Okay, let's get something off the table. I have had a difficult time with movie reviews since I started this blog back in '08. Here's my problems:
(1) They take freaking forever to write. I'll admit to you that most Retrospace posts take around 30 minutes to put together. I've been writing them nearly every day for four years, so I've got it down to a science. Movie reviews, for some reason, take a goddamn lifetime. By the time I'm done with it, I feel like I've written a doctorate dissertation and I never want to see the movie again.
(2) I have such low brow tastes in films that you end up getting an overly long essay on movies like Screwballs and Count Yorga. The type of people that like Screwballs (myself included) are not the type who want to read an in-depth analysis of the film. And I don't like critically acclaimed, highly regarded films that would warrant a detailed study. I'll leave that to serious movie critics; meanwhile I'll be watching Cannonball Run II.
(3) I don't think I'm particularly good at writing them. I tend to bore myself with the scene by scene transcription. In a review of the Gore Gore Girls I tried to write like Henry James (famed author of The Bostonians and Turn of the Screw) in a desperate attempt to keep myself interested. Needless to say, it was a failure. In a review of Hardbodies, I actually tried to review in the voice of an evolutionary biologist! Good God, you've got to give me points for trying!
In a final act of desperation, I started the "Gilligan's Instant Queue" posts. In these posts (of which there are only three), I decided to give short reviews via a silly set of ratings criteria ("badassitude", "frightiousness", "disturbulence", etc.) For once, the posts didn't take hours to write, and I actually had fun doing them. Even better, you readers seemed to like them.
However, I'm not happy with the lame ratings system, and I hate that I have to limit myself to Instant movies. Yet, I feel like I've finally got a handle on how to put together a movie review...
(1) It's got to be super short. I'll leave the long thought-out reviews to the movie blogs.
(2) It's got to have lots of eye candy (i.e. screen captures). I enjoy making them, and my pathetic attention span wanes when there's not lots of images.
and (3)..... well, I thought I'd leave that to you. Please flood me with suggestions. What would you like to see in a review (bearing in mind that I stand firm on points 1 and 2)? What information would you like to get from a "review"? Trivia? Notable nudity? A short synopsis?
Give me a hand here, folks. The last thing we want is for another movie review in the voice of Henry James.
-Who was naked and how much was shown?
ReplyDelete-The monster was a guy in a rubber suit (good), an actual animal/bug superimposed onto the film as to appear gigantic (great), or $1M computer generated (snoozarino)?
-The soundtrack. Theramins and Moogs (fanfuckintastic), '70s deep tracks of rock, disco, or funk (outa sight), or rap (what the fuck would you watch anything with rap in it?)?
-If the nudity was decent, tell us that part again, Uncle Gilligan.
Mammaries, Monsters and Music. Check.
DeleteThe finest review of a film I have ever read. Encountered it years ago and it has never left my consciousness:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ruthlessreviews.com/1609/death-wish-3/
Read the review. I can't compete with that - however, it damn sure makes me want to see the movie!
Delete"People are shot, stabbed, thrown from rooftops, raped, set on fire, hit by cars, beaten with chains, blown up, punched, kicked, and strangled. Old women are bludgeoned, old men knocked to the floor with 2X4s, and defenseless teenagers stabbed in the neck. Big-titted whores run topless through the streets, men are chased by gangs bearing plungers, and no-good punks are attacked by screaming women armed only with brooms."
Click. (that's the sound of me adding it to my Netflix queue)
How much value the movie has in retroview? That is: impossible hairstyles, surrealistic clothing, eye-melting paperwall...
ReplyDeleteNice. Retrospace is just the type of place to make the wallpaper an integral part of a movie review.
DeleteI want:
ReplyDelete1) Fun to read (I think you've got that down).
2) Enough info for me to decide if it's a movie I want to watch. Is it just an empty-headed fun time? Is it grim or gory? Does it star Warren Oats or Joe Don Baker or Tanya Roberts? That kind of stuff.
3) Lots of screen caps.
4) Early appearances of now famous people.
I know what you mean about movie reviews taking forever to write. I was going to do 50 Greatest Films at one a week last year or the year before, and I only have about half-a-dozen done.
I actually made a blog in the hopes of doing movie reviews and I just hadn't gotten around to it, mostly because a lot of the movies were either VHS or those cheap-o 50 movies for 1 dollar packs. I feel like without a lot of pictures, I can't make a movie review that is very compelling to read. :/
ReplyDeleteWith low-brow guilty pleasures, there's no point in thoroughly dissecting the movie because it never deserves that much attention. I think it's best to stick to:
ReplyDeletea) the unintentionally funny bits,
b) the unintentionally cool bits, and
c) why you can't resist watching it.
That shouldn't take too long. And, oh yeah, screen cap samples of the funny and cool bits.
the girl with the blue football shirt looks like she needs one of those "suddenly shapelier bras.
ReplyDeleteYay, another "low-brow, I don't know much about them book-learnin' movies" movie reviewer. Fuck it, you're everywhere anymore, I can walk into a bar and get that garbage. My advice – don't review movies, just say you like everything and be done with it. Christ, you've put together a wonderful website, you've got a brain in your head, watch Psycho then watch Halloween and tell me that Psycho isn't worlds ahead. Look at the camera work, listen to the music, the acting the script. It isn't snobbery to prefer the critically acclaimed movie, it's common sense and a decent sensory system in your head. Sheesh.
ReplyDeleteSheesh is right. I don't know what to say except, why are you here? Basically everything on this site is low brow. There's no shame in reveling in it. Indeed, you could say that people in the seventies had a "lust for low brow". It's a blue collar ethos, not necessarily the bourgeois posturing that you judge it to be.
DeleteYou go watch The English Patient and feel good about yourself. Meanwhile, I'll be having a blast watching Smokey and the Bandit. Movies, after all, can be fun.
Psycho being compared to Halloween? WTF, they're not even in the same category. Why not compare To Kill a Mockingbird to Robot Monster, both genius at their own game.
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ReplyDeleteFor some reason this reminds me of the slogan of our local easy listening radio station in the 60's and 70's : "Music for the middlebrow".
ReplyDeleteThe English Patient? Blecch! I'll join you watching Smokey & the Bandit. I can enjoy a piece of shit as well as the next guy but not to the exclusion of great movies, which is what you attempt to do here. You come off as an antisnob snob and I'm not buying it, you seem too perceptive to me in your write-ups, that's all I'm saying.
ReplyDelete