14, 1932. The archive contain every issue of Daily Variety, which began publication September 6, 1933. An excellent source when trying to find older film reviews!

Los Angeles Times Historical, 1881-1986 

Search for historical Los Angeles Times articles.

New York Times Historical, 1851-2004 

Search for historical New York Times articles.

(London) Times Digital Archive, 1785-1985 

The Times is the "world's newspaper of record" and covers all major international historical events from the French Revolution to the Falkland War. Search the full-text of the entire newspaper, including articles, editorials and advertisements.

Chicago Tribune (1849-1986) 

Provides coverage of early film censorship and ratings attempts in the city, a good midwest representative paper.

Art Index Retrospective 

Provides searchable indexing spanning 55 years of art journalism from 420 noted publications around the globe, reflecting coverage provided from 1929 through 1984.

1. Start by searching either the Los Angeles Times or New York Times news databases, linked above. Enter the title of the show or film in the first field, using quotes to search it as a phrase if 2 or more words. For example:

2. Scroll down to "more search options" and select the dropdown menu next to "document type" or after searching, limit results to "review". Sometimes this can include book reviews and other sources but you should bea ble to find movie reviews as well.

3. Find an article on your show and scroll down to the indexing box at the end of the article, click on the subject heading to find more specific articles on your show

*Hint if your show is not coming up, try inserting the TV/Film producer or writer in the second field

In addition to the database interface for the New York Times, UCI Libraries subscribes to nytimes.com access for all UCI faculty, staff, and students! Once you have registered at accessnyt.com, you will be able to access all nytimes.com content from anywhere, including film reviews. For support and instructions step-by-step, visit: https://guides.lib.uci.edu/news/NYTimes.