Expressing Critical Opinions: Two Movie Reviews

And, as you’ll see in the mentor texts below, you can have fun even when you make it formal. Not only are you “allowed” to write in the first person (“I”) and give your honest reactions, but doing so is actually central to the task. Even if you’re just writing a short review of, say, the place you go to get your car’s oil changed, a strong point of view helps.

If you don’t believe us, check out these tips for reviewers from Yelp, including:

The best reviews are passionate and personal. They offer a rich narrative, a wealth of detail, and a helpful tip or two for other consumers.

Think about your recent experience at a business — could you put details in there that would help future consumers like you?

To write a great review, however, you’ll have to go even further. You’ll have to do what Jon Pareles, a Times critic who reviews popular music, describes as combining “the details of the individual experience — the close-up — with a much broader picture of what the experience means.”

Back when we ran our very first Review Contest, in 2015, he explained it like this:

Reviews are where an experience meets ideas. You go to a concert, a movie, an art exhibition, a restaurant, and it makes you think. Maybe the experience is a catalyst for a brand-new idea; maybe it crystallizes something you’ve been thinking about for a while. It becomes something worth writing about.

The job of the reviewer is to get both the experience and the ideas into words — and into proportion. In some ways, a review is the same as reporting: The facts have to be correct and presented in a coherent way. And in some ways, a review is very different from reporting: Your subjective experience and your reactions — intellectual, emotional, visceral — are a big part of it.

The best criticism merges the details of the individual experience — the close-up — with a much broader picture of what the experience means. It’s not just about that concert or art exhibit. It’s about how to listen or how to look. It’s about changing the perception your readers will bring to the next experience because your ideas awakened theirs.

Yes, that’s a tall order. You need to select your details. You need to make sure your ideas are clearly expressed. You need the writing itself to be engaging, to be worth that reader’s attention. It can be serious, a little poetic, even funny — whatever communicates the ideas.

The Times reviews 14 categories of creative expression — books, music, movies, theater, television, comedy, fashion, architecture, dance, the visual arts, video games, restaurants, hotels and technology — and you can choose a work from any of those broad categories to be the subject of your own critique. In this edition of our Mentor Text series we focus on movie reviews, but the skills you’ll observe and apply here are the same ones you’ll use to write about any genre.

Happy reviewing!

Before You Read

Think of a movie you have watched recently and about which you have a strong opinion. Your pick can be a new release or an old favorite, and it can be a film you loved or one you loathed — just make sure it’s one you remember fairly well.

First, take a minute to jot down a few notes about this film. What was your opinion of it? Why? What details do you remember best?