Many students wonder how to critique a movie as they frequently confuse movie review writing with movie critique writing. It is essential to understand even the slightest differences in order to succeed in these writing types. So, a movie review is mainly concerned with providing one’s personal impression, reflection or reaction to the movie. When it comes to critique writing, it is more concerned with providing some argumentation when discussing specific aspects on the movie. Moreover, it requires one to focus not merely on the general perception of the film but delving deeper into cinematographic effects. When writing a movie critique, a student is encouraged to provide recommendations on what could have been improved in order to attract a larger audience whatsoever.
How to Write a Movie Critique
- Watch the assigned movie
Sometimes, you may even need to watch the movie for mor than once. Normally, you watch the movie once for the general understanding and for grasping the overall message or idea. When you watch the movie for subsequent times, you pay more attention to the specific scenes, plot, storylines, the movie’s characters and their interaction, symbolism, and other aspects. While watching the movie for the second or even the third time, remember to take notes. Sometimes, you may even need to jot down specific dialogues or phrases so that you could use them in your movie critique as supporting evidence or illustration of your argumentation.
- Try to be objective and unbiased in your writing
Practice objective writing and try to give unbiased review of the movie. As such, to make your review sound unbiased, try to sound less emotional and avoid the usage of adjectives with superlative connotation. If you put forward some personal opinion, try to support it with some evidence or expert opinion. You need to provide a logical explanation of what made you think that way. Moreover, you should always give your reader freedom of agreeing or disagreeing with what you say. Therefore, do not be oppressive.
- Identify your target audience
One of the fundamental aspects of writing a successful movie critique is to identify your target audience and make the movie critique interesting and relevant for them. Actually, a movie critique should be understandable and comprehensible to its readers, so come up with appropriate vocabulary and structures. The movie critique may be written for children, teenagers, youths or more mature audience. Therefore, come up with vocabulary accordingly.
- Maintain the required paper length
If you are wondering how to write a movie critique for college, apart from just focusing on content, pay attention to whether you are able to fit all the desired text into the required paper length. Normally, movie critique papers are from three to five pages long, so even if you do not have specific requirements concerning the word count limit, be sure not to exceed five pages.
- Pay ample attention to the actors
If you want to know how to critique a movie properly, one of the best pieces of advice is not just to focus on a movie as a unity but to analyze its separate components. Actors are one of the most important constituents of a great movie, so pay sufficient attention to analyzing their play and interaction. Keep an eye on detail, such as dialogues, mimics, gestures, and body language in general. Focus on their performance and what role they play in conveying the message across (apart from analyzing their movie role). Pinpoint to how they contribute to the movie, whether the actors were properly chosen, whether they look harmonious to you in that specific role.
- Provide a detailed discussion of the storyline and the movie plot
Instead of merely focusing on discussion and description of the very events that take up the plot, focus on the storyline from the cinematographic perspective, particularly how logical and concise it is, whether it is clear and comprehensible, whether the plot was predictable or not, whether you noticed some fails in the movie, and so on.
- Provide your personal opinion on the most significant aspects of the movie
When formulating your personal viewpoint, do not merely focus on the feelings, emotions, and thoughts you had while watching the movie. Try to analyze the movie from a more professional perspective. Specifically, if you question yourself how to critique a movie professionally, focus on the screenplay, director’s work, music, costumes, etc. Highlight whether music and lights were effective and relevant at the point they were used. Only after this discussion can you provide your personal opinion.
Calculate the price
General Tips for Writing a Movie Critique Essay
Like any other type of academic assignments, a movie critique has its own mode of organization and structure. Therefore, you need to be particularly attentive about the elements that should be definitely included. Hopefully, the following brief list of tips composed by our company’s writers will provide you with clear understanding of how to organize your movie critique paper:
- Identify the genre of the movie and try to analyze and explore the movie from the perspective of this genre.
- Focus on the very story conveyed in the movie or the message communicated across. Delve deeper into the plot and what elements it consists of. Explore the strategies and tools used by the movie director in order to convey a specific message. Analyze the movie in terms of coherence and logical connections. Specify whether it is interesting and engaging to watch the movie, whether it contains some fresh ideas, etc.
- Switch over to the analysis of the very script. Pay close attention to the dialogues, monologues, silent parts. What role do they play? Are the phrases and the communication mode in general effective?
- Share your personal viewpoint. If you have some strong feelings about the movie, do not be shy to express them. Your opinion matters here. Just write what you liked or disliked about the movie.
- Always be sure to support and illustrate your opinions with examples, quotations, and specific lines from the movie script.
We truly believe that the tips composed by our company’s professional writers will help you succeed in your movie critique writing. If you are unable to cope with the task on your own, do not hesitate and contact us for help.
