The book is poorly written, lazily put together, and most likely not researched at all. This is the type of book that you can see being written in one long stretch. Nothing new is learned from this book other than to never read anything from Chris Stuckmann again.
This is not a book for film buffs. This is a book for people who know nothing about film. So basically, aliens.
NOTE: I wrote this review years ago and then forgot about it. It wasn't until I was going through all the drafts I have in Blogger that I found this review. Everything here is what I thought when it was written eight or so years ago. I still feel this way on many of the points and not so much on others. I have not changed anything as I am not a fan of revisionism. I am not George Lucas or James Cameron or Peter Jackson Wong Kar-Wai.
The Film Buff’s Bucket List
Should also be known as The 50 Films That I Know Will Sell This Book
Author: Chris Stuckmann
Every time that I walk into a bookstore, I always check out the section where they keep the film books. I am always on the lookout for new books to expand my knowledge on the subject. I don’t always pick a winner (I recently read Father of the Blob by Jack Harris which was ok, but not the book I was hoping for it to be), but when I do, I will talk about that book for a long time. The Film Buff’s Bucket List will not be one that I talk about a lot as I would like to forget that it even exists.
The book was written by Chris Stuckmann, who is a film
reviewer on YouTube. I happened to cross his channel one day a few years ago
and decided to take a look and see what he says. The man is a pretty decent
reviewer who loves film (to an extent) and loves to talk about film.
Hell, the guy will even disagree with the norm every once in awhile, like when
he gave The Amazing Spider-Man 2 a passing grade (the film is hated upon in
many circles).
Stuckmann also takes on bad films with his Hilariocity
Reviews, where he mocks a famously known bad film. He has tackled everything
from Jaws: The Revenge to The Room. His riffs are a little bit rough and the
films he covers have usually been done to death by the time he gets to them,
but there are some gems to be found.
Stuckmann also has a few videos where he talks his love for
Anime, Blockbuster Video, and a few other things that a kid of the 90’s would
obsess over. His review of Cowboy Bebop made me go out and buy the blu-ray set.
So, I find his book at my local Barnes & Noble and
decide that this is going to be the next book that I read. I plopped down the
$15 and head home. Later that night, right before I go to bed, I decide that I
am going to read the first chapter. I make it through the dedication, quotes
praising Stuckmann (which are usually on the back cover of a book, but
whatever), and the foreword by Scott Mantz who is a film critic for Access
Hollywood. Mantz’s foreword is mostly about himself, with a paragraph or so
left to talk about his “favorite film critic”.
Next up is Stuckmann’s introduction to the book. He talks
about the viewing of Signs in the theater that made him fall in love with film.
He then goes on to talk about (briefly) two feature films he made, along with
the creation (and dissolving) film website. He finishes up by talking about his
YouTube channel.
Now we are into the meat of the book. The book covers 50
films that were released from 2000-2015. The book is divided up into four
sections (2000-2003, 2004-2007, 2008-2011, and finally 2012-2015) and in these
sections is where we find our film reviews and the single biggest problem I
have with the book.
Before I get to the problem, I want to talk about the
reviews themselves.
There are three to four reviews per year and they range from
being a full page to being three small paragraphs. Yes, that is right. THREE
SMALL PARAGRAPHS. Stuckmann will talk at
length about a film like Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, but will
barely talk about a film like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a film that should be talked
about more because it isn’t nearly as well-known as The Lord of the Rings. He
does this numerous times in the book and I wonder why. Did he not like these
films as much as the others? Why include them in the book then? As I kept reading, I came across some inaccuracies and weird
“opinions” that I had to share:
1.
He doesn’t believe that Pixar made good film
between Toy Story and The Incredibles.So, he is saying that from 1995 to 2004,
Pixar was turning out garbage until they hired Brad Bird to come up with The
Incredibles. A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., and Finding Nemo were
not better than Toy Story? Maybe. But there are a lot of people out there who would beg to differ.
2.
In his review for Minority Report, he refers to
the pre-cogs as “3 twins”? Really? Sure, there are three pre-cogs, but not “3
twins”. Does he mean three sets of twins? If so, then there would be six people
in the pool and, last time I checked, there were not six people in that pool.
In reality, there were three people: a set of twins called “The Twins” and
Agatha, named after famous mystery author Agatha Christie. Since this is a
mystery film, the name fits. Anybody who knows anything about anything knows
that “3 twins” would be triplets.
3. In his
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon review, he talks about how “Films spoken
entirely in Mandarin Chinese simply didn’t gross over $100 million in America”.
While this statement is technically true, it is an oddly specific statement. Sure,
Mandarin Chinese films didn’t gross $100 million at the box office because no
foreign film before or since has, but neither have any Cantonese spoken films. It is very odd he would single out Mandarin. Does he not know about Cantonese? Maybe. Crouching Tiger was the first film to cross
that barrier and has stayed on top since. One could make an argument that The
Passion of the Christ, a film that was shot in Aramaic, Latin, and Hebrew, but
funded by an American company while the lead was played by an American, takes
the honors away from Crouching Tiger. Every list that I have seen doesn’t
include The Passion on it.
4. Says that 2014’s Snowpiercer “feels like a
foreign film”. That is because it is. The film was funded by a South Korean
company and co-written and directed by a South Korean filmmaker, Bong Joon Ho.
Sure, it stars Americans, British, and South Korean actors, but this film is
very much a South Korean film, which would make it a foreign film to us
Americans.
5. States that Die Hard is a “recent” film. I had
to read this a few times. Die Hard, the one that stars Bruce Willis, which
takes place inside of a skyscraper, is a recent film? Did we time travel to the
late 80’s and I just don’t know about it? If we did, I would be writing this on
a typewriter and I was never very good at typewriters. I will play devil’s
advocate and say that he was referring to the more recent Die Hard films,
2007’s Live Free or Die Hard and/or 2013’s A Good Day to Die Hard, but I am not
one for play devil’s advocate very much.
6. At the end of the book, he thanks some people.
He thanks Scott Mantz, Andy Signore, and Jeremy Jahns. These three people are
the ones that gave him quotes to put on the book and Mantz even wrote the
introduction to the book. You know who he doesn’t thank? His wife, his parents,
her parents, etc. The people closest to him do not get any thanks whatsoever.
His wife gets the old “He live with his wife” BS, but he never thanks her or
anyone else besides the three men I mentioned earlier. Do know what would
happen if I didn’t thank my wife in ANY form? I would be in the doghouse for a
very long time. I know for a fact that Stuckmann did not get to where he is
today on his own. He was helped by a lot of people. Maybe he had falling outs
with some of them, so he may not want to thank them, but not thanking his wife?
Fuck you.
So, this is the part of the review where I talk about the
biggest problem I have with this book. The problem is very simple: WHO IS THIS
BOOK FOR?
Is the book for film fans? If so, then Stuckmann should have
picked more obscure films, which he wouldn’t have because he is all about
choosing the popular films. Almost all of the films in this book are films that
most film fans have seen. Out of the 50 films covered, I have seen 49 of them.
The only film that I haven’t seen is Caché (Hidden). I am not a big fan of the
director, so I don’t really have any desire to see the film. But still,
Stuckmann claims to be a film fan, yet picks the easiest targets. Why not cover
Spider-man 3 instead of Spider-man 2, which is the most loved in the series? Or
make a case for films that have a higher chance of people not seeing.
So, if the book isn’t for film fans, then it must be for the
casual filmgoer, right? It could be, but, outside of a handful of films, most
casual filmgoers have seen most of the films in this book. These are big films that got big pushes from
the studios that released them. I could see if they were smaller films, but the
smaller films he covers are still more mainstream and known than other films
not covered.
Ok. Is there a third group that this book could be for? Yes.
Stuckmann himself. If you have ever watched any of his videos, you will know
that Stuckmann is really stuck up. (His name makes sense now). He has this air
about him that comes off as “I am better than the people watching my channel”.
It was one of the reasons that I stopped watching his reviews. I felt like I
was being talked down to. If I am going to watch a review, I want the person to
at least act like they are on the same level with me. The thing about is,
Stuckmann doesn’t know that much about film. He knows the basics, but he
doesn’t have the history aspect down at all. To him, films didn’t begin until
sometime in the 70’s. Just look at the reviews that he posts. They are mostly
films that came out in the last twenty years. Sure, he dips his toe in the 70’s
and 80’s water, but not very much.
I believe that he wrote this book to inflate his own ego. We
all have ego trips sometimes, but Stuckmann seems to be stuck in them (that one
was a better pun). He has shown off his “man cave” (I hate that term so much
that I have all but banned it from my household.) more than once, which is
standard for someone on YouTube. Hell, there are whole channels dedicated to
showing off stuff that people bought. It is not that he is proud about what he
has, most people are. It is the stuff that he says while he is showing off his
recent wares. He was showing off a TV that was given to him by LG or some of
other company. As he was talking the TV up (probably because he had to in order
to keep the TV), he says that the DNR feature on the TV is “amazing” and that
he “can finally watch blu-rays as they were intended to be seen, with no
grain”. This is a stupid statement if he was a film buff as he claims to be.
Film grain is inherent to almost any film shot on actual film. There are films
that have no grain, but they were processed that way. Any “film buff” will want
to see the film as it was intended to be see, grain and all.
Stuckmann has written a book for himself and has the gall to
charge people to read it. There is not much information here that you can’t
find elsewhere and the reviews are poorly written. I know that I am not the
best writer in the world, but I do try and with everything that I write, I do
get better. Stuckmann’s writing feels like that of a high school student who
doesn’t really care all that much.
OVERALL
The Film Buff’s Bucket List is a terrible book. It is so bad
that I took it back to Barnes & Noble and got my money back. When the girl
asked why, I told her it was one of the worst film books I had ever read. She
apologized (Stuckmann should be doing that) and gave me my money back. The book
is poorly written by a guy who has to keep convincing himself that he loves
film. The choices of the films for inclusion here are laughable (not in the way
that you are thinking.) and that there is no audience outside of his YouTube
channel audience. I have read many bad film books in my day, but this one is
one of the worst. I read to learn (or be entertained) and I got nothing out of
this book. The Film Buff’s Bucket List belongs in the bargain bin at a
Salvation Army second hand store, but that is an insult to the Salvation Army.
They should bury this book like they did with the E.T. Atari game back in the
80’s, only this time don’t go looking for it.
 Bucket List aka What Happens When A Terrible YouTube Movie Reviewer Writes A Book.){kind=link}
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