#firstworldprobs

"Ugh I don’t know what movie to watch! #bored #firstworldprobs"

I’m sure a few people have come across a tweet similar to this one, if not multiple of them. I think we all come across that problem every once in a while, the desire to go see a movie but without the clue as to which one to buy the ticket for. So what do we do? We ask our friends or look up reviews online to get an idea of it’ll be a waste of money or not. Movies are a cultural facet of storytelling that has progressed from word of mouth and drawings to moving pictures in high-definition and quality surround sound; and people just like re-telling a story to a friend are going to review them for others. That’s what I wanted to focus on, how different people review this common movie culture and how that review comes off to readers. I recently saw the movie Warm Bodies and personally really enjoyed it, so I decided to pick that movie as a basis for picking my reviews to analyze.

The first blog I choose to analyze is The Movie Blog because I would think the author, as a Canadian independent filmmaker and a journalist, would give a quality review given his job. The first thing I noticed was the Twilight-like picture in the blog and sure enough that’s how John Campea started off. If you haven’t been around the internet, you should know that people tend to mock Twilight and its love story, as well as Kristen Stewarts lack of facial expression. So for the review to open up to a comparison of that, with a given example picture that looks creepily similar to the Twilight posters, it doesn’t set up the most ‘Yeah! Let’s go see this!” impression. As he goes on he uses words such as “tolerable” and “sometimes very enjoyable” which really doesn’t help the case of the movie at all with the negative connotation. I mean really, who wants to go see a movie that is described as just ‘tolerable’? Moving down the lines of text and accompany pictures, Campea starts to develop the idea that the movie is good and that the style kept his “interest the entire time”. He sets up a picture in your mind of the zombie movement in the second to last paragraph as he calls in his own, and most of society’s, idea of a zombie walk and attributes and how this movie doesn’t follow along that path. I think his testimony of seeing and enjoying it and not to go in as a zombie movement critique is a good way was well received to readers. I particularly like when he described it as having “comedy and drama…inconsistently spread…in a good way” because it’s an honest way to get the point across. Campea also used pictures with captions underneath that were question comparisons that would definitely draw you into reading it if you hadn’t yet.

The next blog Pink is the New Blog doesn’t give of the more professional vibe that the other one did and all I know about the author is that he is a runner and he goes by Trent. He starts off opening the review with a snippet of his day, which was apparently frustrating, and then goes off into talking about the movie, which was a lot shorter than Campea’s. He uses similar pictures as the other blog, but gives off a negative take on the movie throughout the blog rather than enjoying it. This vibe is given by his word choice of “wears thin”, “hurts”, “decent” and “weak”, as well as making only a paragraph of the blog about the movie and the rest on his day. As a reader looking for a good movie this would turn me off of the movie because it seems Trent pays more attention to the day then the movie itself, and even then he doesn’t give it much credit. He does use pictures of the movie but those are overshadowed by pictures of the beach he spent the day at. Overall his lack of enjoyment of the movie is dully noted and in comparison to Campea, lacking in evidence and thorough review of all points. Both reviews get their point across of whether they would recommend the movie or not through their overall tone. All and all this common cultural facet of movie-watching can be reflected in people’s reviews, and that either draws people into this culture or turns them away, which can be reflected by both reviews I found.