Art of Communication

COM382

COM382 : The Class : Art of Communication

Film: The Art of Communication

MOVIE REVIEW ASSIGNMENT

Overview

Each student will write a 500 to 750 word movie review of your semester project web site film. Your reviews will be linked to your AFI film home page. You will electronically turn in three "drafts" of the movie review. Each "draft" is expected to be of the highest quality. The first two will be graded, commented on and returned to you, so that you can improve and become a better writer.

All assignments are due by 11:59 p.m.on the due date. The same penalties as described in the COM 382 Semester Project apply to the movie reviews. The due dates and value of each review is:

September 29 15 points

October 20 25 points

November 10 50 points

The Review

A film review is a critical analysis of a movie. The purpose is for you to articulate your thoughts and impressions about a film in a way that brings the movie’s significance and your feelings about the movie into focus.

A movie review is your own personal, subjective response to a film, supported by objective facts, grounded in a careful description and selection of evidence from the film you are writing about. Focus on a few key examples and develop those fully.

Begin your film review with a grade. Grade the film on a five-point scale, with five being the best and one being the worst. Your group’s grading icon is to be consistent. That means, everyone in the group will use stars, or an A to F scale, or Alfred Hitchcock heads, or a popcorn box or whatever you come up with.

In a film review you must make mention of the key filmmakers, including the director, major stars, the screenwriter and any others – composer, cinematographer, costume designer, editor, etc. – who you believe made a significant contribution to the movie.

A movie review is not a long plot summary, although you will probably need to include a brief plot description without giving away the ending,

For purposes of this class, your review should have a thesis statement.

Because some of you will not be able to italicize or underline titles for your electronic submission, all film titles are to be in quotation marks.

Be precise. When describing a scene or an image, do not settle for vague recollections. To that end, you should see the movie more than once.

Your review should include some analysis of literary and/or technical elements found in the film.

While this is quite a bit of information to include, how you structure the review is up to you. Some of these elements can be said very briefly. Some you may leave out entirely.

For each draft of the review, plan to write, review, edit and rewrite again.

Click on the Following for some movie review samples:

E-mail Paul Helford at Paul.Helford@nau.edu
Call Paul Helford at (520) 523-9312

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