What are the best books for learning to write book and movie reviews?

Hello: "How to Write a Movie Review" is an entry-level guide to writing movie reviews, and is perennially on the list of recommended books for movie reviewers of all kinds. It's a very comprehensive introduction to the 4 similarities, 6 approaches, how to prepare, how to put pen to paper, and how to revise for a movie review. It is worth mentioning that the book has a large number of excellent works for us to compare and learn. The introduction of the content is on the collegiate side, with Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 focusing on how to write a film analysis essay, which is equally applicable to amateurs.

How to Write a Film Criticism by Timothy J. Corrigan, Professor of English and Director of Cinema Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, has taught film courses in Tokyo, Rome, Paris, London, and other cities. His representative works include The New German Cinema: The Influence of Displacement, The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Between Illusion and History, Cinema and Literature: An Introduction and a Reading, and Critical Visions in Film Theory.

A good movie review needs to contain three elements: an idea in the head, a movie in the eye, and talent in the pen. All three can be acquired through long-term accumulation and practice.

01, to do a good job, we must first sharpen our tools

We need to make it clear that professional movie reviews mainly solve the problem of movie analysis and artistic evaluation. Film analysis is not just a simple audio-visual analysis, it also includes reference to genre and its history, and to the development of film language. It is on the basis of this reference that the analyst can make an appropriate aesthetic evaluation of a film. And the knowledge of the methods of audiovisual analysis, of film genres and of the development of film language is something to be learned.

This is also the problem for most of us, who, after watching a movie for two hours, only remember a few episodes of the ****ing mood and turn a blind eye to the main theme of the movie, the filming techniques, the editing style, and some of the intertextual metaphors. During the Spring Festival I watched "Sunshine", the whole movie with the rhythm of crying and laughing, the end of the movie only said "too depressing, the family of origin on people really big". Why is it big? How was it shown in the movie? What did the director and editor want to express through the movie? These I never thought about.

How to Write a Movie Review says, "As soon as you get into analyzing, many writers appear weak. The main signs are: they can't find the right angle of analysis; the basis is stretched and unconvincing; the point of view is inappropriate or there is no point of view at all."

Watching a movie is not "watching" the movie, watching is an action, the action behind "how to see is the key.

Pre-viewing Preparation

Movies are essentially psychology, an expression of the director's language, and a smart moviegoer will learn about the director's background beforehand. The creator's expression is either the place where they grew up, their ethnic group, or a familiar way of life. Many writers we are familiar with have their own spiritual geography, such as Jia Pingwa's Shangzhou, A Lai's Tibet, Mo Yan's Gaomi's Northeastern Township, Wang Anyi's Shanghai Lane, Feng Jicai's Tianjin, etc. The same goes for directors. The same goes for directors.

Let's say the heroine of Tropical Rain, Ling, has a few labels, 40 years old, Chinese teacher, originally from Malaysia, Singaporean daughter-in-law, trying to make a man for 8 years, combined with the director Chen Zheyi's life background we can easily link these key words. Singapore is more xenophobic, marrying into Singapore from Malaysia is a high climb, English is the first language Chinese is not valued, the only way for Ling to integrate into Singapore is to have a Singaporean child. Re-watching Tropical Rain in this context many of the issues are easier to understand.

On top of that, we must be clear that movies are commercial endeavors that require a calculation of inputs and outputs. Watching the small-budget movie "Gonzo" shouldn't compare its scene-setting light and shadow adjustments with the big-budget "Fantastic Four". Knowledge of the production cost of the movie and the production team allows us to reasonably adjust our mental expectations. Ryan Johnson directed the movie "Blade", Agatha-style story expression, the plot ups and downs of the reversal of the continuous, won the Academy Award nomination for best screenplay, if a new director to deliver such an answer sheet, absolutely high marks, but Ryan Johnson can not, the pre-preparation of excessive greatly depletes the audience's patience, the ending of the unexpected no suspense movie hormone elevated feeling, in the middle of a good, not bad, in the He's just passable.

What you see is bad, what you write is bad

The only way to start reviewing and writing about a movie is to give it your full attention. Of course, paying attention is not the same as not moving at all, and a good memory is better than a bad one, and writing a movie review requires taking notes.

With the above knowledge, we will have some preconceived questions about a movie, and we will write these questions down. My preset questions before watching Portrait of a Burning Woman were, why is this movie directed, written, photographed, and cast by women? The director, Céline Siamma, and the star, Adela Hanel, were lovers, would that have been a problem to film? The movie is set in 1760's France, how did the people survive then? There's no limit to the number of pre-set questions that you can ask, it's meant to pique your curiosity.

Movies aren't just about stories, characters or lifestyles, they're also a way of seeing. Viewers come from different backgrounds and see different things. What's fundamental to a movie review is this: to examine how a subject has come to have a particular meaning through the ****ing together of art, technology and commerce. Pay attention to the parts of these factors that appeal to you the most. From start to finish, keep a questioning mind.

Finding the theme of a movie is both the main focus and the hard part, and it correlates with the audience's acumen, the amount of films they've read, and their questioning mentality. A few suggestions are given in Learning to Ask:

Intellectual curiosity. At every opportunity you encounter, lose no time in searching for causes and answers.

Be open-minded and compatible with multiple realities. Seek out and honor other viewpoints and perspectives.

Flexible and tolerant. Always ready to change views in the face of strong reasoning.

Humble and yielding to one's own beliefs. Recognizes that complete certainty is almost pure fantasy.

Intellectual skepticism. Demands proof before accepting assertions and opinions.

Put in the context of a movie, we often ask ourselves:

What is the connection between the title of a movie and its plot

Why does the movie open in this way?

When was the movie made?

Why is the cast list presented in an and coordinated manner in the opening scene?

Why does the movie end with this image?

How is this movie different from other movies or old movies I've seen recently?

How is this movie similar to foreign movies I know?

Is there some significant form of camera movement? Maybe a telecine, superimposition, or jump-joining?

What are those shots that are more important?

Specifically, we need to pay attention to the more anomalous or confusing parts of the movie for you, and those recurring shots. In Portrait of a Burning Woman, the story of Orpheus in Search of a Wife appears twice, once with the three girls gathered around a book, and again with the female artist's painting Orpheus in Search of a Wife... why was that story chosen? Why did the female painter's painting of Orpheus have a chance to say goodbye to his wife? There is no unnecessary scene setting in the movie, every detail can find out the director's intention.

Notes, what to take?

"When reviewing and writing about a movie, personal emotions, expectations, and reactions are the beginning of an intellectual essay, as well as reflecting on the origins of those emotions, expectations, and reactions and how it relates to the objective elements of the movie: its place in the history of cinema, its cultural context, and its formal strategies."

To complete these 2 hours of movie memorization is obviously not enough, and a good memory is a good way to supplement it with note-taking. This note can be a shorthand of key lines, or any number of factors such as filming techniques, point of view, costumes, etc. Experienced movie review writers have a unique set of shorthand techniques, special markers, acronyms ...... the only requirement is that they are readable.

To write a good movie review be sure to watch the movie several times, at least twice. Ideally, the first time you watch it, you should only take note of what strikes you instantly in the movie. The second time you watch the movie, you should take meticulous and detailed notes. Immediately after the movie, you should organize your notes, flesh out your shorthand, and organize an overall logical flow.

In essence, a film review is an argumentative essay, questioning the image to ask questions to introduce the topic, organizing your notes to watch the film again to determine the subarguments, and finally, through the organization of your notes, contextual typing, and repeated questioning, directing the available elements in the film to the topic to serve as an argument.

02, film-related knowledge

Film is one of the youngest art forms, and it has absorbed many of the structures and forms of traditional art. Reviewing and writing about movies requires the use of critical vocabulary from other literary and visual arts, and there are three that we commonly use: narrative, character, and point of view.

Narrative

Narrative movies can be divided into different parts:

Story: all the events presented to us or that we can infer.

Plot: the arrangement or construction of a series of events in some form or structure.

Narrative: a perspective that organizes a plot according to a particular emotional, physical, or intellectual stem point.

How to Write a Movie Review uses the example of a movie depicting Napoleon's life, which is unchanging: his birth, childhood, rise to power, wars, the French Revolution, and exile on Elba. But different movies choose different focuses, and different stories can be portrayed through different narrative forms.

The narrative of a movie can be determined by asking the question. Is this movie a narrative movie? If not, what is it? Is the story told in chronological order? In what way does the plot unfold? What are the reasons for this approach? And so on. No one can withstand a pot-breaking line of questioning, and after a few or a dozen questions, you can see the movie for what it is.

Characters

Characters concentrate on the actions of the characters and the themes of the film, and are the main protagonists of film analysis. Take Portrait of a Burning Woman as an example, there are two main characters in the play: a female painter and a rich lady, and there are also two main supporting roles: a maid and a rich lady's mother, what makes them related? The rich lady's mother wants her to marry a suitor from Milan, and according to the custom, she needs to send a portrait in advance, and if the suitor is satisfied, he will propose marriage to her. The rich girl, who is the slightest ripple in the usual operation, is unwilling to accept such a marriage without an emotional foundation, and rebels by refusing the portrait. A portrait connects several unrelated people, while adding a time limit to the story. Analyzed in this way, the whole story comes alive.

Point of view

Point of view, in a broad sense, refers to the position of looking, and the way in which it is implied that the point of view determines what is seen. In a narrower sense, point of view is tangible. Simply put, it is the point of view from which you look at a problem. When we go to the beach to watch the sunrise, we tend to choose the best observation point, and this is the reason. Going a little deeper, the mental state as well as the subjective bias when watching a movie also affects what is seen. Xu Zhimo is the talented man who said goodbye to Kangqiao again in the eyes of his fans, but in my eyes, he is the scum who hurt Zhang Youyi.

Film is a "way of seeing", and its point of view depends on what the director wants to convey. There are two general principles for discussing point of view:

Observe when and how the camera creates a character's point of view.

Note that a story is told primarily from an objective point of view, but can still come from someone's subjective understanding.

In addition to this, the actors' costumes and makeup, the setting of light and shadow, the length of the camera angle, the expression of the sound, the editing of the film... are all very important, and space is limited so I will not expand on the introduction of this aspect I chose "Knowing Movies (Illustrated 11th Edition)" as an introductory book, and I will have the opportunity to write another review of the book introduction.

03, how to change

Good articles are changed out of this cardinal rule, put here is still applicable. When checking, you need to pay attention to, logic, topic sentences, and arguments. Need to make sure that the whole article logical smooth, each sub-argument in support of the main argument and is a progressive relationship; at the same time to confirm that each argument in the enrichment and argumentative argument, rather than simply false and empty out of the mouth to maintain. Confirm that each paragraph has a topic sentence, the whole essay topic sentence together can clearly express the argument.

Then go back and re-read the first and last paragraphs. The first paragraph is extremely important in any type of essay; it should be interesting and engaging to the reader while also leading to the next paragraph, which serves the argument. The end can simply do a summary, summarize the whole text but this is very difficult to shine, a better way is to sublimation, along the meaning of the sub-argument layer rises to the end of the whole text will rise to a high level.

Next read through the entire text, to ensure that the sentence is concise and powerful, no typos.

In the final step, return to confirm the title. The title should be big enough to imply the main idea; at the same time, it should be specific enough to attract readers, preferably with a little conflict. Let's compare the title of the article of the public number anti-pants position, "Born to be a man, silent self-destruction", "Thank you, finally cheating", "Divorce, I'm happier than marriage." "After reading this book, I found the courage to live", fulfills on all the requirements mentioned above.

The ability to write a good movie review is related to one's artistic feeling, the accumulation of movie knowledge and the ability to express oneself in words. Artistic feeling can be improved by watching a lot of movies and writing reviews, movie knowledge needs to be learned systematically, and there are a lot of books and courses to choose from, and written expression can be improved by writing and thinking more and reading more.

To summarize, there are 9 steps to write a qualified movie review:

Prepare for the movie. Ask questions in advance to understand the context.

Watch the movie carefully and take notes.

Direct your questions to a thesis that is easy to start with. Don't make the thesis too big; it's too big and broad to say in 3,000 words.

Watch the movie again after you've decided on a topic to confirm the sub-theses and arguments.

Sort out the arguments. Good essays generally start with less controversial thematic points and progress to more complex points such as style and technique.

Outline. (Write over to find your own)

Start writing.

Continue to think about the topic and expand on ideas as you write.

Revise.

If watching and understanding movies is one of the pleasures we get from watching them, reviewing and writing and explaining them should be another exciting treat. How to Write a Movie Review can be used as a textbook, and there are many excellent habits in the book with which to compare and contrast one's own exercises.

I hope this is helpful, and look forward to adopting it!