Chapter 3: Words
How to write a good film review
Here is some bad news: no one can tell you how to write a good film review.
Worse still, there will be days when you’ll feel like you’re simply not good at writing. Most days, possibly. You won’t know how to write. And you won’t know why.
Writing is hard. Writing about writing is hard too. Why is it so hard?
When you try to pin down a ‘process’ for writing, you’re forced to face the fact that there is no method to the madness. Those good reviews you wrote last month weren’t the result of any consistent creative approach. That was just you being lucky.
And in a way, it’s sort of true. There is no formula to follow. And your past success isn’t a guarantee that you’ll be that good next time.
Yet here is some good news.
1. The more you practice, the luckier you will get. To the point where it stops being luck. Even if it often still feels like it is.
2. When you see other people’s writing, you’re just seeing the finely polished end result, not the mess and mistakes that those writers stumbled through to get there.
Writing is hard for everyone. It’s important that you understand this, so that you understand it’s not about you.
When you’re learning something, you typically go on this journey:
Unconscious incompetence: you suck and you don’t even know enough to know why
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Conscious incompetence: you suck and you know why
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Conscious competence: you’re good and you put a fair bit of effort into it
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Unconscious competence: you’re so good now it’s just a reflex
Writing is hard to teach, because backtracking through this journey is pretty much impossible. It’s not like learning a recipe, a language, a dance or a musical instrument. You’re not following a system or drilling techniques. You’re never really ‘conscious’ of how you’re writing or how you’ve written. Writing, especially when it’s going well, tends to happen when you’re in a flow state.
However! What follows are some principles.
We can’t reduce writing to a logical step-by-step system. But we can have principles and tips to guide us in finding our own way. Hopefully these ideas will help you to write good film reviews.
This is a guide, not a blueprint. It’s subjective and non-exhaustive. As ever in life and learning, you should follow Bruce Lee’s mantra: “Take what is useful, discard what is not, add that which is your own.”
Just know that writing will often be a challenge. You’ll have to explore and get lost and fail. Know that you’ll often struggle. Say yes to it. You’ll always find a way through. And you’ll always, always improve.
Anyway.
Here we go!
1. How to start
Writing is mostly rewriting. So for starters, just get something on the page. Get whatever’s in your head out of your head.
Once it’s on the page, you can start moulding it like clay: pull it apart, move bits around, add stuff, take stuff away. When they’re on the page, words and ideas are much easier to work with.
One of the great things about writing a review is that you never start with a blank page. You took notes during the movie, right? Type them up. And you’re off.
2. You need a hook
The very first words of your review need to work incredibly hard. You need a great opener. It should have energy and a promise. It should create curiosity. It should earn your reader’s attention. It should throw out a hook.
It doesn’t take much to do this. Just give them something – anything – to care about immediately, before giving them the drier info like plot.
Do not open with plot summary. Do not do this!
And really try not to start your opening sentence with a name (place or person). It’s boring. You can get away with this, sometimes. Usually when it’s the name of a famous person. But if you do decide to open with a name, keep the sentence short.
It’s worth remembering advertising godhead David Ogilvy’s famous belief that “five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.” And that science clocks our attention span at eight seconds (one second less than a goldfish).
Figuring out how to open your review can be the very hardest bit. You’ll try 50 different ways before striking gold. It’s always worth the dig. Often you’ll find your opener buried somewhere in the middle of your review. A great line that deserves to lead. Drag it out, stick it up front and see what happens when you do.
Whatever it is, your opening few words should have something – an insight, some humour, suspense or colour – that makes a reader feel compelled to read the next sentence.
Assume that if you don’t give them a reason to keep reading, they will bounce.
3. Lose the plot
The worst reviews are simply plot synopses wearing a hat and some cheap shoes. A line at the beginning, a line at the end, a big chunk of plot description in the middle. Short ‘capsule’ reviews are the worst culprits at this.
You need to weave the plot in. Be clever about conveying what the reader needs to know about the story. This takes more effort. But you must try to do it.
Do not open with plot summary. Do not write a thick paragraph of plot summary. These things are fatally boring and totally unnecessary.
Wikipedia can give people an in-depth plot synopsis. That’s not your job. Don’t waste words on plot details that aren’t really necessary to convey. Give them enough to know what the movie is about. Give them as little as you can beyond that.
People are buying a cinema ticket to discover the story for themselves.
Obviously, obviously, do give them some plot. And give it to them early in the review. Assume they haven’t seen the movie. Tell them what the movie is about. Don’t give them an in-depth analysis without ever explaining what‘s going on.
Do readers need to know all the characters' names? Probably not. Especially not in a short review. You’re trying to give the reader some insight with every single sentence.
Finally: do not open with plot summary.
4. Structure
No matter how exciting your words or opinions are, your review will always feel a bit boring if your structure is boring.
Structure is how you organise your review. It’s the particular path you choose to lay for your reader.
A final payoff that chimes with your opener is a lovely thing, for example. Chunks of plot that are truck-dumped into the review are less so.
We’ve already begun talking about two ways to create an interesting structure.
When you find ways to weave the plot into the review, so that it becomes supporting sinew for your criticism, you naturally begin to create an interesting structure.
When you open with a bang – say, with a point that originally seemed to belong in the middle of your review – you have already created an interesting structure.
Storytellers do this all the time. Random example: JJ Abrams begins M:I:III with the most electrifying scene in the entire film, which occurs half way through the story. As Jean-Luc Godard said, “A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. But not necessarily in that order.”
Your review is like a little story you’re telling the reader. Trey Parker and Matt Stone sum up a great way of thinking about structure: “And” vs “But” and “Therefore”.
Whatever you do, try to make each sentence or paragraph tee up the next. Whatever you do, do not break your review into sections that focus on an element of the filmmaking: the direction, the performances, the score. This is bad. Weave it.
To talk more about structure, I’ve dissected one of my own reviews. Here’s a breakdown of a Django Unchained review.
5. Find your angle
So far, we’ve talked about two problems you have to solve each time you write a review. How to start. And how to take your reader on an interesting path through your review. You can solve both these problems simultaneously – if you go at it from an angle.
Film criticism is all about taking an angle. Few things are duller than a person without an opinion or a review without an angle. An angle gives people something to discuss, to think about, and to agree/disagree with. Something to respond to. For you, it’s another cure for writer’s block – it gives you something to write about.
What’s your angle on this film? How do you figure that out?
Films aren’t just for looking at. Films say something. All films, whether they realise it or not, are saying something. They could be talking inwardly about cinema (the film itself, other films, people who make films, people who watch films) or outwardly about the world (which is to say, the people in it).
Ask: what is this film saying? It might not be what you’ve been led to expect. Dr Strangelove is supposed to be a war comedy. But it’s actually Kubrick’s sex movie. Eyes Wide Shut looks like Kubrick’s sex movie. But it’s actually about money.
Context is your key to unlocking an angle. Historical, personal, cinematic. Context delivers meaning, always. Much of the way you will analyse films will be ‘intertextual’, which means putting them in the context of other films. This is a huge part of your read on a film.
But things get really interesting when you put films in the context of ideas that are taking place in the world.
Every film was made at a certain moment in history. Knowingly or unknowingly, it will in some ways reflect that moment in history. Movies illuminate the fears, desires and values of the culture that created them. It’s for you to consider how.
Being able to appreciate a film’s technical artistry plays into this. You’re not simply asking, ‘How is this film shot and edited?’ But more importantly, ‘What is it in service of?’ And even more importantly, ‘Is the screen saying the same thing as the script? Or is something else going on here?’
Look closer. What things can you see? It doesn’t matter if the filmmakers intended them. If you’ve seen something in a film, it’s there. If anyone sees something in a piece of art, that thing exists.
What’s important here? What’s interesting? What’s special? What’s new? What’s good and what’s bad? Why?
You’re not a fan. You’re a film critic. Go at it from an angle. Back up what you say with strong, smart reasons. All that good stuff you’ve been learning since the Knowledge chapter.
This guide isn’t called ‘How to read a film’. But that should get you started.
6. Don’t pick a fight with writer’s block
There are already too many books on this subject, so let’s just go with the magic bullet: if you hit a brick wall, just stop.
Go and do something else. Anything else. Take a walk. Do the washing up. While you’re doing that, your unconscious will be beavering away on your film review like some AI super-computer that’s testing every possible outcome.
Because that’s what your unconscious does. It hates an unsolved puzzle, a half-written paragraph or an unfinished film review. By the time you come back to the review, your brain will have either put a tantalising crack in the problem or straight-up solved it completely.
Don’t try to smash writer’s block. Don’t fight it head on. It will hurt you. Just walk away to pick up a comeback win.
7. Don’t say I
First-person reviews make the review about you. Don’t do that. Make it about the film. Make it about the people you’re writing for. If you’re going to include yourself in the story, it had better be truly in the service of giving the reader a deeper insight into the film. Chances are, you’ve just written “I” or “me” because of your ego.
8. Do some research
What’s the running time? Who was the DoP or editor? Are there any other notable contributors or cameos? Is there anything significant about the ‘making of’ story that feeds into this? The film is never just about what’s on the screen. Do some research around the film, see what you discover, and don’t be afraid to sprinkle it in if that’s useful. (Watch the trailers, too.)
9. Be nice
Do you ever think about how many people it takes to make a film? So many workers and artists have given so much time – weeks, months, years of their lives – to make even the worst film you can remember seeing. The vast majority of them did so with good intentions.
Remember this. Honour the many good intentions that were behind the film. Don’t just dash off a dismissive burn because it makes you feel clever and superior.
If you ever visit a film set, you should get an instant sense of this. But if you’ve ever stayed to watch the full credits on a film, you should already know it.
It can take thousands of people thousands of hours of hard, passionate work to make the film that you dismiss with a 100-word, two-star review that took you 10 minutes to write.
If the film that emerges sucks, say so. But don’t delight in sticking a knife into its ribs. You’re not contributing anything useful, you’re not proving Roosevelt wrong and you’re not helping people to love film more.
That’s right, your one-star or two-star review should still be trying to make me love film more.
Take a moment to remember all that stuff from the Passion chapter. Do you spark joy? If not, we thank you and drop you into the furnace.
Four steps to criticising with kindness.
Believe it or not, you can be kind and critical at the same time. In fact, you should be. Philosopher Daniel Dennett offered these four steps to being a kind critic:
1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
Being funny helps a lot, by the way.
You’re not here to destroy a thing that was made, you’re here to create more understanding about it. Your review should never feel like an attack.
No one quotes him on it, but just before he launched into his famous ‘Man in the Arena’ speech, good old Teddy Roosevelt said this: “The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities – all these are marks, not ... of superiority but of weakness.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once said, “If you absolutely can't tolerate critics, then don't do anything new or interesting.” Most of us don’t do things we should because we’re afraid of what other people might say about us. This is a destructive force and not something for you to be part of.
Fortune-cookie final thought: what’s ‘wrong’ with something (or, indeed, someone) can often be what’s most worth exploring.
10. No spoilers
Do not tell them the twist. Do not even tell them that there is a twist. Don’t steal it from them. There may be lots to say about what happens, but you’re taking more from the watcher than you’re giving them back. Leave it. Let them be rug-pulled and blindsided.
Same goes for any major plot points. Unless you’re writing pure analysis for a journal (e.g. Sight & Sound), your job is to synopsise (invented word?) and critique without spoilers.
If you really have to — and if your editor is cool with it — you can drop a spoiler warning and literally tell your reader not to read your review until they’ve seen the film.
11. Witty ≥ smart
Don’t try to be a smart critic. Try to be a witty critic. A witty review is, by definition, a smart review. Exhibit A: there will never be a better line written about zombies on trains.
12. Wear your intelligence lightly
Particularly when you’re starting out, you will have a powerful urge to show the world how credible you are. You will want to do that by dropping hardcore cine-references. Resist! Smuggle your knowledge in.
Don’t try to look clever or write clever. You are not at university. Don’t use words like “discourse” and “dialectic”. Be very careful with words like “interrogate” and “deconstruct”. If you’re going to quote Deleuze or Bazin, your probably need to wash it down with a really good joke.
Remember who you’re writing for and who you’re here to serve. Show that you’re writing for them.
Rather than trying to signal how smart you are, think about how to make the reader smarter. Be the writer that makes them excited to discover something they didn’t know or haven’t seen.
If you’re making them feel stupid, you are failing. You’re not helping them love film more. You’re putting them off cinema.
13. Tell the truth
More specifically, tell your truth. That’s the thing that no one else can do. When you watch a film, no one else sees it quite like you. Your review doesn’t need to be definitive from start to finish. It just needs to give your perspective. You’re the only person on earth who can give that.
There’s only one Apocalypse Now. But every person who sees it, sees a different Apocalypse Now. This is very exciting. But it gets even more exciting. Every time you see Apocalypse Now again, it will be different again. Films are always changing, because we are always changing. You will always see every film anew.
Express yourself honestly. That and helping people are probably the only things worth doing in life.
In his introduction to the fourth edition of his famous reference book, author David Thomson lamented the title change from A Biographical Dictionary of Film to The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. It was never meant to be definitive. Rather, it was an open invite for everyone else to have such honest opinions.
Thomson’s takedown of Chaplin is a great example:
“In truth, Chaplin is the looming mad politician of the century, the demon tramp. It is a character based on the belief that there are ‘little people’. Whereas art should insist that people are all the same size.”
You don’t have to agree with that to respect it.
Especially when you’re starting out, it will be very tempting to echo the consensus in order to sound credible or astute. Some people will also be tempted to be contrary in order to sound different or daring. You don’t need to do that either.
If you watch a Godard film and find yourself thinking, ‘This is pretty slow…’, that’s fine! It doesn’t mean you’re dumb or wrong.
If you’re honest and considered, you can’t be wrong about a film. Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael both slated 2001: A Space Odyssey. Their reviews are good reviews. Maybe, in years to come, the world may decide you were the one who was right.
“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” — Bertrand Russell
New contributors are the lifeblood of any art. Film criticism is no different. No matter how many people are already writing about film, there will always be room for your unique voice. This is your review. There are many like it but this one is yours.
14. Do not use semicolons
“They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”
Kurt Vonnegut there, in slightly less gender-aware times, talking about this winker ;
Semicolons are the most elegant piece of punctuation in the English language. And you never need to use them.
Because, almost as much as typos, semicolons break the spell. They make the reader unexpectedly pause for a micro-second to ask themselves what a semicolon is supposed to make them do, except make them feel a little inferior that they are even asking this question. You don’t need that. Use a full stop or (possibly) a dash instead.
15. The war against cliché
Clichés are words or phrases that have been used and reused until they’ve been pounded into meaninglessness.
They are the mould of writing. Old and bad-smelling, they can grow anywhere, spawning suddenly to ruin their host sentences.
Keep an eye peeled for them and cut them out. Or better still, see if you can ‘re-mould’ them into something fresh.
Don’t feel bad when you notice them appear in your own writing. No one’s writing is immune. Clichés are a completely natural part of the writing process. In fact, the more frequently you write about films, the harder it is to stop your hands from typing them.
Your favourite critic writes clichés all the time. You just never see them, because the best critics will have killed them or transformed them as part of the writing process.
Here are just a few examples that should make you angry when you read them:
“a slice of”
“smorgasbord”
“on [crack/acid/drug you have never done]”
“[something] meets [something]”
“stunning debut”
“instant classic”
“hilarious”
“hits it out of the park”
“gem”
“ultimately”
“high-octane”
“rollercoaster ride”
“fun romp”
“for all the family”
“edge of your seat”
“leave your brain at the door”
“does what it says on the tin”
“avoid like the plague”
“bloated mess”
“über-[something]”
“seminal”
“rip-roaring”
“titular”
“myriad”
“veritable”
“fever dream”
“plethora”
“star-studded”
That’s enough now. Oh, and be careful with words like “epic”, “masterpiece”, “classic” and “iconic”. They’re borderline cases. And watch the alliteration, too. Sprinkle that stuff like very expensive truffle dust.
16. Beware hyperbole
The modern culture of hyperbole is transforming our language. It has literally changed the meaning of the word ‘literally’.
We now live in a world where everything is “awesome”. So what do you call something when it actually is awesome? Tell me, was this movie really “astonishing”? Were you genuinely astonished? Have you really seen enough films — enough of the right films — declare that movie “a masterpiece”?
I know. We want our reviews to be exciting. We want to make people excited about the film. We want to write gorgeous, blazing sentences. But this desire often results in a film that’s more fun to read about than it is to watch.
Hyperbole isn’t healthy. It leads to inflated expectations and erodes trust. It leaves you nowhere to go when you really do want to praise something. And it also leaves you with that nagging sense that you just didn’t quite tell the truth. Perhaps worst of all, it rots the meaning and power of words themselves.
Again, this is about choosing the right words. You’re trying to find words that exactly capture a performance or a scene or a feeling. I hear you. It’s hard to get it right. It’s easier not to. That’s why so many film reviews aren’t good. Come on, you can do this.
17. Sentences
Avoid loooong sentences. They are a big problem. The longer a sentence runs, the more it sags under its own weight, the more steam it loses on the journey. After about 25 words, your reader is begging for a full stop.
Then again, short sentences, if that’s all you use, are like someone on their first driving lesson. A herky-jerky, surge-and-stall experience that’s just not very enjoyable. Even normal-length sentences are boring if that’s all you use.
What we’re really talking about here is rhythm. The secret heartbeat that drives every form of great creative expression. You need to develop a sense of it in your writing. Mix it up with short, medium and long sentences. You’ll find that it instantly makes your reviews more compelling to read.
From here, you can consider how you’ll control the rhythmic energy of your writing according to the kind of film you’re reviewing. Maybe writing about a Mike Leigh film in short, punchy sentences would make less sense than if you used longer, flowing sentences. But maybe not. You be the judge.
18. Somethingly somethings
Somethingly somethings’ are two words jammed together, often in a weak attempt to jack up the second word. Worse case, those two words are antithetical (“brilliantly dark”) or tautological (“hilariously funny”).
PR and marketing people love to use somethingly somethings on film posters. If you use them, you are a publicist in disguise.
You’re going to want to emphasise stuff. Just be precise about it. This is about choosing the right words rather trying to bail out an imprecise word by putting “stunningly” in front of it.
19. Final checks
When you finally finish your review, everything in your being will be telling you just to email it or publish it or whatever you need to do to be shot of it. You must fight this. In a perfect world, do these three things. At the very least, do one of them.
a) Spellcheck. Just do it.
b) Final read-through. Go do something else for a bit, then come back and do a final read-through of your review to catch any typos, missing words or other weird mistakes. You will almost definitely find something.
c) Read it out loud. Film is a primarily visual art. But writing is a musical art. Words make sounds. We don’t say that words ‘read’ badly, we say they ‘sound’ bad. To know if your writing sounds good, read it aloud. You’ll hear if words chime or clunk. You’ll run out of breath on sentences that are too long. You’ll expose two words that might not look weird together but do sound weird. You’ll hear repeated words that you maybe couldn’t see when reading.
Keep an eye/ear out for:
- Repetitions
- Long sentences
- Clunky words
- Boring bits
20. Shorter is usually better
If you’ve been commissioned by a publication, you’ll have a word limit. Stick to it. If it’s too short, they have to pad it out. If it’s too long, they have to chop it back. This will not make you or them happy. If you’re commissioning yourself, keep it short. There’s nothing worse than a sprawling blog post.
Brevity might just be the secret.
It is not only a great gift to your reader but to you too. It will force you to be a better writer. Brevity will force you to do many of the things this guide suggests. You will say more with fewer words. You will choose sharper words. You will be less indulgent. You won’t waste words on plot. And so on.
It also increases the likelihood your review will be read. Until you’re established (and maybe even then), people are far more likely to read your finely chiselled 150-word review than your doughy 1,500-word review.
“Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.” (“I only made this letter longer because I did not have the time to make it shorter.”) — Blaise Pascal, 1656
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IN SUMMARY
- Writing a good film review is an art not a science. This is just a guide. Suggestions not rules. Nothing here is really True.
- Writing a good film review can be hard. For everyone. Don’t be hard on yourself.
- You don’t have to remember any of this stuff. Most of it is now in your head, floating around your unconscious. And it’s really your unconscious that does the writing, not ‘you’.
Just write. Write a film review. Don’t try to make it perfect. At the end of every sentence, you can remind yourself that, though it doesn’t feel like it, you’re already a better writer than you were before that sentence began. Now write another review. Grow. Enjoy. Repeat. You can stop whenever you like.
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