Movie Wars ― How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See

Movie Wars cogently explains how movies are packaged, distributed, and promoted, and how, at every stage of the process, the potential moviegoer is treated with contempt. Along the way, it exposes industry secrets, such as that Miramax often buys distribution rights to movies it then fails to distribute, thus ensuring that its competitors don't get them. And it shows, for the first time, why the corporate ownership of movie theaters defies antitrust laws and precedents stretching back over fifty years.
While the average American can usually find a book or record that has not been endorsed by the mainstream media, when it comes to movies, consumers are powerless against what Rosenbaum calls "the media-industrial complex." Using examples ranging from the New York Times's coverage of the Cannes film festival to the anticommercial practices of Orson Welles, from the American Film Institute to the major studios, and from Small Soldiers to Starship Troopers, Movie Wars details the workings of the powerful forces that are in the process of ruining our precious cinematic culture and heritage, and the counterforces that have begun to fight back.

Jonathan Rosenbaum is a film critic for the Chicago Reader.