Excellent.

... comprehensive.

Keaton fans have often complained that nearly all biographies of him suffer from a questionable slant or a cursory treatment of key events. With Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life—at more than 800 pages dense with research and facts—Mr. Curtis rectifies that situation, and how. He digs deep into Keaton’s process and shows how something like the brilliant two-reeler Cops went from a storyline conceived from necessity—construction on the movie lot encouraged shooting outdoors—to a masterpiece.

Fans of Keaton, as well as classic cinema, will be delighted to read James Curtis’s new book.

Curtis’s book is much less essayistic, and more traditional [than Dana Stevens's new book about Keaton].

... exhaustively detailed and as dry as circus sawdust.

... definitive.

... a gift to movie lovers. It’s a gorgeously formatted and produced volume, both precise and exhaustive in tracing the life and creative pursuits of the brilliant comic artist and sometime film director who reached his apogee in the 1920s. It’s perfect for a leisurely read or a stint of index-dipping into the performer’s long life and career.

Though there are few living who knew Keaton, Curtis has made deft use of alternative sources already published or circulating. In lesser hands, this might result in a book that treads little new ground, but Curtis breathes new life into the classic comic, exploring the richer context of Keaton’s entire career rather than merely hitting the highlights. Although ultimately celebrating Keaton, Curtis also explores, with admirable evenhandedness, the performer’s private struggles with depression, adultery, and alcoholism. Curtis does commendable work with the frustratingly necessary job of movie scene descriptions—a particularly daunting task with silent films, where one runs the risk of either bogging down the reader with superfluous detail or overlooking the qualities that endear Keaton to us in the present day.

... Curtis doesn't write inconsequential profiles, he writes definitive biographies.

... [an] overstuffed book, which belongs in any film fan’s library for providing a close look at the silent era and all of Keaton’s efforts, whether big or small, triumph or failure..

...beautifully written.

Curtis is clearly an admirer of Keaton, but he doesn’t view his subject through rose-colored glasses: he discusses and puts into context Keaton’s battles with alcoholism and mental illness, his rocky marriage, and the devastating impact of poor reviews on some of Keaton’s most personal projects. A valuable addition to the literature of film history..

Buster Keaton...emerges as a great auteur and a martyr to Hollywood in this vibrant biography.

... a comprehensive, warmly sympathetic life iconic entertainer Joseph Frank 'Buster' Keaton.