THREE SOURCES OF INFORMATION FOR OUR TASK: WRITING A REVIEW OUT OF A EXQUISITE CORPSE

ENGLISH VII. PROF. SOL COLMENARES. UNIVERSIDAD DEL VALLE
LICENCIATURA EN LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS


I. What is a review?
A review is a critical evaluation of a text, event, object, or phenomenon. Reviews can consider books, articles, entire genres or fields of literature, architecture, art, fashion, restaurants, policies, exhibitions, performances, films, documentaries and many other forms.
Above all, a review makes an argument. The most important element of a review is that it is a commentary, not merely a summary. It allows you to enter into dialogue and discussion with the work's creator and with other audiences. You can offer agreement or disagreement and identify where you find the work exemplary or deficient in its knowledge, judgments, or organization. You should clearly state your opinion of the work in question, and that statement will probably resemble other types of academic writing, with a thesis statement, supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
Typically, reviews are brief. In newspapers and academic journals, they rarely exceed 1000 words, although you may encounter lengthier assignments and extended commentaries. In either case, reviews need to be succinct. While they vary in tone, subject, and style, they share some common features:
• First, a review gives the reader a concise summary of the content. This includes a relevant description of the topic as well as its overall perspective, argument, or purpose.
• Second, and more importantly, a review offers a critical assessment of the content. This involves your reactions to the work under review: what strikes you as noteworthy, whether or not it was effective or persuasive, and how it enhanced your understanding of the issues at hand.
• Finally, in addition to analyzing the work, a review often suggests whether or not the audience would appreciate it.
You may be accustomed to thinking of academic writing in terms of the arguments that it makes. But you might find it more difficult to consider the persuasive qualities of concerts, works of art, or television shows. Nevertheless, authors, composers, chefs, and artists want you to experience their creations in a particular way. What made the biologist study chimpanzees instead of gibbons in her study of primate behavior? Why did the actors in the campus production of Antigone dress in drag in lieu of togas? Why is the novel part of a trilogy? Why did the chef at the new Brazilian restaurant use rocquefort cheese for the pão de queijo? The answers to questions like these comprise the threads that weave the fabric of your review.
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/review.html

II. WRITING A FILM REVIEW
QUESTIONS YOU CAN THINK OF:
• What was your reaction when the movie was over? If it was powerfully positive or negative, that may be a good place to begin.
• What is the director trying to accomplish? It's different for each genre: thrillers, romance, drama, sci fi, etc. Does it work or not, and why? (Sometimes the idea is great but the mechanics are so bad that it has no power - see a list of the mechanics, below.)
• Are there social, cultural, political, religious issues that the director is drawing your attention to? How does she do it? Is it subtle, heavy handed, clever, compelling, annoying, etc.?
• It could be the narrative - a story so compelling that you're drawn into the world of the movie and lose all sense of place and time... or it's so boring that you can hear every squeak in every seat in the movie house.
• The characters may be so powerfully created that what happens to them becomes your primary concern... or they could be so two-dimensional or trite that if one dies, you don't even notice - or care. Are the characters appropriate for the genre? Do you have people in the year 3203 speaking like we do today with the same slang?
• Which of the actors should you highlight? What about their performances is particularly noteworthy or ragged? Can you tell if it's bad directing or just a bad actor (or vice versa?)
• How does the writer handle dialogue? Does it flow easily, sounding natural, or is it stale and trite making it impossible to get to know the characters.
• How does the lighting or set enhance or distract from the movie?
• If there are special effects, how well are they done and how well are they integrated into the movie? Or is it just a movie to show really cool special effects?
• All movies have to create some kind of tension leading to a climax and then a resolution. How does the director create or fail to create that tension? Is the ending anti-climactic — telegraphed well in advance? Were you surprised in a good or bad sense?
• Does the storyline hold together or does it feel that the director is using too many coincidences and tricks to hide what is really a flawed plot?
• How does this movie fit in the overall work of the director? Does he or she use common themes throughout or is every book a surprise — an exploration of an entirely new idea?
• How well does this movie either fit its genre or break new ground or rely on tired old clichés? What other movies can you compare the various elements to?
• Does the director's work remind you of other directors? Is that good or bad?
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/05/23/024355.php


III. Writing Reviews (Film)

There are no absolute simple formulas you can follow when writing a review, but there are a number of questions you should be asking.  Your readers will also be expecting that you will provide them with certain information.  When reviewing a film, it is a good idea to keep these questions in mind, to take notes (even in the dark), to see the film at least twice, rent it on video if you can, and then try to narrow your focus as much as possible.  Reviews are usually short, and while it's important to provide a broad overview, it is even more important to keep your reader's interest.
1.  Who directs, produces or writes the film?  Often the director, writer, actor, and/or producer are the same.  Is this important, and if so, why? Who are the main actors, the supporting actors? Do you want to focus on one well known actor, or on specific performances? It doesn't matter how inventive or creative you are in your writing, your reader will want to  know most, if not all, of this information within the first paragraph or two if it is not included as an introductory framework.

"While The Celebration  has received considerable critical acclaim--the film was awarded prizes for Best Foreign Language Film by both the New York Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association--its director, twenty-eight-year-old Thomas Vinterberg, will probably never receive any prizes for modesty."  (Richard Porton, from Cineaste)
     or . . .
 "What if everything we thought was real--these streets, this city, the year 1999--was merely a computer-generated program in our heads, a cyberdream of reality?  That, in short, is the premise of The Matrix, which appears to be set in the present--that is where its hero (Keanu Reeves), thinks he is--but it is actually set in 2199, when artificial-intelligence machines rule the world, and humans are merely the crops they grow to supply energy. (David Ansen, Newsweek)
or
"Fargo is meant as a return to their poor but honest roots. It's a terrific, twisted comedy, but these guys are tricky. Joel Coen, the elder brother (he's 41), is billed as the writer and director. Ethan, 38, is the writer and producer. Actually, they both direct. Forget their editor Roderick Jaynes. No such guy. They do the editing. They also say Fargo is based on a true story. Yeah, right. So what's the "no similarity to actual persons" disclaimer doing in the final credits?"  (Travers, Peter, Rolling Stone)

2.  What is the film about?  What are the main ideas it presents, the issues it
     confronts? What abstract idea, theme, concept, or topic do you want to emphasize the most?  In effect, you are asking, "How would I go about summarizing the main points and then what would I choose to focus on?"
         Thomas Vinderberg's film The Celebration confronts a number of serious issues: incest, madness suicide and dysfunctional families. But it is Vinderberg's ability to take a reprehensible character and present him as likeable, generous, and charming, that surprises the viewer the most.

3.  Is the film typical of one particular film genre? Is it a science-fiction/fantasy, a romantic-comedy, a documentary, an action film? Is it a combination of more than one?  Does it make a mockery of the genre or deconstruct it? Is the filmmaker following  any particular manifesto or tenet? In answering this question, you are also asking whether the film undermines the viewers’ assumptions, what the viewer might be expecting from the film, and how that is fulfilled or challenged.
"Yet, even if we remain unimpressed by Dogma 95's hype, The Celebration's frenetic camera movements perfectly capture the film's nervous evocation of moral chaos."  (Richard Porton, from Cineaste)
A flamboyant remake of Kurosawa's sword-and-samurai spectacular Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars was the famed Sergio Leone's first spaghetti western, and the film that created the iconic Clint Eastwood persona.  . . . This is the movie that reinvented the American western and its mythology, even as it "follows the plot and even the camera set-ups of Kurosawa's classic black comedy" (Michael Sragow, The New Yorker quoted in Cinamateque)

4.  What effect does the work have on the viewer? In order to write a good review of anything, you must be able to take a critical position.  This can be positive, negative, "apparently indifferent," or some combination of these,     but where you stand on certain issues should be clear to your reader. You    might consider what is missing, what is worth seeing, what it is you value the most.
 Is it compelling, difficult, complex, simple, overwhelming, aesthetically appealing,
 vague, dry, humourous, inviting, cryptic, stale, enigmatic, logical, edible, delectable,
 tasteless, warm, frightening, too theoretically based, too abstract, tactile, dark,
 invigorating, gossipy, mechanical, predictable, metaphysical, winsome, sophisticated,
 grotesque, ingratiating, flamboyantly energetic, dizzyingly enjoyable?  Does it
 `throw a lot at you,' `violate your senses,' `invoke a furious response?'

5.  Is the film based on a novel or short story?  If so, was the screen play written by the author of the original text?  Is the screen-play faithful to the original text?  Do the filmmakers complicate or compliment the story line through the use of special effects, flashbacks, recurring image motifs, or other visual schema?

"Another major problem is in the characterization of Beloved. Whereas Morrison created a feral, but relatively articulate person--into whose psyche the reader is occasionally permitted entry--the film presents a repulsive creature (a bizarre performance by Thandie Newton) whose croaks and drools and screeches recall Linda Blair's demonic child in The Exorcist. In the book, Beloved first appears in a quietly lyric scene, her slim form rising out of the river:
(John Tibbetts,  Literature Film Quarterly)
6. How does this film contribute to the actor, director, or producers’ portfolio?
    How does the work relate to a previous film, to the kind of work they do
    in general?  Who has the director chosen to work with? Why?
  "After a well-received 1984 debut with the noirish Blood Simple and a 1987 hit with Raising Arizona, the Coens were hammered critically for being cold, technical, film-school showoffs, especially for their megabudget ($26 million) flop, The Hudsucker Proxy." Fargo is meant as a return to their poor but honest roots. . ."
(Peter Travers, Rolling Stone)
or
Winfrey herself chose [director] Jonathan Demme, whose last picture was the award-winning Philadelphia (1993), to helm the project over the protests of a few who felt a black director would be more suitable. Demme called in a crack team of collaborators, including cinematographer Tak Fujimoto (Philadelphia, Devil in a Blue Dress), production designer Kristi Zea (Silence of the Lambs, GoodFellas), and composer Rachel Portman (The Road to Wellville, The Joy Luck Club).
(John Tibbetts,  Literature Film Quarterly)

7. What information can you glean from other reviews, academic essays in journals, interviews? How does this information affect your response?  What expectations are set up? Are they fulfilled?

In his 1999 interview with Cineaste, Thomas Vinterberg states that The Celebration "was never meant to be a comedy at all.  But . . . that people laugh because of the cruelty of the film."  What Vinterberg says may be true, but . . ."

8. Who are you?  What is your background?  How does your experience
    influence your response?
         "As a third year ECIAD student, specializing in media studies, I have some insight into…"
         "All three of Paul Almond's previous films have been stunning . . ."

9. What tone, structure, voice or form do you want to adopt?  How and why does this choice reflect the content of the work?  This is a little trickier than it seems, but if you can speak ironically of an ironic piece (or in a gossipy tone when the issue of private or trivial communication is at stake), it can sometimes help the viewer understand the response the film may be trying to evoke in the viewer.

"Bunch of guys at a Manhattan 'plex watching The Matrix. Carrie-Ann Moss kicks some 'droid butt,, makes a streetwide leap from one building top to the top to the next, then crash lands through a small window.  "The bitch is bad," one of the guys opines. "Go, girl!"  Then Laurence Fishburne shows up as Morpheus--a morphing Orpheus, a black White Rabbit, an R-and-B Obi-Wan Kenobe, a big bad John the Baptist, a Gandalf who grooves, every wise guide from literature, religion, movies and comic.  Though he's in a dark room in the dead of night, as if he needed to be more cool, Fishburne is wearing these teeny black shades.  Another guy at the 'plex says approvingly, "those glasses are fabulous!"  To deliver a futurismo fashion statement and a can of whup-ass in the same movie--this is smart filmmaking.
(Richard Corliss & Jeffrey Ressner, Time)

10.  If you've got the necessary background, you might want to ask yourself how the shots, sequences, lighting, the use of superimposed image, editing, etc. influence the outcome of the film.  If you choose to take this tactic, you should probably take your audience into account.  Will they be familiar with the terminology, theory, or references? If not, it might be important to provide some definitions or to tone down the language.
       For example, the following excerpt may be a little confusing for the average reader, but the references would make complete sense to a film student or aficionado.
  Vinterberg, an associate of Lars Von Trier, orchestrates his ensemble with a gusto worthy of Robert Altman. The Celebration was impressively shot on Hi-8 video and successfully transferred to film; Vinterberg's brain-jarring camera swoops, outrageous tilts, and eccentric angle, as well as his frantic crosscutting, help compensate for the somewhat hackneyed characterizations. Like Gaspar Noe's more harrowing (and still distributor-less) I Stand Alone, The Celebration is basically a stunt--in this case, one that's too self-congratulatory in its craziness to achieve much more than momentary impact.  (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice).
This following example would probably be accessible to any reader:
Using a technique of Cinema Verite, Bertolucci uses a hand-held camera to film a chase through the woods. The use of  shaky images in The Conformist convey to us the agitated emotions of the chase.

http://www.eciad.ca/wc/Filmreview.htm