This is a comprehensive introduction to post-classical American film. Covering American cinema since 1960, the text looks at both Hollywood and non-mainstream cinema.

A comprehensive overview of the film industry in Hollywood today, Contemporary Hollywood Cinema brings together leading international cinema scholars to explore the technology, institutions, film makers and movies of contemporary American film making.

When teenagers began hanging out at the mall in the early 1980s, the movies followed. Multiplex theaters offered teens a wide array of perspectives on the coming-of-age experience, as well as an escape into the alternative worlds of science fiction and horror. Youth films remained a popular and profitable genre through the 1990s, offering teens a place to reflect on their evolving identities from adolescence to adulthood while simultaneously shaping and maintaining those identities. Drawing examples from hundreds of popular and lesser-known youth-themed films, Timothy Shary here offers a comprehensive examination of the representation of teenagers in American cinema in the 1980s and 1990s. He focuses on five subgenres—school, delinquency, horror, science, and romance/sexuality—to explore how they represent teens and their concerns, how these representations change over time, and how youth movies both mirror and shape societal expectations and fears about teen identities and roles. He concludes that while some teen films continue to exploit various notions of youth sexuality and violence, most teen films of the past generation have shown an increasing diversity of adolescent experiences and have been sympathetic to the particular challenges that teens face.

Contemporary U.S. Cinema is a forceful exploration of the tumultuous changes that have dominated the shifting landscape of American film-making over the past three decades. From the explosive release of Easy Rider to the excesses of Heaven's Gate and the comic book figures of Spider-Man, its aim is to examine the economic, social and cultural contexts of mainstream and independent American films. The book divides into nine provocative chapters with material on: the most significant individual film-makers, such as Scorsese, Coppola and Lucas, as well as independent film-makers like Jarmusch and Anders the careers of leading actors of the last thirty years, such as Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford and Julia Roberts, whilst exploring the powerful position of the film star in the modern American film-making process the economics of Contemporary U.S. Cinema with particular reference to the tortuous journey from production, distribution and exhibition of Waterworld and Titanic the artistic influence of foreign film-makers, such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, and explores Hollywood's increasing dominance and reliance on the global market genres, sequels and the recent developments in computer-based technologies, using examples from The Godfather I - III, The Matrix, the Star Wars saga and remakes from Shaft to Ocean's Eleven The book is illustrated with stills throughout and includes a bibliography and annotated further reading list.

Film and television scholars as well as readers interested in gender and sexuality in film will appreciate this timely collection.

This anthology addresses the salient aesthetic, ideological and economic determinants of independent American cinema over the past three decades.

A lively and engaging study of on-screen and off-screen performances of masculinity, focusing on well-known male actors in American film and popular culture in the 1990s and 2000s. Peberdy examines specific social, cultural, historical and political contexts that have affected age, race, sexuality and fatherhood on screen.