As you begin
putting your own film review together, here’s a quick recap of the film
elements that must be included in the review and those that are optional. You
should probably cover a few from the optional list, but those choices will
depend on the type of film,
subject matter, etc.
“Have tos”
for film reviews:
Actors/acting – you must at least name the top-billed
actors. You can do so the easy way, by putting the actor’s name in parentheses
after the character’s name, or you can name the person in the main part of the
sentence (as we noted with the “Hoff” in one of the reviews today). If you’re dealing with veteran actors,
you should make some type of connection to their previous work, especially if
there’s something thematically similar in the actor’s current project and a
previous project. If it’s an “up-and-coming” actor, highlight that. If it’s someone who’s playing a part
that’s very unusual for them (say Sean Connery suddenly starred in a romantic
drama), highlight this. You can talk about the quality of the performance (is
it highly nuanced, emotionally moving, realistic? Is it hollow, empty, stilted,
unrealistic?) I can’t urge you enough to read a number of reviews to get a
sense of the various ways you can develop these “have to” elements.
Plot
synopsis – yes, we need a
summary of the basic plot. Lots of reviewers combine this with their naming of
the actors (as in, “Julia (Drew Barrymore) meets the lovelorn, now cynical wedding singer Robbie Hart (Adam
Sandler)
just as her
rich but excessively shallow boyfriend Glenn (Matthew Glave) finally proposes”).
We do not need a play by play of everything that happens, a breakdown of
multiple scenes, etc. People who read reviews don’t want these kind of nuanced
details – they’ll go see the film for those, and most of us prefer some kind of
surprise when we see a film. If your film has a particularly complex or
confusing plot, your summary might need to be more detailed (Inception,
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Signs, Vanilla Sky come to mind).
Something like Piranha 3DD? Not so much, as we saw today. Killer fish find an
(unlikely) way in and eat a bunch of hot coeds. That’s pretty much what
happens, give or take several clichéd, poorly developed relationships and plot
arcs. Plot arcs, as opposed to arc, indicate subplots. This simply means that
the film is dealing with multiple storylines. The usual framework for this is
one main story arc, one or two subplots, sometimes more. Even movies very
typical for their genre, pretty straightforward, have subplots. Disaster movie The
Day After Tomorrow depicts, aside from its main plot that involves college
kids trying to navigate/avoid a terrible storm and subsequent tsunami, a love
story (of course), a mild critique of U.S./Mexico relations and bureaucratic
negligence as well as a three-man friendship put to the test.
Director – we covered this a lot in class already.
Remember that you need to address this role, even if it’s a bare minimum. Just
as with the actors, if there’s something different/unique/particularly
interesting about this director doing this film (whatever that may be), it’s
probably worth developing. A few examples:
Critic Ann Hornaday for Movies on Dark Shadows: “ Tim Burton's
retread of the 1970s daytime goth-opera - starring Johnny Depp as original
sexy-vamp Barnabas Collins - does exactly what the Depp-inspired comedy
"21 Jump Street" so cleverly critiqued, lazily recycling old TV shows
and hoping no one will notice. . . . But Burton winds up driving such piquant anachronisms
into the ground with a constant barrage of jokes featuring Barnabas interfacing
with 1970s culture, from a troll doll and a lava lamp to Karen Carpenter and
Alice Cooper (who shows up in a truly nonsensical cameo). There's little by way
of a story in "Dark Shadows," which instead works as a glib, if
attractively atmospheric, collage of winks and references.”
Critic Mark
Savlov for The Houston Chronicle on American Reunion: “Thirteen years
after the Weitz brothers forever defiled the great American apple pie with
sexual innuendo and jump-started the joys of cam sex for a generation, this
fourth film in American series (not
counting four direct-to-DVD spin-offs) proves to be, quite honestly, the best
of the lot thus far. . . .Suffice it to say directors Hurwitz and Schlossberg,
the comic minds behind theHarold &
Kumar films, have
returned this group of hormonally charged ex-teens to the Weitzes’ original
vision of sweet-natured raunch via a class of ’99 reunion storyline.”
Critic Mark Olsen for The LA Times on The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence):
“Now, with "The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)"
Dutch writer and director Tom Six has something to live up to, expectations to
fulfill, subvert or just let down. He has apparently decided to do all of those
things, all at once, prankishly raising a middle finger to those who liked his
first film and then jabbing it directly into the eye of anyone still looking. .
. . Rather than the comparatively elegant restraint of the first film, here Six
graphically overdoes everything, the intentional opposite of what came before. . . . One can suppose Six sees himself as some
sort of low-budget shock-exploitation parallel of Danish filmmaker Lars von
Trier, a self-conscious showman-provocateur who knows full well when he is
playing with fire. Yet with none of von Trier's formal mastery or moral rigor,
the best Six can muster is to turn the tables on the thirst for extreme outrage
among horror fans. With this punkish response film, Six has in essence backed
himself into a rhetorical corner, leaving as perhaps the only option for his
next stunt something in which the filmmaker Tom Six winds up with his mouth
surgically attached to his . . . .”
***Don’t watch this movie. Seriously. That
said, this is a good example of a review that hinges on criticism of the
director and how his vision plays out.
Thesis-like/summative statement: This is really important for a number of
reasons. First, it’s simply good practice. Being able to summarize a piece of
writing in a few sentences, and doing it well,
is going to be a skill you’ll value as you move forward. Secondly, readers
won’t “take away” everything you say but will
take away a general impression – give them that in this statement. It also
reinforces what you’ve “shown” throughout your review. Such a statement can
work as a transition when it’s the first sentence of a new paragraph. This can
be the lead (if it’s interesting enough) or the conclusion (using a summative
statement as a conclusion is very different than leaving the summary itself for
the conclusion). Here are a few samples:
Critic Stephanie Zacharek from Movieline on The Dictator: “The Dictator,
for all its liberal leanings, doesn’t let anyone off the hook, not even
well-intentioned liberals. Cohen comes right out and says things that most of
us, in polite conversation, wouldn’t dare. He knows it's the impolite
conversation that really gets things moving.”
Critic Roger Ebert for rogerebert.com on Prometheus:
Ridley
Scott's "Prometheus" is a magnificent
science-fiction film, all the more intriguing because it raises questions about
the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers. . . . I'm a pushover for
material like this; it's a seamless blend of story, special effects and
pitch-perfect casting, filmed in sane, effective 3-D that doesn't distract.”
Critic Leslie
Felperin for Variety on Piranha 3DD: “Few
titles are more elegantly self-explanatory than "Piranha 3DD": It's
got killer fish, stereoscopy and boobs aplenty. Less tongue-in-cheek than its
2010 predecessor and more tongue-hanging-out-drooling, this latest iteration of
the predatory piscine franchise, helmed by "Project Greenlight"
protege John Gulager, ups the self-parody so much that it's practically a
Wayans Brothers spoof, albeit with fewer jokes.”
Richard
Corliss for Time on The Invisible War (in limited release): “That is the first act of overdue reparation
to the valiant victims who risked their lives for a military that did
everything possible to rob them of their honor. Repressing its rage to tell an
important story, The
Invisible War identifies soldiers who are
true heroes because they dared to fight for justice.
