The previous movie review, The Avengers, is a movie that I didn’t get around to reviewing until about 18 months after I had originally seen it. Which indicates
to me my project of trying to review every movie I see might be
breaking down.
It’s not
that I haven’t had any free time for the last 18 months. Procrastination has also been a
factor. And limited powers of focus and
concentration—the idea that even if I have 10 hours free a day, I’m only able
to focus and be productive for a small proportion of that time.
But at any
rate, I’ve come to the conclusion that my project of writing lengthy reviews of
every movie I watch might be unsustainable.
On the
other hand, as troublesome as it is to write all these reviews, I do really
like keeping a record of everything I’ve watched, and my thoughts on it.
So, I’m
going to try and keep the best of both worlds here by just posting short
capsule reviews from here on out.
Here’s my idea for the future:
Each review
will contain a body which will be no more than 100 words. And I plan to be strict on myself about this.
However, in
addition to the main body, I’ll give into a little bit of self indulgence by
allowing me to add in these extra optional categories, with the following
self-imposed rules:
Why I Saw This Movie: Often there will
be more than one reason that I’ll see a particular movie, but no more than one
sentence per reason
My History with this Movie: No more
than one sentence.
Positive points and Negative Points:
I’ll present this in bullet form. As
many bullet points as I like, but no more than one sentence per point.
Related Posts: A self-indulgent
allowance, allowing me to link back to any past blog posts I feel might be
relevant.
Related Links: If there’s any other
links on the web (e.g. another reviewer I particular agree with), I’ll link to
that in this section.
Rating: I have previously avoided
initiating a rating system in my reviews, because I thought it impossible to
reduce movie to a rating. Every movie is
a combination of things that worked and things that didn’t mixed in with the
subjectivity of the viewer (what mood you were in that day, whether you were in
the target audience for this film, how many times this year you’ve seen similar
movies, et cetera.)
However, in
the interest of making my reviews less long-winded and more succinct, I’m going
to swallow my objections here and try and assign every film a rating as a
short-hand way of reviewing it.
I’ll be
assigning each film a rating of 1 to 10 stars. With the option of adding a one
sentence explanation of the rating.
And
finally, Other Things I Would Write
About if I wasn’t Limiting Myself to 100 Words: for movies where it’s
really killing part of me to limit myself to 100 words, I might add a section
of other points I wanted to talk about. But limit myself to one sentence per point.
In order to
avoid procrastination, another rule is that the movie review has to go online
as soon as possible after having seen the film—either written immediately
afterwards, or sometime within the following 24 hours. (An exception is when I don’t have Internet
access immediately—I’m still publishing this blog largely out of Internet Cafes. But as soon as possible at
any rate.)
Then, once
the initial capsule review is published, I’ll have the option of going back
later and doing another long form written review of the movie if I want
to. (For 99% of the movies I see, I
doubt I’ll want to. But the option will
be there just the same.)
********************************************************
My book reviews can also get pretty long winded, and can also consume a fair
amount of my time. But for now I’m going
to apply the capsule review system only to movies, and stay with the old
lengthy reviews for books.
I enjoy
writing the book reviews more—I find it intellectually rewarding to put some
energy into engaging what I read, but I’m not sure I can say the same thing for
movies.
Besides
which, I’m such a slow reader that there’s never too much danger of getting
overwhelmed by book review projects. It
usually takes me about 6 weeks or so to finish a book. Movies, on the other hand, I’m capable of
watching several in a day if I don’t restrain myself.
**************************************************************
A list of all the movie reviews I've done thus far (under the old system) is here. New movie reviews will continue to be indexed here.
Update (March 17, 2015)
I'm going to adjust the rules slightly here. In cases where I have a lengthy history with the movie, I'll allow myself more than one sentence. But each point has to be contained in one sentence. For example if there's a movie I remember from both early childhood and late adolescence, I'll allow myself one sentence for each recollection.
Also for positive and negative points, I'll give myself two sentences for each point--I've been finding that sometimes I need one sentence just to set up the point, and then another sentence to explain why I find it positive or negative.
Link of the Day
'Obama Should be taken before ICC for the war on terrorism ' Chomsky to RTAnd Must-see morning clip: Fox News is threatened by the word “holiday”
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