2. Dictionary.com describes a review
as…
“A critical article or report, as in a
periodical, on a book, play, recital, or
the like; critique; evaluation.”
3. When planning my film review article, I looked on
a lot of film review websites, some of these
include…
Rottentomatoes.com
Empireonline.com
Filmreview.com
Totalfilm.com/reviews
Timeout.com/film
Imdb.com
4. Here are some film review
article layouts from Empire
Magazine…
5.
6.
7.
8. Here are some film
review article layouts
from Total Film
Magazine…
9.
10.
11.
12. These are some film
review article layouts
from The Guardian…
13.
14.
15. Woman In Black
Hanging on to your movie career is a trial for any child actor, but for Daniel Radcliffe, who is
associated not just with youthfulness but with one very specific, well-loved role, it’s going to be
an uphill battle. He’s made a good first step with this smart, spooky adaptation of Susan Hill’s
bestselling novel – famous also as a long-running West End show – but the sight of Harry Potter
with mutton chops and a two-year-old son can still take a spot of getting used to.
Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, a widowed lawyer who travels to a remote northern village to
oversee the sale of Eel Marsh House, a coastal mansion which the locals regard with
superstitious suspicion. It’s not long before a series of child deaths lead Kipps to suspect the
presence of an otherworldly force: the ghostly Woman in Black.In story terms, there’s little here
we’ve not seen in countless haunted-house movies or special BBC dramas for the bank holiday
audience. But it’s put together with panache – ‘Eden Lake’ director James Watkins proves
himself a master of the short, sharp shock – and a superbly maintained air of clammy dread,
thanks in large part to an appropriately murky visual palette.
Radcliffe is solid rather than spectacular, but that serves the film: Kipps is a tight-lipped sort,
though it never prevents us from rooting for him. Able support is provided by Ciaran Hinds,
whose turn as the local landlord is the most likeable here. Other characters fare less well – the
townsfolk are a motley bunch of industry-standard ee-by-gummers – and we’re certainly not
encouraged to care about the Woman’s hapless young victims. Like the house itself, ‘The
Woman in Black’ is old-fashioned, ornate, imposing, occasionally creaky – and possessed of
more than a few enjoyably nasty surprises.
Timeout.com By Tom Huddleston
16. War Horse
If there's such a thing as a family war movie, this is it, and when War Horse delivers, it really, really
delivers. The standout scene is undoubtedly a spectacular British cavalry charge, where Tom Hiddleston's
dashing young officer has his worst fears realised - you can see the years fall away from him, as, like so
many solidiers in The "Great" War, he realises the whole thing is a sick joke.
If the film has a problem, it's that we are not watching Saving Private Hiddleston, and throughout the film,
just as you're hooked by one of the many human interest vignettes, we have to bid our two-legged chums
farewell and follow the story of Joey the War Horse instead. Which is not to say Joey is a bad horse, or an
uninteresting horse, as horses go. But he's still a horse, and when the human cast is this good, it's a
wrench to leave them in favour of a horse. Horses can't act. They just can't. It doesn't matter how
"miraculous" they are.
The script seems anxiously aware of this, insisting at every opportunity that Joey is a very special horse.
Oscar Wilde once memorably opined, "One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little
Nell without dissolving into tears... of laughter." A similar impulse rears its head in War Horse every time
somebody insists that Joey is "a miraculous horse." You keep expecting them to have him turn water into
wine, or do a card trick.
In lesser hands, this could have made for a disastrous fudge sundae, but the fact is that Spielberg is
among our top directors for a reason - almost anyone else would struggle to create a film half this good
from this narrative. It's a challenge that involves marshalling a crack team of performers, craftspeople and
technical wizards - the film glows with the care taken over old-fashioned (in a good way) tangible detail
and a commendable avoidance of lazy CGI fall-back solutions (where CGI is used, it's both justified and
seamless). Certain key scenes - an execution, the aforementioned cavalry charge, a race through no-man's
land - are as chilling as you'd hope, while remaining what the film is supposed to be: family-friendly. Full
marks to the War, then, with some reservations about the Horse.
Film4 Catherine Bray
17. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The bones of the story remain -- the 40-year-old unsolved case of a missing girl, a disgraced financial journalist, and the
enigmatic young private investigator with that dragon tattoo. But Oplev hasn't been shy in asking screenwriters
RasmusHeisterberg and NikolajArcel to strip away much of the complex plotting that makes the book such a page turner but
would have made a mess of a film. The ominous mood is set with the arrival of a pressed flower in a simple frame on the
82nd birthday of HenrikVanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), the head of a sprawling, family-owned industrial empire in Sweden,
where the film takes place. The flowers have come with each birthday since his niece Harriet vanished when she was 16,
presumed dead at the hands of a killer. They line the wall, a macabre reminder of a tradition Harriet began as a child. The
aging mogul is convinced the killer is in the family, the flowers a taunt; he wants one last shot at some answers while he
can.
Not far away, MikaelBlomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), an investigative magazine reporter who's got a knack for connecting the
dots in ways that bring down titans, has just lost a nasty libel case. Henrik knows all that and more because he engaged a
security firm to look into the journalist before asking him to take on Harriet's case. LisbethSalander (NoomiRapace), with
her shaved head, nose rings, a dragon tattoo inked on her back and a genius streak when it comes to hacking computers, is
the unlikely PI sorting through Mikael's dirty laundry. With the players set, the filmmaker dives into Harriet's disappearance,
leading us into a web of intrigue that the spider is still spinning. For devotees of the book, be prepared: Oplev has done
some major renovations on the story, changing characters, plot points and relationships to suit his needs. What he has kept,
and what makes the movie work, is the essence of Lisbeth, Mikael and the mystery that will soon bring them together.
Without letting style overtake the substance, Oplev and cinematographer Eric Kress have nevertheless given a beautiful,
somber tone to the proceedings, using the ice and snow of a Swedish winter to create a stark color palette as well as a cold,
emotional tone. The filmmaker has also done a neat trick in keeping all the mysteries straight, so that no one gets lost as
Harriet's story unfolds and Mikael's and Lisbeth's take their own spot on the stage. All of this the filmmaker will get to
before it's over, understanding that human behavior is really what's under the microscope here.
One of the difficulties inherent in turning "Dragon Tattoo" into a film is that Larsson, who died suddenly in 2004, leaving the
as yet unpublished trilogy behind, tied so much of Mikael's sleuthing to sorting through old police reports, newspaper
clippings, family photos and corporate archives, while Lisbeth's detective work is done digging inside computers. Not exactly
the makings of an action thriller.
LA Times Betsy Sharkey
18. I will use all of this
research when
preparing my
article for my film
review.
