Film Review Research

I've looked at "Empire" film review and "Rotten Tomatoes" both online reviews. I picked these two because I wanted to experience two types of reviews, as Empire have a print based magazine version coexisting with their online counterpart and will have a more professional style of reviewing than R T as they are based off user reviews and casual critic reviews.

Empire:
Empire use a very sophisticated language style; the pace of the writing is swift and smooth whilst always referring back to film throughout the review. However although the language is at a high level in generally steers clear of film terms such as mise-en-scene etc as it knows that their target audience may not understand these terms.
"In a way, the story is practically a Biblical parable, since it involves many of the elements you might find in the scriptures: hubris, repentance and deliverance."

This is an example of the level of review that Empire exhibits as it delves deep into the plot. Empire succeeds highly in portraying when a viewer will watch the film what its likely they will think and feel.

The review looks over the entire plot line and highlights the better and worse points of the film. Empire writes in a respectful way, always complementing where deserved and not mocking too much when a film is rated low. Although a pun here or there is always present.

Overall: Empire writes in an elegant manner so its easy for the reader to trail through whilst getting a good understanding on what the films about and if its made well. Humour is sometimes used to engage the reader into an laid back, social manner.

Rotten Tomatoes:

It can be seen from looking at the main web page for RT that they do things a little differently, detailed by their rating system (Rotten or Fresh.) Although I'm a little unsure of what details a good film, with the two sub ratings I'm pretty sure a rotten 10% for Little Fockers isn't great. Especially with my first hand experience of that film being that upon exiting the cinema feeling somewhat deflated and wincing at the thought of the ticket price, a rotten 10% seems to sound fairly accurate regardless of its ambiguous nature.

Almost instantly my first thoughts are is that RT is a website to engage viewers, with various polls, picture galleries and film news floating in and around various sub-sections, I root around to find what their take is on the new and highly rated "The King's Speech." (Below)

RT tends to conducts their film reviews to be very much publicly controlled as users are allowed to post their own thoughts on films in little snippet quotes. Furthermore they incorporate the views of top critics and other film reviewers giving it a very collective and perhaps reliable rating base. However it doesn't quite help me in as it wont directly fit to what I have to produce for my ancillary task.

Rotten Tomatoes:

(Click to enlarge)

Magazine:
Due to Rotten Tomatoes not really fulfilling one portion of my research I've decided to look at Total Film magazine. I bought a copy of their latest film review magazine and jotted down some notes about how they write in a informative yet informal manner. It's as if they are having a conversation about the film with you.

Furthermore I've noted how TF lays out their bigger reviews on double page spreads and carefully position images and certain chunks of information in and around the main article and image. This gives the article a layered depth whilst not cluttering it too much so that its overpowering.