How to Write a Film Review: Robust Recommendations
When students face difficulties coping with writing a film review, they always have a chance to simplify it. If you are one of them, don’t give up because EssayBulls specialists have prepared something for you! At our post, you can find essential tips on research, outline, correct film review format, and other recommendations to boost your understanding of this project’s feature.
Why a Movie Review Is Important
Many people today like sharing their opinion about movies they’ve watched. All of us can easily tell whether we like certain films or not. Still, like or dislike positions in film reviews appear unprofessional. In your movie review, try to be attentive to details and express your thoughts concisely. Create a plan which you will follow. It will act as a body for your research and a detailed explanation of why you sympathize with the film and which parts of it you would improve being a director.
When you ask yourself how to write a movie review, you need to understand why your opinion matters. It is not enough for readers to get a one-sentence review, so you need to work on explicit information about the movie. Therefore, before writing your own project, read the movie synopsis example or look at someone’s movie review template to better manage it.
How to Write a Film Review Effortlessly
Sometimes it is hard to understand how to start working on your movie review. It doesn’t matter whether you are a newbie or an experienced movie reviewer; you need to know how to do it properly. For this purpose, we prepared some steps you need to follow before writing.
- Watch the movie several times
If you have a decent movie to write a review on, it is better to watch it thoroughly. Don’t be afraid if you don’t understand a specific film the first time. Many professional critics recommend watching a movie at least twice to notice important details and include them in the review.
Take notes while watching and compare your first impression with the next ones. The art of the beholder is often underestimated today. Still, take your time to learn how to write a movie review and pay attention to the details no matter how many hours you spend watching a movie on repeat.
- Research for necessary information
Many students omit this step because they think that the watching process is enough to find everything about the movie they need. Actually, there are many interesting aspects that you can research and change your project approach. Collect relevant data on the basics of the movie’s story that formed the idea for the script. Please find out more about casting details, the film-making company that was ready to produce the movie, and its specification while filming.
Knowing the film’s background can prevent various inconsistencies while preparing the review. It would be best if you mentioned the director’s name and history of taking the script to process locations for film-making and specific events during the shots.
- Organize the review’s structure
Each film review format has an introduction, movie summary or logline, plot analysis, creative methods used by filmmakers, personal opinion with evidence, and conclusion. All these elements you can include within five paragraphs. Knowing what to write in each paragraph will make your movie review more concise and save your time in many ways.
If in the introduction you need to mention the name of the movie or documentary and such crucial credits as the screenwriter and director, in the movie’s summary, you have to describe the plot briefly. As you can see in any movie synopsis example, the author reveals the story’s critical moments and engages the reader to watch it. Make your review both logical and exciting for the audience as well to make them run to their screens.
- Analyze all details of the movie
When the teacher assigns to write a movie review, it is great for students to prepare a movie review template and then write a first draft based on it. Every movie has various aspects such as plot, concept, length, genre, cast, and crew that works on it. Consider all these details and analyze them in-depth before giving a verdict.
Provide for readers all essential elements from start to finish. It will help understand the complete picture, summarize the events and characters’ behavior, and evaluate the plot. If it is helpful, comment on each scene and which effect they had on the overall movie.
- Enrich with examples
Give your movie review a chance to sound convincing. It is not necessary to elaborate on all the events that happened in the movie you write about. Stating a personal opinion about it could also be a part of a common mistake. The best you can do when preparing a perfect movie review template for your further works is to provide a situation, a scene that was captured in a particular way, and other movie elements. This will help readers understand why the director and actors chose a specific solution for each episode and other methods to reach the perfect result (colors, light, dialogues, mood, tone, costumes, camera techniques, decorations, symbols, etc.)
When you want to find out how to write a film review efficiently, you can do so easily. A movie review is a creative process. Simply follow the rule of revealing information about the film for your reader as for yourself.
Film Review Format and Structure: How to Work With It
As mentioned earlier, every movie review consists of several elements. If we look at it as academic writing, it should have five standard paragraphs. Still, this is only the last point of the film review, so you need to consider four preceding elements, such as:
- Film title
- Summary
- Information about filmmakers
- Actors
The fifth section has a review itself, with an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. To format it properly, you need to follow one of your curator’s assigned citation styles. It could be MLA, APA, Chicago, or Harvard. With these formatting styles, you can insert in-text citations from research or even quotes from films and organize the references list properly.
Movie Review Template: Learn How to Write Your Own
“The Pianist” Holocaust Movie: What Does Wladyslaw’s Story Reveal to You about Human Nature?
These people existed in non-intersecting worlds: a teacher in a German village school and a talented, world-famous Polish pianist. The Second World War doomed them: the teacher put on a Nazi uniform and became a murderer, and the pianist got the stigma of “subhuman” and was to be killed. Their paths crossed in the burning fire of the Warsaw uprising, and the meeting saved both of their fates. The story of Wladyslaw Szpilman revealed to me that this is not only the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, or the story of his savior, Wilm Hosenfeld; this is the story of humanity. The stories of these people, the great pianist and the great savior, show that human nature is a desire for life, but only that human beings are able to remain human in inhuman conditions who have a goal and have love inside.
The brilliant psychiatrist Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, who at the same time managed to keep hundreds of people from suicide, wrote Man’s Search for Meaning in just nine days. For the sake of argument I will give a quote from his book: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’” (Frankl, 27). Wladyslaw unconditionally proves these words. He was always saved by his love of music, and the pianist always played his imaginary piano. He was led by love and hope that one day he would be able to touch his lovely instrument again. That is, a person needs a passion, a fire inside that can give warmth during the most severe frosts of life.
In the second argument, it is worth paying respect to the man who saved Wladyslaw at that moment when the pianist had already said goodbye to his life. A person is human when he or she truly loves something. Unfortunately, the film does not reveal fully the image of this kindhearted man. In fact, Wilm suffered from the atrocities of fascism on Polish soil. He tried to help everyone he could help, forged documents, and pulled people out of concentration camps. In one of the letters to his family, he wrote: “We do not deserve mercy; we are all guilty (“The Story of Captain Wilhelm Hosenfeld: A German Catholic Who Helped Save Poles”). He was led by love for humanity, and he did what love inside told him. He was supposed to kill a hiding Jew, but instead, he listened to his heart once again. So, love helps to show the best sides of human nature.
A person never knows what fate is hiding around the next turn. A simple teacher can go against the conditions of life and remain a man with a capital letter; an outstanding pianist can lose everything except hope for the future. Human nature is the desire to survive and the desire to save others, and these desires must be full of love and meaning.
Works Cited
Frankl, Viktor E., et al. Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, 2017.
“The Story of Captain Wilhelm Hosenfeld: A German Catholic Who Helped Save Poles.” Elentir.info, 13 Aug. 2018, www.outono.net/elentir/2018/08/13/the-story-of-captain-wilhelm-hosenfeld-a-german-catholic-who-helped-save-poles/.
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Read more articles in our blog to understand the principles of great review writing. For instance, you can get acquainted with the “Joker” movie review template and get a better understanding of how to cope with your own review. Expand your knowledge in any field of study and sound confident even in the most complex subject!
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