Dueling Movie Reviews

I like to read movie reviews because it's an art to be able to describe why a movie is or isn't good. While at Snow College in my very first film class, my teacher required us to write reviews of the movies we watched. We couldn't just say we liked the film, we had to describe why. Which meant we had to look deeper into our thoughts and put those thoughts to words.

I never really excelled at this. I can read a review and think "Yes! That's exactly what I was thinking. This reviewer has captured my exact thoughts."  I have a hard time making my thoughts and feelings be coherent sentences. Maybe they've used too much CGI, or the characters seemed one-dimensional, or the story was rudimentary, or the director cobbled scenes together oddly. I'm not good at making that sound like a review.

But others are. I wasn't planning on seeing Maleficent because it just didn't appeal to me, so I felt ok reading a review for it at The Atlantic. The reviewer did not care for the movie; they said the directing was bad, there was too many special-effects  and the actors in their roles were awful. I like this review because it expressed thoughts I imagine I would have about the film. (I don't hate CGI, but I definitely think they should be used less, and this reviewer captured my sentiments perfectly). Read the review here.

Then I mosied over to NPR and read their review of the film. All the things that the other reviewed disliked about the film this review loved. She gushed about the director, Angelina Jolie, the story, the CGI-battles and the actors. Read that review here.

I love these opposing reviews and the different perspectives they have on the exact same piece of work.