Library Research Guides: CINEMA & MEDIA STUDIES: Find News & Reviews

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Individual U.S. Papers

To find earlier issues of these newspapers, see under Historical Newspapers on this guide.

New York Times, 1980-present This link opens in a new window
Global Newsstream provides current coverage, but only news and editorial content in HTML format.
Boston Globe, 1980-present This link opens in a new window
Searchable full-text of this newspaper
Los Angeles Times, 1996-present This link opens in a new window
The West Coast's major newspaper. More recent coverage is only news and editorial content.
Washington Post, 1996-present This link opens in a new window
News and editorial content in text format only.

Individual U.S. Magazines

Nation Archive This link opens in a new window
Liberal, national weekly journal covering foreign affairs, local and national politics, education, law, literature, and the arts, from 1865 to present. When searching for a film title or director, change "Select a Field" to "TX All Text" next to the search box.

The New Yorker Magazine
Search the archives back to 1925

Industry Publications

Related Guides

News
by Wellesley College Research & Instruction Staff Last Updated Mar 26, 2024 135 views this year

Search multiple sources at once

Some of these sources contain the full text of reviews; others provide citation information with a FindIt@Wellesley link for requesting the full text through Interlibrary Loan.

See Historical Newspapers and Magazines on this guide for more options for searching pre-1990s sources.

Tip: If your film has a name that could bring up many unrelated results (e.g., Enchanted, Something New), add the director's last name to your search.

SuperSearch
To find news & reviews from the time the film was released: Search for your film by title and limit the publication dates to the years immediately surrounding its release. SuperSearch enables you to search a lot of what the Library has in one easy-to-use interface, but it is not complete. To search with more focus, precision, and depth, try one of the individual databases suggested on this page.

Global Newsstream This link opens in a new window
Find news & reviews from major U.S. and international news sources from the 1980s on. Use the "Document type" filter to limit to reviews.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Find news & reviews from major U.S. & international news sources from the 1980s on.
Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Use the filtering options to limit your results to reviews. Includes film magazines and industry publications.
OpinionArchives This link opens in a new window
Cross-searchable full-text archives of many news and cultural commentary magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, Commentary, Commonweal, Dissent, Moment, and the New York Review of Books.
Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new window
An interdisciplinary, bilingual (English and Spanish), full text database of newspapers, magazines, and journals from ethnic, minority and native presses, 1960 to present.
LGBTQ+ Source This link opens in a new window
Good source for reviews of LGBT-themed and -directed films, from the LGBT press.
Westlaw Campus Research This link opens in a new window
U.S. and foreign newspapers, 1980s to present (dates of coverage vary).

PRINT SOURCES
Film Review Annual
Print volume covers reviews from 1982 - 2002. Note: To find reviews of a film published in the year it was released, consult the volume from the year after (e.g., reviews of Pretty in Pink, which came out in 1986, are compiled in the 1987 volume).
Film Review Index
Print volumes with citations for reviews from 1882 - 1985. No full text.

Historical Newspapers & Magazines

Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Search for historical articles in a full-text replicas of major American and British newspapers, including graphics and ads. Comprised of the following titles, which can also be searched individually: Boston Globe, 1872-1989; Chicago Defender, 1909-1975; Chicago Tribune, 1849-1997; Guardian and the Observer (UK), 1791-2003; Los Angeles Times, 1881-1996; New York Amsterdam News, 1922-1993; New York Times, 1851-2016; and Washington Post, 1877-2003.
Nation Archive This link opens in a new window
Liberal, national weekly journal covering foreign affairs, local and national politics, education, law, literature, and the arts, from 1865 to present. When searching for a film title or director, change "Select a Field" to "TX All Text" next to the search box.

The New Yorker Magazine
Search the archives back to 1925

Periodicals Index Online (PIO) This link opens in a new window
Index to articles from periodicals, 1665-1995. Includes film magazines and British periodicals.
Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window
Articles in US & Canadian popular magazines, 1890 to 1982.
America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Searchable full-text of more than 1,000 historical U.S. newspapers. The core of this database is Early American Newspapers, 1690-1922, searchable along with African American Newspapers, 1827-1998, and Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection, 1799-1971.

AFRICAN AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS
AFRO Archives
search the The Afro-American, the National Afro-American Ledger, the Baltimore Afro-American, and the Washington Afro-American, covering 1902-2003 in total.

Chicago Defender, 1909-1975 This link opens in a new window
African American newspaper
African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window
content still being added (a work in progress)
New York Amsterdam News, 1922-1993 This link opens in a new window
African American newspaper

INTERNATIONAL NEWSPAPERS

Guardian and the Observer (UK), 1791-2003 This link opens in a new window
Digitized full-text of the British newspaper The Guardian (1821–2003) and its sister paper, The Observer (1791–2003).
Times Digital Archive, 1765-2010 This link opens in a new window
Times of London, 1785-2006
African Newspapers, 1800-1922 This link opens in a new window
More than 40 fully searchable English- and foreign-language African newspapers published in the 19th and early 20th centuries.