Movie Review Examples to Pay Your Attention to

Into the Wild by Sean Penn

June 1st, 2013

Into the Wild by Sean Penn: In Search of the Self Into the Wild is an adaptation film of a non-fiction book written by John Krakauer in 1996. The movie is an American biographical drama film which was produced and directed by Sean Penn in 2007. It is based on the sorrowful life faced by Christopher McCandless as he travels across North America and how he spent his time in the Alaskan wilderness in the early years of the 1990s….

Million Dollar Baby By Clint Eastwood

May 31st, 2013

The Importance of Self-Belief in the Film Million Dollar Baby By Clint Eastwood Success in life can be said to be based on confidence in individual abilities. Self-belief has a significant impact on our lives, yet it cannot be taught in schools. This is due to free will associated with being confident or not. The more an individual has self-belief, which in other words is referred to as confidence, the greater heights of success one is deemed to achieve (Denzin,…

The King’s Speech by Tom Hooper

May 21st, 2013

The King’s Speech by Tom Hooper – The Manifesto of Brilliant Acting The King’s Speech is a British historical drama that was directed by Tom Hooper in 2010. The screenplay to the movie was written by David Seidler. The film involved such star actors and actresses as Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter. The King’s Speech was highly esteemed by critics. It won four Academy Awards and seven British Academy Film Awards. Rex Reed declared it the best…

Audrey Hepburn in the Film My Fair Lady

May 18th, 2013

My Fair Lady is a legendary musical film adaptation based on a play “Pygmalion” by George Bernard Show and directed by George Cukor in 1964. This elegant and high-grossing film represents the pinnacle of the film musical as a unique art form and still occupies a significant place in the history of cinema. It won eight Academy Awards, including Director (George Cukor), Cinematography (Harry Stradling), Actor (Rex Harrison), Score (Andre Previn) and Best Picture. It won for Costumes, Sound, and…

Shall we go to the movie? Many people enjoy watching movies, but watching a movie and writing a review is very different. If you don’t succeed in writing a movie review, don’t be upset. Instead of reading numerous guides, how about checking some movie review samples written by expert writers?

The best thing to learn how to write movie reviews is to read a complete guide supported with the best movie review examples for college students. Here at payforwriting we have created a base of guidelines, topics, and samples for different kinds of academic writing: essays, reviews, emails, creative writing, etc. This information was prepared by our experts based on their experience and knowledge. All information presented here is totally free. We understand how it’s hard to find a source with all information dedicated to writing in one place – that’s why we have created this website to help you!

How to Write a Movie Review Template

Let’s imagine that you have just seen a film in the cinema. If you noted something when you were watching, you can use it in your writing. If not, consider the possibility of watching the movie again if you will have some ideas or questions when you will be writing your term paper. Generally, movie review format examples can be divided into the following paragraphs:

Opening. Attract the reader’s attention from the first words. Have you mentioned how advertisements sell the film? Read through announcements and watch a trailer. The most catchy moments are mentioned in trailers and your aim is to create your own trailer but in words. Don’t share your point of view from the very beginning – leave it for the conclusion. As an alternative, find an interesting fact or story connected to movie production.

Description. This paragraph should be dedicated to general information about the movie, and it is an important part of your text. As soon as you will grab the reader’s attention, tell the movie title, director, main actors, release date, and studio where the movie took place. Also, you can mention the movie rating in IMDb or another movie rating system. It would be nice to mention whether the film has nominations or awards. Also, briefly tell what the movie is about without additional descriptions (not more than two sentences).

Plot summary. Tell what has happened in the movie. Keep in mind that the reader may not have seen the film, so try to avoid possible spoilers. Just summarize the plot in more detail, so the reader will have the overall picture. Also, tell about the characters. Have the actors fit their roles? Whose role did you like the most?

Analysis. In this paragraph you need to tell about your cinematic experience. Did you like the music? Were special effects impressive enough? Does the movie create a feeling of completeness? Movie analysis will consist of a list of criteria the author picks as important.

  • Scenario. The core of any film is the scenario. Even if it is a well-written play or story, it may be ruined with poor direction and implementation. Dialogue, scenes, characters, the completeness of the scenes, the logical sequence of events, the climax, and other details are all included in the scenario. As a critical audience, we leave a subjective point of view about certain events that took place in the movie and whether the director and screenwriter have succeeded in presenting a complete picture.
  • Directing. Simply talking, the director is a kind of art manager. It is the director who decides how this or that actor will perform, how this or that scene will be filmed, and much more. Also, you can conduct a brief analysis of the director’s previous activities: what genre of movies are more commonly filmed, which films were successful, and which ones failed. Then you can connect this experience with the current movie and make a conclusion.
  • Acting. Think about the actors. Has the director made the right choice of actors? Do actors fit their roles? If you think that another actor will be a better choice, describe why.
  • Operator’s work. The operator’s work is guided by the director, but still the operator is responsible for maintaining composition and camera angles of every scene. For the first time you can analyze whether the scenes look good and are in harmony. Every operator has a unique style that can be distinguished from other works. Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch are great examples of directors that showed great collaboration with operators and composers.
  • Music. The right music can add more feeling to a picture. Try to watch “The Green Mile” with the music from “Frozen.” It will be weird, right? Evaluate how music corresponds to the scene or the overall mood of the film. With the help of music, a director can create a certain atmosphere for different genres.
  • Visualization (visual effects, costumes, make-up artists). This criterion is important especially for those films like fantasy or historical films, where costumes play a significant role in creating the overall picture. Don’t fall into the common trap of beginners blaming the film for historical mismatch of costumes. Many films use such mismatching as specific stylization. For fiction, the audience will be waiting for great visual effects, so don’t forget to evaluate its quality and realism.

Conclusion. In this part you need to sum up the ideas about the film and give your final evaluation. Your review should leave the right impression, so the reader will understand if the movie is worth watching.

N.B. If you don’t understand how the review is supposed to look, you are welcome to check an example of movie review paper on our site.

Tips to Consider While Writing

  1. To be ready to write a good movie review, you need to write down the description of the film. You can memorize or record the actors that play the main roles and mention the characters they play. Remember some interesting fact from the biography of the actors. Some actors choose similar films and you can draw a parallel between their styles in two different films.
  2. Find interesting facts about the crew and the creation of the motion picture. In what places was the film shot, what kind of budget – everything will be very interesting for the reader. If the director of film is a young professional, tell about films he or she has already shot and which ones are being planned.
  3. If the music for the film was composed by a well-known composer, it is worth mentioning in the review. If the composer is an unknown author, this can also be rightly mentioned in the text, pointing to the emergence of a new star in the horizon of the film industry. Specify a musical genre and interesting features in the scoring of the film.
  4. If the finale is unexpected, it is necessary to indicate in the recall. But don’t describe it in detail. Let the readers watch the film and find out everything by themselves.

Following this plan, you will write a good review. In any case, you can be sure that this is a review, not feedback. And to understand how a finished paper should look, check movie review examples for students on our site!

How Can Movie Review Examples be Useful for You?

From early childhood we strive to learn from examples. It’s human nature to seek something that can be taken as an example. Beginner artists learn from professional artists and writers learn from texts of great authors. The best way to realize how a good review is supposed to look is to read some well-written examples along with a step-by-step guide. At payforwriting we have gathered a collection of different paper samples written by professional writers. You can find research papers, essays, emails, business papers, and reviews on different topics.

Writing a review is difficult, especially if you have never written one before. Descriptive writing that involves extensive description can make you sick. The main aim of a movie review is to show how all elements contribute to the story and how it creates a certain atmosphere.

How to describe a movie? You can be a movie fan that has seen hundreds of films. But loving movies and having experience to analyze a movie are two different things. People usually judge movies from a subjective point of view telling only things they like or dislike to describing the best moments and characters.

What structure does it have? Probably you have already read several articles or guidelines that explain how to write a movie review, but how will it help without practical experience? On our site you can find a great sample movie review for students, analyze its structure, and write a review on your own.

There are different approaches to writing a movie review and it will depend on your tutor’s requirements. Over the internet you can find different examples in newspapers and movie review resources that give the audience a general quality of the film. Typically, such reviews lean towards describing why a movie is worth watching or not.

Avoid These Mistakes Students Usually Make

No matter whether you have already used movie review sample essays for writing your papers or not, you may be surprised that you have already conducted some of these mistakes but didn’t realize it. Many students search for sample papers over the internet and most of them get into all sorts of traps. Forewarned is forearmed. Let’s start!

Looking through too many samples. You will make a big mistake striving to read all available samples related to your topic. Your thoughts will be distracted and you can lose focus. When a student needs to write a paper in the tightest time frame, they can spend too much time looking for the ideal sample. It’s great that you want to read more information, but you won’t remember anything from reading numerous examples. It will be better to search for a reliable source with good samples, pick from three to four appropriate examples and examine them carefully.

Choosing unreliable sources. The chance of finding a good sample movie review for school paper on suspicious sources is dwindling to zero. Did you know that many resources place examples of papers written by students? This means that the quality of those papers can be extremely low. If you want to have good samples at hand, don’t trust unreliable sources and pick only those with good a reputation.

Skipping papers with different topics. If you will be searching only for samples on your topic, it may happen that you won’t find any. You may skip a well-structured sample just because you don’t look at samples on other topics. To make the most of a sample, you need not only to read the text, but also analyze it. Explore the title, transition words and phrases, the way the author begins the introduction, and what approach he or she uses to write the conclusion. Every tiny thing that makes a movie review great you can learn from samples.

Movie review writing is a fun experience, especially when you have good examples at hand. If your tutor didn’t give you an example or a list of sources with samples, you’re lucky that you have found payforwriting! On the internet many sources use poor samples that were written by inexperienced writers. Other sources offer samples for a certain amount of money. But on our site all samples are totally free! All of our writers are professionals in their field of study and you can be sure that our samples meet academic standards of writing.

Please, consider the fact that your college requirements for reviews may differ from those applied to our sample. The tutor’s requirements should be always in first place. Just remember this while reading.

In the end, we ask you not to copy these samples to your paper to avoid plagiarism. We know that writing a review is hard work, and we have made all possible to ease your writing process. Discover new ideas and approaches to write a movie review on your own with the best short movie review examples on payforwriting!