Initial Project Research

(1) Isn't it Romantic Poster

My initial research that I carried out for my Major Project; a review of the 2019 romance comedy film "Isn't it Romantic?", involves looking at how other film reviews are structured when being written, and what points are to be covered and analysed. I have looked at film reviews of other films from various sources such as a review of the 1995 film Seven by Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman (1995). When I chose to look at spoken film reviews through videos, I looked at lesser-known film reviewers on YouTube, namely Drew Gooden and Danny Gonzales (YouTube, n.d.), but I thought that they were too casual with their assessment of the films they reviewed and they present their opinions too dramatically in the form of exaggerated re-enactions of criticised scenes, and tend to cherry-pick bad movies to review to present more negative opinions. For the written reviews I have read, the writers have not just described the actions on screen, but what elements in the film from sound and music to the set designs of the film and how it ties into and affects the mood and plot.  When they describe the mood set by the films’ elements, they speak from their own opinion of how they felt when they watched the film, and further expanding on this by using exciting and uncommon words to describe the film by using words that describes the feeling as accurately as possible.

The reviews that I have read also compare the film they are reviewing to other works of the same genre to the film to get the reader to understand the film more if they have watched a film similar to that. The reviewer also refers to other films that the reviewed film’s cast and crew have worked on to a similar effect, sometimes by comparing their character to another they have played, sometimes by poking at similarities or by showing appreciation for their range by recalling a character with a completely different personality, as when Observer’s Mark Kermode cited (2018) “La La Land” when he wrote about Ryan Gosling’s role in his review of First Man.

I will continue to update this blog on my further research on writing a film review.

References

GLEIBERMAN, O. (1995) Seven. [Online] Entertainment Weekly. Available at: https://ew.com/article/1995/09/29/seven-3/ [Accessed 05/05/20].

GONZALES, D. (n.d.) Danny Gonzales. [Online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSUf5_EPEfl4zlBKZHkZdmw [Accessed 05/05/20].

GOODEN, D. (n.d.) Drew Gooden. [Online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTSRIY3GLFYIpkR2QwyeklA [Accessed 05/05/20].

KERMODE, M. (2018) First Man review – an inner space odyssey. [Online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/oct/14/first-man-review-damien-chazelle-ryan-gosling-claire-foy-apollo-11-neil-armstrong [Accessed 05/05/20].

Image References

(1) IMDb (2019) Isn’t It Romantic?. [Online] Internet Movie Database. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2452244/ [Accessed 05/05/20].