Movie Review practice (11/26)

Today we started class by talking about our seating chart. Mr. Rivers has decided that seating charts are pointless, and we can sit wherever we want that makes us comfortable, and where we can talk with our peers. He then reminded us that this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, the school is putting on the play You Can’t Take It With You, which was directed by Mr. Rivers. We then talked about our blogs for the second marking period, and how we should analyze the third level of Ready Player One, using evidence to objectively evaluate the ending. We bridged that into talking about writing our Be Reel Blogs, and how we can effectively create movie reviews, focusing on journalistic movie reviews, and prepared to write a movie review for a short film. We went over the journalistic structure of a review, which was
Deliberately title article
Credit relevant artists
Provide necessary context
Summarize plot
Evaluate content
Evaluate meaning and theme
Conclude
We used this to learn how to write an effective review for our peers, which we can use to further our ability to write a Be Reel Blog.
Title- the first introduction to the tone/argument/purpose of the review, and it should be the last thing you write. We discussed how three different titles show the tone and connects to the argument and audience.
Credit Relevant artists- find who is important and give them credit, such as directors, actors, screenwriters, the original author, the composer. The ways you credit are either explicitly mentioning them to give them credit in your sentence or paragraph, or by crediting them parenthetically, where you mention them on the side, in a parenthetical citation kind of mention.
Provide Necessary Context- what do we need to know about the film/it’s production. Could include details of if it is part of a series, is it a parallel to world events, what’s happening as part of the films production
Summarize the plot- tell the story of the film without spoiling it.
Evaluate Content- the bulk of your review, making specific paragraphs. Paragraphs can be short, but have to be concise.
Evaluate Meaning and Theme- consider the text as a whole: what does it assert? Coming back to the text at the end to analyze how it portrays itself.
Conclusion- brief and specific, in 1-3 sentences you should be answer “So what”

This can be applied to the real world by using this info to write effective reviews. This allows us to process not only the reviews that we write, but also analyze the reviews that we read about other things. By being able to analyze based on criteria, you can determine whether or not a review or source is credible, making it better for choosing who and what to listen to.If we read movie reviews in a more effective way, we can learn to write them effectively as well. By being able to write effectively, we can convey our thoughts and opinions to others in ways that can be easily understood.