Sight & Sound film review:The first film review I decided to study was from the film magazine Sight and Sound. Sight and Sound is a monthly magazine and I have chosen to analyse 'Get Rich or Die 'Tryin'.
Starting with the layout, Sight and Sound has a simplistic theme using red, black and white. By being simplistic it is readable and user friendly, with it's easy to follow columns, larger and bolder fonts for titles, and smaller fonts to represent the credits to the film. As Sight and Sound is aimed at a higher intellectual film audience, the layout is not of the greatest importance as the main focus is on the piece of writing.
This leads onto the language and layout of the article itself. Reading through through the article I felt that it was constantly giving off a sarcastic and cynical feel using dark yet visual descriptive words such as 'drawls' and alliteration such as 'adolescent amazement'. By using the word 'drawl, you feel that the writer of the piece is potentially bored by what 50-cent has to say.
The review then goes to compare the film against fellow rapper Eminem's feature film '8-mile', which suggests it 'suffers in comparison' as Eminem chose to create his own music for his piece unlike 50-cent. This connotes to the reader that 50-cent has been lazy with the creation of his film, shining a negative light on the film, also suggesting it is 'all about the money'.
Even though, as suggested, this magazine produces articles for high intellectual readers, I still follows the simple layout of a generic film review with an introduction, then points in the middle explaining any 'high' and 'low' points of the film, then resolving the article with the final opinion of the film. In this case the the conclusion is 'given the understated effectiveness of such scenes, it is a shame the film is crowded with otherwise generic moments of gang violence'.
Empire film review:Similarly to Sight & Sound, Empire is also a monthly film magazine. The article I have decided to analyse is 'Remember Me' starring Robert Pattinson, Pierce Brosnan and Emilie de Ravin.
Again, starting simply with the layout of the page of the magazine, compared with Sight & Sound it has a more youthful and modernistic feel. This potentially comes from the big bold blue titles and hoe the page layout is stylistically 'crammed'. Similarly to Sight & Sound, Empire follow the convention of columns for the larger articles, however breaks away from this with the small and snappy reviews. Also similarly to Sight & Sound it has a small section before the article giving the release date, run time and other main information - however unlike Sight & Sound, it gives you a brief idea of the plot before reading the review. I feel that by giving the basic plot before reading give you more of an understanding of what you are about to read about.
Moving onto the language of the piece, it seems marginally more relaxed than that of Sight & Sound, which could potentially broaden the target audience of Empire. One of the main reasons the article seems more relaxed is through it's approach of humour. Instantly this includes the first line of the paragraph "mooning about in goth face paint", which is referring to Robert Pattinson's previous role in the Twilight saga.
The review also follows a similar written layout to Sight & Sound. It compares against other films, however only briefly, as it suggests that Remember Me is a resolved drama without the 'guessing game' unlike Shutter Island. It also remarks of potential 'highs' and 'lows' of the film - How it is a 'clichéd' film but is 'played with conviction'. It breaks away from Sight & Sound with it's conclusion. Due to being aimed at a wider audience, Empire resolves the review with a simple one sentence verdict and a star-rating system.
Www.shortfilmreviews.com film review:Due to our film not being a full length feature film, I felt it necessary to analyse a review of a short film. The website www.shortfilmreviews.com is a blog that has a separate blog for each film review.
The layout of the film review is simply that of a blog post, with the title of the film as the title of the blog. It also has an embedded video of the short film at the bottom of the blog so that after (or before) reading the review, it will make sense. I feel that this is a suitable way to post short film reviews as it is a form of marketing for the short film itself. The mass majority of the world are on the internet these days, it is of higher chance that the film will be found on the internet than be read about in a magazine. Although I agree with the blog reviews, I feel that the layout of the text and it's paragraphing could be more spaced and more appealing to the eyes.
As for the review itself, it starts with a rhetorical question, which intrigues you, leading to you reading on - "Do you feel like everything in the world is somehow related?" Unlike the reviews of Empire and Sight & Sound, this review feels as if it is 'hot off the press' and straight onto the blog, using simply a couple of lines to describe the pro's and con's of the film. It starts with a negative, "the quality and montage is not so great", however it then outweighs the singularly large negative with positives such as "I rarely find a good film" and "It can suck you in, just like that". By pointing out more positives than negatives you conclude individually that this is a review in favour of the film, leading to you wanting to watch the film, even though negatives have been stated.
After the snappy review, credits are given, followed by a one like description/plot. In a sense, the way this blog post has been set up is completely backwards to that of Sight & Sound and Empire.
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