DECADE
MAGAZINE FILM REVIEW CONVENTIONS
Me, Earl And The Dying Girl (2015)
Reviewd by Ian Freer for Empire Magazine (online) Oct 2015
The start of the review shows a very brief overview of the films plot. They included the main characters names followed by the last name of the actor who played that character. There is also an five star rating given to the film before the reviewer goes into detail about the film. By having this rating before the in depth review it shows the reader the tone of the review.
By deconstructing an online feature film review it allows us to look in depth at the language the writer used to communicate his opinion on the film to a wider audience. By looking at the writers tone and details about the film that were added into the review; we are able to incorporate these aspects into our own magazine review.
Kysan Bancroft 8028
The reviewer starts of the main part of the review by mentioning some quick details on the film, for example giving some information about how it won a prestigious Sundance award. The review also mentions that the film was based on a young adult novel written by the director. The reviewer praises the film on being able to balance the emotional and comedic elements from the novel into the film. The review also notes that the film didn’t have great success in the box office in America and hopefully will have more success in the UK.
The review goes on to add further detail about the films plot without giving too much away. The review remains positive about the films and how it incorporated film making within the story. The reviewer adds that the relationships between the characters also strengthen the film.
The final paragraph of the review tells the audience that the director was able to communicate a genuine friendship among the characters even though there is a sense of sadness throughout the film as one of the characters is dying.
The final line of the review shows a few adjectives that the reviewer would use to describe the film and how it may make the audience feel while watching it. Overall the journalist remains very positive about the film throughout the review as he praises the directing skills and the writing.
Social media Reviews
Social media is rapidly growing and everyone in this day and age are on facebook, twitter, instagram and this is how people are finding out quick and easy information about anything they want to know . With this power that social media holds it can destroy a film as it is a way that films are advertised and with one negative opinion it can destroy the reputation of the film.
In the case of the movie Salt , it had a good cast starring Angleina Jolie and Liev Schriber, this built on the movie reputation on social media as they had a huge fan base.
However through the Youtube review video it was a mixture of positive and negative opinions as the movie was compared to other movies such as Inception, which could stop someone from viewing the movie particularly if they didn't enjoy Inception. Positve feedback came from the video as he included that the movie lived up to his expectations of the movie.
However with short films there were no reviews to be found on short films, this is because it's a short film which targets a niche audience. When people view short films they have there own opinion on the short film as the message is not as straight forward as feauture length films. This is why when an audience goes to see a feature length film they are able to have a big disussion on the film as it is not hard to understand.
By deconstucting film magazines it helped with creating our film review as we learnt through our reseach the main features that make a film review which we knew was a neccessity to include in our film review.
Tracy Kimani 8108