Do you read film reviews? If so, do you read them before or after you see a particular movie? How much do reviews influence whether you go to see a film? What sources—for example, Rolling Stone or the Los Angeles Times—do you like best for film reviews?
A film review—or a review of any product, restaurant, or performance, for that matter—is at its heart a persuasive genre. Reviewers evaluate with the purpose of influencing readers to accept their judgment on the item or work they’ve reviewed.
Most film reviews, such as the ones you read in The New York Times, for example, are written by journalists with knowledge of film; these reviews are aimed at a popular audience. The purpose of this type of film review is to persuade readers to see (or not see) a movie that’s out in the theaters. Popular film reviewers include critics such as Roger Ebert, Joel Siegel, Lisa Kennedy, Kurt Loder, and David Edelstein. Their reviews appear on TV, in popular newspapers and magazines, and online. Audiences expect these reviews to be of films that are either just out in theaters or just out in DVD form, so they have the kind of currency associated with journalism. Just as a newspaper editorial covers current events, reviews that appear in newspapers cover current films.
Other film reviews are written by scholars for academic audiences and are known as “film criticism.” Scholarly film critics write to persuade their readers—not so much to see or not see a film—but to accept their interpretations of it. As authors, film critics are similar to writers of peer-reviewed journal articles in terms of purposes and audiences. In their reviews, film critics draw on established theory developed by scholars who have studied film in depth. They include Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, and Phillip Lopate; their reviews appeared in publications including the Journal of Film and Video (published by the University Film and Video Association) and Film Comment. Because a film critic doesn’t seek to persuade audiences to attend specific films, the currency of the film discussed is not as important as it is in a journalistic review aimed at a popular audience. While a journalistic film reviewer might review the rerelease of the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, a film critic would take a different angle, examining the career of Quentin Tarantino, for example.
In this section, we focus on the journalistic film review geared toward popular audiences.