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How to Write a Film Review: Preparation, Steps, Examples

• by Anastasiya Yakubovska
• 06.10.2022 10.05.2024
• How to write ...

How to write a film review (true, professional, and comprehensive) and not be limited to the phrase “What a great movie!”? In this article, you will find answers to the next questions:

• How long is a movie review? 
• How many paragraphs does a movie review have? 
• Features of the Film Review 
• Functions of the Movie Review 
• How to Write a Film Review: Preparation for Writing 
• 10 Questions You Need to Answer Before You Start Writing a Movie Review 
• How to Write and Structure a Film Review: Step by Step 

What Is a Film Review?

A film review is a critical judgment or discussion that informs about the release of a new film and contains its analysis, assessment, summary, as well as personal impressions and experiences after watching.

How long is a movie review?

On average, the length of a film review is about 1000 words.

How many paragraphs does a movie review have?

It is recommended that the film review should consist of 5-7 paragraphs.

Read also article “How to Write a Book Review: Step by Step and Examples”.

Features of the Film Review

A film review is a persuasive piece of writing, it has some features as:

• A less formal style of writing. 
• You need to write objectively about the film. 
• But, on the other hand, movie reviews contain personal thoughts and feelings. 
• The film review’s audience is wider and more diverse. 

Movie reviews can be written by two groups of reviewers: professional critics and ordinary consumers. Therefore, the text of the review will differ. In the first case, when the reviewer is a professional critic, he will describe the movie instead of evaluating it. While consumer critics mostly write from a personal perspective. 

What is the main purpose of a film review?

The main purpose of a film review is to inform readers about the film (what can expect from it) and to help them determine if they want to watch the movie. 

Functions of the Movie Review

The film review performs several functions at once: it informs, analyzes, persuades, and entertains. If you can include all of these points in your review, then you will have an excellent result in the end. 

How to Write a Film Review: Preparation for Writing

Writing a review is, of course, a creative process, but you should not forget about the analytical approach to creating a convincing and high-quality text. You must take the work responsibly, which we will do now.

To write a professional film review, you first need to complete the following preparation steps:

• Of course, the first step is to find a film, if it has not been previously chosen by the manager/client/boss. There will be more chances to write a good review if the film was liked by both – film critics and you personally.
• Watch the movie at least 2-3 times. After the first viewing, you will get a general impression of the picture, and try to fully immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the film. Pay attention to the details the next time you watch it: the sound, the actor’s play, the editing, the plot. 
• If you have difficulty understanding the events covered in the film (for example, historical), be sure to find additional information and research the topic.
• If after two viewings you still do not have a final assessment of the film in the form of a brief thesis, watch the film again. You can look at other works of the director who worked on this film, this will help you determine his characteristic style. Also, as an option, you can look at the game of actors in other films (for comparison).
• When watching a movie, take notes: key scenes, interesting plot twists, inconsistencies, details, and quotes. Then, based on them, you can build a review text, and a good quote can become an excellent epigraph.
• Find information about the filming: location, duration, season, details about the filming process, difficulties the production team faced, casting, etc. Such information will make the review more attractive to readers.
• If the film is nominated for awards and prizes, please include this information in your film review. For a potential viewer, such an assessment of the film will be a weighty argument in the direction of -> compulsory viewing.

10 Questions You Need to Answer Before You Start Writing a Movie Review

• Does the film split into multiple parts? A sequel, prequel, or one of the movie series? 
• What is the film genre (action, comedy, historical, drama, fantasy, Western, political, thriller, gangster, horror, tragicomedy, romance, sports, mystery, science fiction)? Is the movie based on real or fictional events?
• Did the screenplay writer create an exciting plot?
• Is the rhythm of the film slow and quiet, heavy and static, or chaotic and frantic?
• What is the film’s rating according to the MPAA? ( G – General Audiences. All ages admitted. PG – Parental Guidance Suggested. PG-13 – Parents Strongly Cautioned. R – Restricted. Under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian. NC-17 – Adults Only.) 
• Are there any films with a similar/same theme? Sometimes it is worth mentioning some of them in a review, as a comparison.
• How can you characterize the work of a cinematographer? How accurately are the most expressive compositional, lighting solutions, as well as camera angles, selected and embodied?
• Is the film entertaining or covers a serious themes?
• Was the casting successful? Did all the actors cope with their roles?
• Is the atmosphere of the film tense, mysterious, sinister, relaxed, or romantic?

The answers to all of the above questions will help you understand how to write a film review, and above all, create a draft version of your future review. But, of course, this is not enough for the final result.

How to Write and Structure a Film Review: Step by Step

Writing a film review is a long and complicated process. Therefore, it is better to break it down into stages and move step by step. This will help you not to get lost and not get confused in the details.

• The catchy introduction.

The introductory part of the review should contain important information about the film: title, director, release date, and genre. 

You can mention nominations and awards, as well as indicate the box office (if the numbers are impressive) and the cast. 

In addition to “technical” aspects and a simple presentation of the plot, it is necessary to express your impression of the film in the form of a thesis, for example, to tell:

• about the connection of the film’s central idea with current events and social problems;
• about the similarity of the film’s plot with a personal life situation, personal experience, and feelings;
• about the connection of technical elements (lighting, sound, editing) with the theme of the film.

2. Pass the verdict.

Do not torment the reader and express your opinion about the film in the first paragraphs of the review.

You should not leave all the most interesting “for later”. If you decide to give a final assessment of the film at the end of the review, what are the chances that the reader will read to this end?

3. Write a summary of the plot.

Choose 4-5 main events.

Avoid the film’s ending and spoilers. Keep the intrigue. If you want to spoil and share an unusual story development, warn the reader about this.

4. Bring the feelings.

In addition to presenting the plot of the film, you should add emotions to the text of the review and show what you felt while watching it.

5. Define the main purpose of the movie. 

Perhaps the film’s purpose is hidden in its plot. Or maybe the film does not pretend to solve global problems at all. Perhaps the film is entertaining, and this is its advantage – it is relaxed and simple.

Sometimes the main idea of a serious and deep film can be found in an interview with a film crew, a screenwriter, or a director.

6. Add some details of the filmmaking process. 

It is important to know the measure and not to overdo it with the terminology. Here’s what you can write about:

• Cinematography: visual mood, lighting elements, shot sizes and widths, camera angles, etc. 
• Sound. The main goal is to create the necessary atmosphere in the film. Sound in movies includes music, dialogue, sound effects, ambient noise, background noise, and soundtracks. 
• Editing is the creation of a finished motion picture from many shot scenes. A film editor must creatively work with the layers of images, story, dialogue, music, pacing, as well as the actors’ performances to effectively “re-imagine” and even rewrite the film to craft a cohesive whole.
• Mise-en-scène (from French – placement on the stage) is the mutual arrangement of the actors and their environment on the set, natural or pavilion. Mise-en-scene includes landscapes, visual effects, the psychological state of the characters, etc.

7. The deep meaning.

You may be able to spot specific symbolic items, repetitive moments, or key phrases that give depth to the film.

8. Give examples.

It is not enough to say “ an excellent game of actors ”. Explain what exactly caught your attention (appearance, facial expressions, costumes, or movements of the actor). 

9. A convincing conclusion.

Write about the moments in the film that made the biggest impression on you. Share a recommendation. To whom and why do you advise to watch this movie?

10. Reread the review text several times .

Edit, and correct mistakes that can spoil the impression even from a professionally written film review.

Examples of Film Reviews

To consolidate the received information, let’s move from theory to practice. Below are two examples of film reviews.

Apocalypse Now

Review by Roger Ebert

Francis Ford Coppola’s film “Apocalypse Now” was inspired by Heart of Darkness, a novel by Joseph Conrad about a European named Kurtz who penetrated to the farthest reaches of the Congo and established himself like a god. A boat sets out to find him, and on the journey the narrator gradually loses confidence in orderly civilization; he is oppressed by the great weight of the jungle all around him, a pitiless Darwinian testing ground in which each living thing tries every day not to be eaten.

What is found at the end of the journey is not Kurtz so much as what Kurtz found: that all of our days and ways are a fragile structure perched uneasily atop the hungry jaws of nature that will thoughtlessly devour us. A happy life is a daily reprieve from this knowledge.

A week ago I was in Calcutta, where I saw mile upon square mile of squatter camps in which hundreds of thousands live generation after generation in leaky huts of plastic, cardboard and scrap metal, in poverty so absolute it is impossible to see any hope of escape. I do not mean to equate the misery of those hopeless people with a movie; that would be indecent. But I was deeply shaken by what I saw, and realized how precious and precarious is a happy life. And in such a mood I watched “Apocalypse Now” and came to the scene where Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) tells Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen) about “the horror.”

Kurtz is a decorated hero, one of the best soldiers in the Army, who has created a jungle sanctuary upriver inside enemy territory, and rules Montagnard tribesmen as his private army. He tells Willard about a day when his Special Forces men inoculated the children of a village against polio: “This old man came running after us and he was crying, he couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile, a pile of little arms. . . .”

What Kurtz learned is that the Viet Cong were willing to go to greater lengths to win: “Then I realized they were stronger than we. They have the strength, the strength to do that. If I had 10 divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment.” This is the “horror” that Kurtz has found, and it threatens to envelop Willard, too.

The whole movie is a journey toward Willard’s understanding of how Kurtz, one of the Army’s best soldiers, penetrated the reality of war to such a depth that he could not look any longer without madness and despair.

The film has one of the most haunting endings in cinema, a poetic evocation of what Kurtz has discovered, and what we hope not to discover for ourselves. The river journey creates enormous anticipation about Kurtz, and Brando fulfills it. When the film was released in 1979, his casting was criticized and his enormous paycheck of $1 million was much discussed, but it’s clear he was the correct choice, not only because of his stature as an icon, but because of his voice, which enters the film from darkness or half-light, repeating the words of T.S. Eliot’s despairing “The Hollow Men.” That voice sets the final tone of the film.

Film review: example

Diana biopic Spencer wobbles between the bold and the bad

By Nicholas Barber

You may feel that you’ve had enough of Princess Diana’s story on the big and small screens, what with Naomi Watts taking the role in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s awful Diana in 2013, and then Emma Corrin playing her in the most recent season of The Crown, with the mantel set to be passed in Elizabeth Debicki in the next run. But, to give it its due, Pablo Larraín’s Spencer marks the only time the People’s Princess has been shown delivering a lecture on Anne Boleyn to an old coat that she has just stolen off a scarecrow, and then having a chat with the ghost of Boleyn herself shortly afterwards. The Chilean director doesn’t go in for conventional biopics, as anyone who has seen Jackie (starring Natalie Portman) or Neruda will know. And here again he has gone for a surreal portrait of his iconic subject. The snag is that his experimental art house spirit keeps bumping up against the naffness and the familiarity of British films set in stately homes, so his psychodrama ends up being both ground-breaking and rib-tickling.

It’s set over three days in 1991, from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day, at Sandringham House in Norfolk. The rest of the Royal Family has arrived for their holiday in a fleet of chauffeur-driven cars, but Diana (Kristen Stewart) rocks up on her own in a Porsche convertible, having taken a detour to visit the aforementioned scarecrow: her dilapidated childhood home, from the days when she was Lady Diana Spencer, is a field or two away from Sandringham. Her late arrival concerns the sympathetic head chef (Sean Harris) and bothers the Scottish army veteran (Timothy Spall) who has the job of ensuring that everything goes the way the Queen wants it to. Her Majesty’s insufferable Christmas traditions include weighing all the guests when they arrive and when they leave to ensure that they’ve been sufficiently gluttonous. But Diana is in no mood for festive japes. Her Christmas present from Charles (Jack Farthing) – a necklace with pearls the size of golf balls – is identical to the one he has given his mistress. And the whisper in the servants’ quarters is that the Princess is “cracking up”. The filmmakers apparently agree.

Steering away from the same territory as The Crown, Larraín and Knight don’t fill the film with awkward meals and heated arguments (although there are one of each of those). Prince Charles does some grumbling, but the Queen has hardly any lines and Prince Philip has none: they are closer to menacing waxworks than people. For most of the time, Diana is either talking to her young sons, her trusted personal dresser (Sally Hawkins) or to herself. It’s interesting, this lack of dramatic conflict and discernible plot, but it can leave the film seeming as listless and purposeless as Larraín’s Diana herself. Her favourite occupation is to wander around the estate until she finds something that has an ominous symbolic connection to her, and then make an unconvincing speech about it. Ah, pheasants! So beautiful, yet bred to be killed!

Stewart is such inspired casting that she makes all this eccentric nonsense watchable. She’s been practising Diana’s signature moves for years – dipped head, hunched shoulders – and she certainly knows what it’s like to put up with intrusive tabloid photographers. She also looks suitably fabulous in the many outfits that Diana is required to wear over the long weekend. And unlike Watts’s performance in 2013, hers doesn’t seem distractingly like an impersonation. Mind you, she delivers all her lines in little bursts of hissing whispers, so if you don’t see it with English subtitles, as its first audiences did at the Venice Film Festival, you might not understand more than half of what she says.

The effect is a bit odd, but there are lots of odd things in the film, not least the tone and the pacing, which lurch around like someone who’s had too much after-dinner port. Between Jonny Greenwood’s squalling jazz soundtrack, the hallucinations, and the blush-making sexual confessions, Spencer is a folly that wobbles between the bold and the bad, the disturbingly gothic and the just plain silly. In some scenes, it’s heart-rending in its depiction of Diana’s self-harm and bulimia. In others, it’s almost as risible as the Diana biopic from 2013, and that’s saying something. I didn’t know any more about Diana afterwards than I did beforehand, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. This is a film that echoes The Shining at the start and 2001: A Space Odyssey at the end. The Crown Christmas Special it ain’t.

Sources of information: 

• “The Film Analysis Handbook” by Thomas Caldwell. 
• https://payforwriting.com/writing/creating-review/how-to-write-movie-review
• www.mtsu.edu
• www.sciencedirect.com/science
• Image:   freepik.com
• Poster from the film Apocalypse Now

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Rotten Tomatoes, explained

Does a movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score affect its box office returns? And six other questions, answered.

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In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes — the site that aggregates movie and TV critics’ opinions and tabulates a score that’s “fresh” or “rotten” — took on an elevated level of importance. That’s when Rotten Tomatoes (along with its parent company Flixster) was acquired by Fandango , the website that sells advance movie tickets for many major cinema chains.

People had been using Rotten Tomatoes to find movie reviews since it launched in 2000, but after Fandango acquired the site, it began posting “Tomatometer” scores next to movie ticket listings. Since then, studio execs have started to feel as if Rotten Tomatoes matters more than it used to — and in some cases, they’ve rejiggered their marketing strategies accordingly.

It’s easy to see why anyone might assume that Rotten Tomatoes scores became more tightly linked to ticket sales, with potential audiences more likely to buy tickets for a movie with a higher score, and by extension, giving critics more power over the purchase of a ticket.

But that’s not the whole story. And as most movie critics (including myself) will tell you, the correlation between Rotten Tomatoes scores, critical opinion, marketing tactics, and actual box office returns is complicated. It’s not a simple cause-and-effect situation.

My own work is included in both Rotten Tomatoes’ score and that of its more exclusive cousin, Metacritic . So I, along with many other critics , think often of the upsides and pitfalls of aggregating critical opinion and its effect on which movies people see. But for the casual moviegoer, how review aggregators work, what they measure, and how they affect ticket sales can be mysterious.

So when I got curious about how people perceive Rotten Tomatoes and its effect on ticket sales, I did what any self-respecting film critic does: I informally polled my Twitter followers to see what they wanted to know.

Here are seven questions that many people have about Rotten Tomatoes, and review aggregation more generally — and some facts to clear up the confusion.

How is a Rotten Tomatoes score calculated?

The score that Rotten Tomatoes assigns to a film corresponds to the percentage of critics who’ve judged the film to be “fresh,” meaning their opinion of it is more positive than negative. The idea is to quickly offer moviegoers a sense of critical consensus.

“Our goal is to serve fans by giving them useful tools and one-stop access to critic reviews, user ratings, and entertainment news to help with their entertainment viewing decisions,” Jeff Voris, a vice president at Rotten Tomatoes, told me in an email.

The opinions of about 3,000 critics — a.k.a. the “Approved Tomatometer Critics” who have met a series of criteria set by Rotten Tomatoes — are included in the site’s scores, though not every critic reviews every film, so any given score is more typically derived from a few hundred critics, or even less. The scores don’t include just anyone who calls themselves a critic or has a movie blog; Rotten Tomatoes only aggregates critics who have been regularly publishing movie reviews with a reasonably widely read outlet for at least two years, and those critics must be “active,” meaning they've published at least one review in the last year. The site also deems a subset of critics to be “top critics” and calculates a separate score that only includes them.

Some critics (or staffers at their publications) upload their own reviews, choose their own pull quotes, and designate their review as “fresh” or “rotten.” Other critics (including myself) have their reviews uploaded, pull-quoted, and tagged as fresh or rotten by the Rotten Tomatoes staff. In the second case, if the staff isn't sure whether to tag a review as fresh or rotten, they reach out to the critic for clarification. And critics who don't agree with the site’s designation can request that it be changed.

As the reviews of a given film accumulate, the Rotten Tomatoes score measures the percentage that are more positive than negative, and assigns an overall fresh or rotten rating to the movie. Scores of over 60 percent are considered fresh, and scores of 59 percent and under are rotten. To earn the coveted “designated fresh” seal, a film needs at least 40 reviews, 75 percent of which are fresh, and five of which are from “top” critics.

What does a Rotten Tomatoes score really mean ?

A Rotten Tomatoes score represents the percentage of critics who felt mildly to wildly positively about a given film.

If I give a film a mixed review that’s generally positive (which, in Vox’s rating system, could range from a positive-skewing 3 to the rare totally enamored 5), that review receives the same weight as an all-out rave from another critic. (When I give a movie a 2.5, I consider that to be a neutral score; by Rotten Tomatoes' reckoning, it's rotten.) Theoretically, a 100 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating could be made up entirely of middling-to-positive reviews. And if half of the critics the site aggregates only sort of like a movie, and the other half sort of dislike it, the film will hover around 50 percent (which is considered “rotten” by the site).

Contrary to some people’s perceptions, Rotten Tomatoes itself maintains no opinion about a film. What Rotten Tomatoes tries to gauge is critical consensus.

Critics’ opinions do tend to cluster on most films. But there are always outliers, whether from contrarians (who sometimes seem to figure out what people will say and then take the opposite opinion), or from those who seem to love every film. And critics, like everyone, have various life experiences, aesthetic preferences, and points of view that lead them to have differing opinions on movies.

So in many (if not most) cases, a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score may not correspond to any one critic’s view. It’s more like an imprecise estimate of what would happen if you mashed together every Tomatometer critic and had the resulting super-critic flash a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

Rotten Tomatoes also lets audiences rate movies, and the score is often out of step with the critical score. Sometimes, the difference is extremely significant, a fact that's noticeable because the site lists the two scores side by side.

There’s a straightforward reason the two rarely match, though: The critical score is more controlled and methodical.

Why? Most professional critics have to see and review many films, whether or not they’re inclined to like the movie. (Also, most critics don’t pay to see films, because studios hold special early screenings for them ahead of the release date, which removes the decision of whether they’re interested enough in a film to spend their hard-earned money on seeing it.)

But with Rotten Tomatoes’ audience score, the situation is different. Anyone on the internet can contribute — not just those who actually saw the film. As a result, a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score can be gamed by internet trolls seeking to sink it simply because they find its concept offensive. A concerted effort can drive down the film’s audience score before it even comes out, as was the case with the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters .

Even if Rotten Tomatoes required people to pass a quiz on the movie before they rated it, the score would still be somewhat unreliable. Why? Because ordinary audiences are more inclined to buy tickets to movies they’re predisposed to like — who wants to spend $12 to $20 on a film they’re pretty sure they’ll hate?

So audience scores at Rotten Tomatoes (and other audience-driven scores, like the ones at IMDb) naturally skew very positive, or sometimes very negative if there’s any sort of smear campaign in play. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But audience scores tend to not account for those who would never buy a ticket to the movie in the first place.

In contrast, since critics see lots of movies — some of which they would have gone to see anyhow, and some of which they would’ve never chosen to see if their editors didn’t make the assignment — their opinion distribution should theoretically be more even, and thus the critical Rotten Tomatoes score more “accurate.”

Or at least that’s what Rotten Tomatoes thinks. The site displays a movie’s critics’ scores — the official Tomatometer — at Fandango and in a more prominent spot on the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes landing page. The audience score is also displayed on the Rotten Tomatoes page, but it’s not factored into the film’s fresh or rotten rating, and doesn’t contribute to a film being labeled as “certified fresh.”

Why do critics often get frustrated by the Tomatometer?

The biggest reason many critics find Rotten Tomatoes frustrating is that most people’s opinions about movies can’t be boiled down to a simple thumbs up or down. And most critics feel that Rotten Tomatoes, in particular, oversimplifies criticism, to the detriment of critics, the audience, and the movies themselves.

In some cases, a film really is almost universally considered to be excellent, or to be a complete catastrophe. But critics usually come away from a movie with a mixed view. Some things work, and others don’t. The actors are great, but the screenplay is lacking. The filmmaking is subpar, but the story is imaginative. Some critics use a four- or five-star rating, sometimes with half-stars included, to help quantify mixed opinions as mostly negative or mostly positive.

The important point here is that no critic who takes their job seriously is going to have a simple yes-or-no system for most movies. Critics watch a film, think about it, and write a review that doesn't just judge the movie but analyzes, contextualizes, and ruminates over it. The fear among many critics (including myself) is that people who rely largely on Rotten Tomatoes aren't interested in the nuances of a film, and aren't particularly interested in reading criticism, either.

But maybe the bigger reason critics are worried about the influence of review aggregators is that they seem to imply there's a “right” way to evaluate a movie, based on most people's opinions. We worry that audience members who have different reactions will feel as if their opinion is somehow wrong, rather than seeing the diversity of opinions as an invitation to read and understand how and why people react to art differently.

Plenty of movies — from Psycho to Fight Club to Alien — would have earned a rotten rating from Rotten Tomatoes upon their original release, only to be reconsidered and deemed classics years later as tastes, preferences, and ideas about films changed. Sometimes being an outlier can just mean you're forward-thinking.

Voris, the Rotten Tomatoes vice president, told me that the site is always trying to grapple with this quandary. “The Rotten Tomatoes curation team is constantly adding and updating reviews for films — both past and present,” he told me. “If there’s a review available from an approved critic or outlet, it will be added.”

What critics are worried about is a tendency toward groupthink, and toward scapegoating people who deviate from the “accepted” analysis. You can easily see this in the hordes of fans that sometimes come after a critic who dares to “ruin” a film's perfect score . But critics (at least serious ones) don't write their reviews to fit the Tomatometer, nor are they out to “get” DC Comics movies or religious movies or political movies or any other movies. Critics love movies and want them to be good, and we try to be honest when we see one that we don't measures up.

That doesn't mean the audience can't like a movie with a rotten rating, or hate a movie with a fresh rating. It's no insult to critics when audience opinion diverges. In fact, it makes talking and thinking about movies more interesting.

If critics are ambivalent about Rotten Tomatoes scores, why do moviegoers use the scores to decide whether to see a movie?

Mainly, it’s easy. You’re buying movie tickets on Fandango, or you’re trying to figure out what to watch on Netflix, so you check the Rotten Tomatoes score to decide. It’s simple. That’s the point.

And that’s not a bad thing. It's helpful to get a quick sense of critical consensus, even if it's somewhat imprecise. Many people use Rotten Tomatoes to get a rough idea of whether critics generally liked a film.

The flip side, though, is that some people, whether they’re critics or audience members, will inevitably have opinions that don't track with the Rotten Tomatoes score at all. Just because an individual's opinion is out of step with the Tomatometer doesn't mean the person is “wrong” — it just means they're an outlier.

And that, frankly, is what makes art, entertainment, and the world at large interesting: Not everyone has the same opinion about everything, because people are not exact replicas of one another. Most critics love arguing about movies, because they often find that disagreeing with their colleagues is what makes their job fun. It's fine to disagree with others about a movie, and it doesn't mean you're “wrong.”

(For what it’s worth, another review aggregation site, Metacritic, maintains an even smaller and more exclusive group of critics than Rotten Tomatoes — its aggregated scores cap out around 50 reviews per movie, instead of the hundreds that can make up a Tomatometer score. Metacritic’s score for a film is different from Rotten Tomatoes’ insofar as each individual review is assigned a rating on a scale of 100 and the overall Metacritic score is a weighted average, the mechanics of which Metacritic absolutely refuses to divulge . But because the site’s ratings are even more carefully controlled to include only experienced professional critics — and because the reviews it aggregates are given a higher level of granularity, and presumably weighted by the perceived influence of the critic’s publication — most critics consider Metacritic a better gauge of critical opinion.)

Does a movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score affect its box office earnings?

The short version: It can, but not necessarily in the ways you might think.

A good Rotten Tomatoes score indicates strong critical consensus, and that can be good for smaller films in particular. It’s common for distributors to roll out such films slowly, opening them in a few key cities (usually New York and Los Angeles, and maybe a few others) to generate good buzz — not just from critics, but also on social media and through word of mouth. The result, they hope, is increased interest and ticket sales when the movie opens in other cities.

Get Out , for example, certainly profited from the 99 percent “fresh” score it earned since its limited opening. And the more recent The Big Sick became one of last summer's most beloved films, helped along by its 98 percent rating. But a bad score for a small film can help ensure that it will close quickly, or play in fewer cities overall. Its potential box office earnings, in turn, will inevitably take a hit.

Yet when it comes to blockbusters, franchises, and other big studio films (which usually open in many cities at once), it’s much less clear how much a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score affects its box office tally. A good Rotten Tomatoes score, for example, doesn't necessarily guarantee a film will be a hit. Atomic Blonde is “guaranteed fresh,” with a 77 percent rating, but it didn‘t do very well at the box office despite being an action film starring Charlize Theron.

Still, studios certainly seem to believe the score makes a difference . Last summer, studios blamed Rotten Tomatoes scores (and by extension, critics) when poorly reviewed movies like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales , Baywatch , and The Mummy performed below expectations at the box office. ( Pirates still went on to be the year’s 19th highest-grossing film.)

2017’s highest grossing movies in the US

But that correlation doesn’t really hold up. The Emoji Movie , for example, was critically panned, garnering an abysmal 6 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. But it still opened to $25 million in the US, which put it just behind the acclaimed Christopher Nolan film Dunkirk . And the more you think about it, the less surprising it is that plenty of people bought tickets to The Emoji Movie in spite of its bad press: It's an animated movie aimed at children that faced virtually no theatrical competition, and it opened during the summer, when kids are out of school. Great reviews might have inflated its numbers, but almost universally negative ones didn't seem to hurt it much.

It's also worth noting that many films with low Rotten Tomatoes scores that also perform poorly in the US (like The Mummy or The Great Wall ) do just fine overseas, particularly in China. The Mummy gave Tom Cruise his biggest global opening ever . If there is a Rotten Tomatoes effect, it seems to only extend to the American market.

Without any consistent proof, why do people still maintain that a bad Rotten Tomatoes score actively hurts a movie at the box office?

While it’s clear that a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score and box office earnings aren't correlated as strongly as movie studios might like you to think, blaming bad ticket sales on critics is low-hanging fruit.

Plenty of people would like you to believe that the weak link between box office earnings and critical opinion proves that critics are at fault for not liking the film, and that audiences are a better gauge of its quality. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, co-star of Baywatch , certainly took that position when reviews of the 2017 bomb Baywatch came out:

Oh boy, critics had their venom & knives ready . Fans LOVE the movie. Huge positive scores. Big disconnect w/ critics & people. #Baywatch https://t.co/K0AQPf6F0S — Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) May 26, 2017

Baywatch ended up with a very comfortably rotten 19 percent Tomatometer score , compared to a just barely fresh 62 percent audience score. But with apologies to The Rock, who I’m sure is a very nice man, critics aren't weather forecasters or pundits, and they’re not particularly interested in predicting how audiences will respond to a movie. (We are also a rather reserved and nerdy bunch, not regularly armed with venom and knives.) Critics show up where they’re told to show up and watch a film, then go home and evaluate it to the best of their abilities.

The obvious rejoinder, at least from a critic’s point of view, is that if Baywatch was a better movie, there wouldn’t be such a disconnect. But somehow, I suspect that younger ticket buyers — an all-important demographic — lacked nostalgia for 25-year-old lifeguard TV show, and thus weren't so sure about seeing Baywatch in the first place. Likewise, I doubt that a majority of Americans were ever going to be terribly interested in the fifth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (which notched a 30 percent Tomatometer score and a 64 percent audience score), especially when they could just watch some other movie.

A pile-up of raves for either of these films might have resulted in stronger sales, because people could have been surprised to learn that a film they didn’t think they were interested in was actually great. But with lackluster reviews, the average moviegoer just had no reason to give them a chance.

Big studio publicists, however, are paid to convince people to see their films, not to candidly discuss the quality of the films themselves. So when a film with bad reviews flops at the box office, it’s not shocking that studios are quick to suggest that critics killed it.

How do movie studios try to blunt the perceived impact when they’re expecting a bad Rotten Tomatoes score?

Of late, some studios — prompted by the idea that critics can kill a film’s buzz before it even comes out — have taken to “ fighting back ” when they’re expecting a rotten Tomatometer score.

Their biggest strategy isn’t super obvious to the average moviegoer, but very clear to critics. When a studio suspects it has a lemon on its hands, it typically hosts the press screening only a day or two ahead of the film's release, and then sets a review “embargo” that lifts a few hours before the film hits theaters.

Consider, for example, the case of the aforementioned Emoji Movie . I and most other critics hoped the movie would be good, as is the case with all movies see. But once the screening invitations arrived in our inboxes, we pretty much knew, with a sinking feeling, that it wouldn’t be. The tell was pretty straightforward: The film’s only critics' screening in New York was scheduled for the day before it opened. It screened for press on Wednesday night at 5 pm, and then the review embargo lifted at 3 pm the next day — mere hours before the first public showtimes.

Late critics’ screenings for any given film mean that reviews of the film will necessarily come out very close to its release, and as a result, people purchasing advance tickets might buy them before there are any reviews or Tomatometer score to speak of. Thus, in spite of there being no strong correlation between negative reviews and a low box office, its first-weekend box returns might be less susceptible to any potential harm as a result of bad press. (Such close timing can also backfire; critics liked this summer's Captain Underpants , for example, but the film was screened too late for the positive reviews to measurably boost its opening box office.)

That first-weekend number is important, because if a movie is the top performer at the box office (or if it simply exceeds expectations, like Dunkirk and Wonder Woman did this summer), its success can function as good advertising for the film, which means its second weekend sales may also be stronger. And that matters , particularly when it means a movie is outperforming its expectations, because it can actually shift the way industry executives think about what kinds of movies people want to watch. Studios do keep an eye on critics’ opinions, but they’re much more interested in ticket sales — which makes it easy to see why they don’t want risk having their opening weekend box office affected by bad reviews, whether there’s a proven correlation or not.

The downside of this strategy, however, is that it encourages critics to instinctively gauge a studio’s level of confidence in a film based on when the press screening takes place. 20th Century Fox, for instance, screened War for the Planet of the Apes weeks ahead of its theatrical release, and lifted the review embargo with plenty of time to spare before the movie came out. The implication was that Fox believed the movie would be a critical success, and indeed, it was — the movie has a 97 percent Tomatometer score and an 86 percent audience score.

And still, late press screenings fail to account for the fact that, while a low Rotten Tomatoes score doesn’t necessarily hurt a film’s total returns, aggregate review scores in general do have a distinct effect on second-weekend sales. In 2016, Metacritic conducted a study of the correlation between its scores and second weekend sales , and found — not surprisingly — that well-reviewed movies dip much less in the second weekend than poorly reviewed movies. This is particularly true of movies with a strong built-in fan base, like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice , which enjoyed inflated box office returns in the first weekend because fans came out to see it, but dropped sharply in its second weekend, at least partly due to extremely negative press .

Most critics who are serious about their work make a good-faith effort to approach each film they see with as few expectations as possible. But it's hard to have much hope about a movie when it seems obvious that a studio is trying to play keep-away with it. And the more studios try to game the system by withholding their films from critics, the less critics are inclined to enter a screening devoid of expectations, however subconscious.

If you ask critics what studios ought to do to minimize the potential impact of a low Rotten Tomatoes score, their answer is simple: Make better movies. But of course, it’s not that easy; some movies with bad scores do well, while some with good scores still flop. Hiding a film from critics might artificially inflate first-weekend box office returns, but plenty of people are going to go see a franchise film, or a superhero movie, or a family movie, no matter what critics say.

The truth is that neither Rotten Tomatoes nor the critics whose evaluations make up its scores are really at fault here, and it’s silly to act like that’s the case. The website is just one piece of the sprawling and often bewildering film landscape.

As box office analyst Scott Mendelson wrote at Forbes :

[Rotten Tomatoes] is an aggregate website, one with increased power because the media now uses the fresh ranking as a catch-all for critical consensus, with said percentage score popping up when you buy tickets from Fandango or rent the title on Google Market. But it is not magic. At worst, the increased visibility of the site is being used as an excuse by ever-pickier moviegoers to stay in with Netflix or VOD.

For audience members who want to make good moviegoing decisions, the best approach is a two-pronged one. First, check Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic to get a sense of critical consensus. But second, find a few critics — two or three will do — whose taste aligns with (or challenges) your own, and whose insights help you enjoy a movie even more. Read them and rely on them.

And know that it’s okay to form your own opinions, too. After all, in the bigger sense, everyone’s a critic.

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Rotten Tomatoes and the Tomatometer score are the world’s most trusted recommendation resources for quality entertainment. As the leading online aggregator of movie and TV show reviews from critics, we provide fans with a comprehensive guide to what’s Fresh – and what’s Rotten – in theaters and at home. And the Tomatometer is just the beginning. We also serve movie and TV fans with original editorial content on our site and through social channels, produce fun and informative video series, and hold live events for fans across the country, with our ‘Your Opinion Sucks’ live shows. If you’re an entertainment fan looking for a recommendation, or to share an opinion, you’ve come to the right place.

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The Tomatometer score – based on the opinions of hundreds of film and television critics – is a trusted measurement of critical recommendation for millions of fans.

Back in the days of the open theaters, when a play was particularly atrocious, the audience expressed their dissatisfaction by not only booing and hissing at the stage, but also throwing whatever was at hand – vegetables and fruits included.

The Tomatometer score represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show. A Tomatometer score is calculated for a movie or TV show after it receives at least five reviews.

When at least 60% of reviews for a movie or TV show are positive, a red tomato is displayed to indicate its Fresh status.

When less than 60% of reviews for a movie or TV show are positive, a green splat is displayed to indicate its Rotten status.

When there is no Tomatometer® score available, which could be because the Title hasn’t released yet or there are not enough ratings to generate a score.

What is Certified Fresh?

Certified Fresh status is a special distinction awarded to the best-reviewed movies and TV shows. In order to qualify, movies or TV shows must meet the following requirements:

• A consistent Tomatometer score of 75% or higher.
• At least five reviews from Top Critics.
• Films in wide release must have a minimum of 80 reviews. This also applies for films going from limited to wide release.
• Films in limited release must have a minimum of 40 reviews.
• Only individual seasons of a TV show are eligible, and each must have a minimum of 20 reviews.

The above requirements for Certified Fresh status are only the bare minimum a film must achieve to qualify for the distinction. A film does not automatically become Certified Fresh when it meets those requirements. The Tomatometer score must be consistent and unlikely to deviate significantly before a film or TV show is marked Certified Fresh.

A Certified Fresh movie or TV season whose score drops and remains consistently below 70% will lose the Certified Fresh designation. The certification removal might not happen as soon as the score drops below 70%; as with CF designation, removal will take place when the score settles.

A movie or TV season that loses Certified Fresh status can regain it by reaching a consistent score of 75% or more and meeting the other minimum requirements.

Rotten Tomatoes has assembled a team of curators whose job it is to read thousands of movie and TV reviews weekly. The team collects movie and TV reviews from Tomatometer-approved critics and publications every day, generating Tomatometer scores. Our curators carefully read these reviews, noting if the reviews are Fresh or Rotten, and choose a representative pull-quote. Tomatometer-approved critics can also self-submit their reviews.

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The Audience Score, denoted by a popcorn bucket, represents the percentage of users who have rated a movie or TV show positively. With films for which we can verify users have bought a ticket, the default Audience Score we show is made up of “Verified Ratings,” which represents the percentage of users who have rated a movie or TV show positively who we can verify bought a ticket; it is displayed once enough of those Verified Ratings are in to form a score. For all other titles, we display an “All Audience Score” that includes ratings from people regardless of whether or not we can currently verify they have seen the movie or show. Titles eligible for Verified Ratings have an All Audience Score, too: To see it, just click on the popcorn bucket and you can toggle between both the Verified Audience Score and the All Audience Score. You can read more about recent changes to the score box HERE .

When at least 60% of users give a movie or TV show a star rating of 3.5 or higher, a full popcorn bucket is displayed to indicate its Fresh status.

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How to write a movie review [Updated 2023]

Writing a movie review is a great way to practice critical analysis skills. In this post, we explore what a movie review is, how to start a film review, and steps for writing and revising it.

What is a movie review?

A movie review is a concise evaluation of a film’s content and formal elements (cinematography, sound, lighting, etc.). Also known as a film review, a movie review considers not just what a film means, but how it means. Essentially, when you write a film review, you are conducting a critical analysis or close reading of a movie.

How to write a movie review

To write a successful review about a movie, you need to evaluate a film’s content, as well as its form. In this section, we break down these two components.

A film’s content includes its plot (what it’s about), characters, and setting. You’ll need to determine the main plot points of the film and how the film’s story works overall.

Are there parts that don’t make sense? Are certain characters more important than others? What is the relationship between the movie’s plot and its setting? A discussion of a film’s content provides good context for an analysis of its form.

Form refers to all of the aesthetic and/or formal elements that make a story into a movie. You can break down form into several categories:

• Cinematography : This element comprises all aspects of the movie that derive from the way a camera moves and works. You’ll need to pay attention to elements like camera angles, distances between the camera and the subject, and types of shots (i.e. close-up, aerial, etc.).
• Lighting : Films use lighting in various ways to communicate certain effects. For instance, noir films tend to utilize chiaroscuro lighting (deep contrasts between light and dark) to express a sense of secrecy or foreboding.
• Sound : The way a film uses sound can vary considerably. Most movies have a soundtrack, sometimes with music composed specifically for the film. Some films play around with ambient sounds or use silence at key points to signify important moments. What is the relation of sound to the image in specific scenes or sequences? Do sounds link images? Does it ever become more important than the image?
• Editing : The movies we watch online or in theaters have been heavily edited in order to achieve a particular flow. When you are preparing to write a movie review, pay close attention to elements like the length of shots, transitions between scenes, or any other items that were finalized after filming.
• Costumes, Props, and Sets : Are the costumes and props believable in relation to the film’s content and setting? Are costumes particularly elaborate or understated?

The important thing to remember when you are analyzing the formal elements of a movie is that every image, sound, movement, and object has meaning and has been planned. Your review needs to take into consideration how these elements work together with the film’s storyline to create a whole experience.

Once you’ve considered both the content and form of the movie that you’re reviewing, you can begin to evaluate the film as a whole. Is it a successful movie? Would you recommend it? Why or why not?

Step-by-step review writing tips

1. watch the movie.

The first time that you watch the movie, look for overarching themes or patterns, and establish what the film is primarily about. Take note of the main characters, as well as the setting.

2. Watch the movie again and take notes

Next, watch the movie again and take notes as you are doing so, keeping in mind the formal aspects discussed above. Write down anything that seems significant.

3. Evaluate the film’s form and content

Using the categories described above, and any handouts or guides provided by your instructor, evaluate the film’s formal elements along with its content. Are there elements of the movie that strike you as unfamiliar or perplexing? Are there elements that are repeated to emphasize a point or perception?

4. Write your review

A good movie review will contain:

• an introductory paragraph that tells the reader what movie you’re reviewing
• a paragraph that summarizes the movie
• several body paragraphs that explore significant formal elements and how they relate to the content
• a concluding paragraph that discusses your overall reaction to the film and whether or not you would recommend it to others

5. Create citations

You’ll need cite the film and any secondary sources that you consulted while writing. Use BibGuru’s citation generator to instantly create accurate citations for movies, as well as articles, books, and websites.

You may also want to consult a guide on how to cite a film in MLA or another major citation style .

6. Revise and proofread

Once you’ve written your review, you should set aside some time to revise and proofread it before you turn it in.

Movie review checklist

You can use this checklist to ensure that you’ve considered all of the formal elements, as well as the content, of the film that you’re reviewing:

🔲 Cinematography (camera moves and types of shots)

🔲 Lighting (natural vs. artificial light, contrasts between light and dark)

🔲 Sound (soundtrack, sound vs. silence, loud vs. soft sounds)

🔲 Editing (length of shots, transitions between scenes)

🔲 Costumes, props, and sets (believable vs. staged)

🔲 Content (plot, characters, setting)

Frequently Asked Questions about how to write a review about a movie

A movie review should contain a brief summary of the film, several paragraphs of analysis that focus on form and content, and a concluding paragraph that sums up your reaction.

Before you write anything, you need to watch the film at least once. Take notes as you’re watching and pay attention to formal elements and patterns. Then, write your review. The final step is to revise your work before you turn it in.

The tone for a movie review should be critical, yet objective. The goal of most reviews is to persuade a reader to either see a film or not.

The best film reviews balance plot summary with critical analysis of significant formal elements. A reader should be able to decide if she wants to see the film after reading the review.

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How to Write a Movie Review

Last Updated: May 2, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Marissa Levis . Marissa Levis is an English Teacher in the Morris County Vocational School District. She previously worked as an English director at a tutoring center that caters to students in elementary and middle school. She is an expert in creating a curriculum that helps students advance their skills in secondary-level English, focusing on MLA formatting, reading comprehension, writing skills, editing and proofreading, literary analysis, standardized test preparation, and journalism topics. Marissa received her Master of Arts in Teaching from Fairleigh Dickinson University. There are 14 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 5,603,911 times.

Whether a movie is a rotten tomato or a brilliant work of art, if people are watching it, it's worth critiquing. A decent movie review should entertain, persuade and inform, providing an original opinion without giving away too much of the plot. A great movie review can be a work of art in its own right. Read on to learn how to analyze a movie like a professional film critic, come up with an interesting thesis, and write a review as entertaining as your source material.

Sample Movie Reviews

Writing an Intro for a Movie Review

• Comparison to Relevant Event or Movie: "Every day, our leaders, politicians, and pundits call for "revenge"– against terrorist groups, against international rivals, against other political parties. But few of them understand the cold, destructive, and ultimately hollow thrill of revenge as well as the characters of Blue Ruin. "
• Review in a nutshell: "Despite a compelling lead performance by Tom Hanks and a great soundtrack, Forrest Gump never gets out of the shadow of its weak plot and questionable premise."
• Context or Background Information: " Boyhood might be the first movie made where knowing how it was produced–slowly, over 12 years, with the same actors–is just as crucial as the movie itself."

• Using stars, a score out of 10 or 100, or the simple thumbs-up and thumbs-down is a quick way to give your thoughts. You then write about why you chose that rating.
• Great Movie: ABC is the rare movie that succeeds on almost every level, where each character, scene, costume, and joke firing on all cylinders to make a film worth repeated viewings."
• Bad Movie: "It doesn't matter how much you enjoy kung-fu and karate films: with 47 Ronin, you're better off saving your money, your popcorn, and time."
• Okay Movie: "I loved the wildly uneven Interstellar far more than I should have, but that doesn't mean it is perfect. Ultimately, the utter awe and spectacle of space swept me through the admittedly heavy-handed plotting and dialogue."

• Great: "Michael B. Jordan and Octavia Spencer's chemistry would carry Fruitvale Station even if the script wasn't as good. The mid-movie prison scene in particular, where the camera never leaves their faces, shows how much they can convey with nothing but their eyelids, the flashing tension of neck muscles, and a barely cracking voice."
• Bad: " Jurassic World's biggest flaw, a complete lack of relatable female characters, is only further underscored by a laughably unrealistic shot of our heroine running away from a dinosaur – in heels."
• Okay: "At the end of the day, Snowpiercer can't decide what kind of movie it wants to be. The attention to detail in fight scenes, where every weapon, lightbulb, and slick patch of ground is accounted for, doesn't translate to an ending that seems powerful but ultimately says little of substance."

• Does the film reflect on a current event or contemporary issue? It could be the director's way of engaging in a bigger conversation. Look for ways to relate the content of the film to the "real" world.
• Does the film seem to have a message, or does it attempt to elicit a specific response or emotion from the audience? You could discuss whether or not it achieves its own goals.
• Does the film connect with you on a personal level? You could write a review stemming from your own feelings and weave in some personal stories to make it interesting for your readers.

Composing Your Review

• When you name characters in your plot summary, list the actors' names directly afterward in parenthesis.
• Find a place to mention the director's name and the full movie title.
• If you feel you must discuss information that might "spoil" things for readers, warn them first.

• Cinematography: " Her is a world drenched in color, using bright, soft reds and oranges alongside calming whites and grays that both build, and slowly strip away, the feelings of love between the protagonists. Every frame feels like a painting worth sitting in."
• Tone: "Despite the insane loneliness and high stakes of being stuck alone on Mars, The Martian's witty script keeps humor and excitement alive in every scene. Space may be dangerous and scary, but the joy of scientific discovery is intoxicating."
• Music and Sound: " No Country For Old Men's bold decision to skip music entirely pays off in spades. The eerie silence of the desert, punctuated by the brief spells of violent, up-close-and-personal sound effects of hunter and hunted, keeps you constantly on the edge of your seat."
• Acting: "While he's fantastic whenever he's on the move, using his cool stoicism to counteract the rampaging bus, Keanu Reeves can't quite match his costar in the quiet moments of Speed, which falter under his expressionless gaze."

• Keep your writing clear and easy to understand. Don't use too much technical filmmaking jargon, and make your language crisp and accessible.
• Present both the facts and your opinion. For example, you might state something such as, "The Baroque background music was a jarring contrast to the 20th century setting." This is a lot more informative then simply saying, "The music was a strange choice for the movie."

• Great: "In the end, even the characters of Blue Ruin know how pointless their feud is. But revenge, much like every taut minute of this thriller, is far too addictive to give up until the bitter end.""
• Bad: "Much like the oft-mentioned "box of chocolates", Forest Gump has a couple of good little morsels. But most of the scenes, too sweet by half, should have been in the trash long before this movie was put out."
• Okay: "Without the novel, even revolutionary concept, Boyhood may not be a great movie. It might not even be "good.” But the power the film finds in the beauty of passing time and little, inconsequential moments – moments that could only be captured over 12 years of shooting – make Linklater's latest an essential film for anyone interested in the art of film."

Polishing Your Piece

• Ask yourself whether your review stayed true to your thesis. Did your conclusion tie back in with the initial ideas you proposed?
• Decide whether your review contains enough details about the movie. You may need to go back and add more description here and there to give readers a better sense of what the movie's about.
• Decide whether your review is interesting enough as a stand-alone piece of writing. Did you contribute something original to this discussion? What will readers gain from reading your review that they couldn't from simply watching the movie?

Studying Your Source Material

• The title of the film, and the year it came out.
• The director's name.
• The names of the lead actors.

• Make a note every time something sticks out to you, whether it's good or bad. This could be costuming, makeup, set design, music, etc. Think about how this detail relates to the rest of the movie and what it means in the context of your review.
• Take note of patterns you begin to notice as the movie unfolds.
• Use the pause button frequently so you make sure not to miss anything, and rewind as necessary.

• Direction: Consider the director and how he or she choose to portray/explain the events in the story. If the movie was slow, or didn't include things you thought were necessary, you can attribute this to the director. If you've seen other movies directed by the same person, compare them and determine which you like the most.
• Cinematography: What techniques were used to film the movie? What setting and background elements helped to create a certain tone?
• Writing: Evaluate the script, including dialogue and characterization. Did you feel like the plot was inventive and unpredictable or boring and weak? Did the characters' words seem credible to you?
• Editing: Was the movie choppy or did it flow smoothly from scene to scene? Did they incorporate a montage to help build the story? And was this obstructive to the narrative or did it help it? Did they use long cuts to help accentuate an actor's acting ability or many reaction shots to show a group's reaction to an event or dialogue? If visual effects were used were the plates well-chosen and were the composited effects part of a seamless experience? (Whether the effects looked realistic or not is not the jurisdiction of an editor, however, they do choose the footage to be sent off to the compositors, so this could still affect the film.)
• Costume design: Did the clothing choices fit the style of the movie? Did they contribute to the overall tone, rather than digressing from it?
• Set design: Consider how the setting of the film influenced its other elements. Did it add or subtract from the experience for you? If the movie was filmed in a real place, was this location well-chosen?
• Score or soundtrack: Did it work with the scenes? Was it over/under-used? Was it suspenseful? Amusing? Irritating? A soundtrack can make or break a movie, especially if the songs have a particular message or meaning to them.

Expert Q&A

• If you don't like the movie, don't be abusive and mean. If possible, avoid watching the movies that you would surely hate. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Understand that just because the movie isn't to your taste, that doesn't mean you should give it a bad review. A good reviewer helps people find movie's they will like. Since you don't have the same taste in movies as everyone else, you need to be able to tell people if they will enjoy the movie, even if you didn't. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Structure is very important; try categorizing the different parts of the film and commenting on each of those individually. Deciding how good each thing is will help you come to a more accurate conclusion. For example, things like acting, special effects, cinematography, think about how good each of those are. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/writing_about_film/terminology_and_starting_prompts.html
• ↑ https://www.spiritofbaraka.com/how-write-a-movie-review
• ↑ https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/9-tips-for-writing-a-film-review/
• ↑ https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/writing-help/top-tips-for-writing-a-review
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/summary-using-it-wisely/
• ↑ https://twp.duke.edu/sites/twp.duke.edu/files/file-attachments/film-review-1.original.pdf
• ↑ https://www.dailywritingtips.com/7-tips-for-writing-a-film-review/
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/writing_about_film/film_writing_sample_analysis.html
• ↑ https://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/onnyx.bei/dual-credit/movie-review-writing-guide
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/conclusions/
• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-a-movie-review/
• ↑ https://gustavus.edu/writingcenter/handoutdocs/editing_proofreading.php
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/editing-and-proofreading/
• ↑ https://edusson.com/blog/how-to-write-movie-review

About This Article

To write a movie review, start with a compelling fact or opinion to hook your readers, like "Despite a great performance by Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump never overcomes its weak plot." Then, elaborate on your opinion of the movie right off the bat so readers know where you stand. Once your opinion is clear, provide examples from the movie that prove your point, like specific scenes, dialogue, songs, or camera shots. To learn how to study a film closely before you write a review, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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A movie review is an article that is published in a newspaper, magazine, or scholarly work that describes and evaluates a movie. Reviews are typically written by journalists giving their opinion of the movie. Some reviews include score (4 out of 5 stars) or recommendations (thumbs up). Since reviews are printed in many different kinds of publications, you may need to search several sources.

A movie criticism is written by a scholar or expert in film studies to discuss the movie within a historical, social, political, or theoretical context. It differs from the opinion or recommendation that a movie review provides in terms of length, content and focus. Criticisms can be found in cinema studies journals as well as discipline-specific sources, depending on the plot or themes of the movie.

Reviews and criticisms are produced after the release of a movie, whether that is its initial release to theatres, or a release in a home video format. Knowing the initial release date(s) will help refine your search. Also note that nationwide release of movies only started in the 1980s; earlier films were released on different dates in different parts of the country. So a movie reviewed in New York City of Los Angeles may not have been reviewed for months or years later in smaller cities. The Internet Movie Database is an excellent source for release dates. Finally, movies can be remade, so you will want to be sure you are finding reviews or criticisms for the correct film; knowing the director or major stars will help refine your search results.

Many sources will only give a citation for the review or criticism. Use that citation to track down the complete text of the article.

Movie review and critique databases

General interest databases.

Reviews and criticisms can be found in general interest databases. Note the date range covered by each database and select ones that cover the time after the release of your movie. Search the title of the movie (as a phrase when possible) and include the director's last name if more than one film by that title exists.

Print indexes

Since most databases cover only more recent years, finding reviews for older movies may require using a print index. Check the catalog record for each index to see if it covers the dates required. Use the volume corresponding to the year of publication for your book and the year or two after.. (Several of these indexes have been moved to off-campus storage; you'll have to request for them to be brought back to Newman to use them.)

Freely available movie review websites

A large number of websites provide access to movie reviews, either the full text of the review, or at least a citation you can use to track down the full text.

• Last Updated: May 9, 2024 9:21 AM
• URL: https://guides.lib.vt.edu/find/byformat

Rotten Tomatoes Ratings — How Does Rotten Tomatoes Work?

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T he Rotten Tomatoes ratings system―good or bad? Well, I’d say it’s a bit better than the original way tomatoes were used to judge entertainment. Because even if we want to throw fruit at the screen, 21st century technology reminds us we don’t have to. Rotten Tomatoes will provide us with a fair Critic consensus before we even get to the theatre (saving us a ton of food and money).

So how does Rotten Tomatoes work, exactly? Is it a reliable judge of… characters … Okay, okay, hold your tomatoes please. Let’s get a behind the scenes look at how it all works.

What do the Rotten Tomatoes symbols mean? Read on

Rotten tomatoes ratings system.

Rotten Tomatoes started in 2000 and it quickly became moviegoers go-to for reviews. But ever since Fandango acquired the company, it’s become even more well-known adding something called a “Tomatometer” score next to every movie and ticket listing. 

Critics have suggested that there is much more nuance and complication when it comes to the correlation between a Rotten Tomatoes rating and ticket sales. And while we will not get into that in this article, I think there is something to be said psychologically about seeing a rating right before you make your choice.

But I digress. 

I know for me, the ubiquitous nature of a Rotten Tomatoes score has made me feel like they hold more weight than they once did. But do they really hold more weight? How is the score actually calculated? And how are critics curated? 

Let's break it down.

Tomatometer Breakdown

Rotten tomatoes rating system, how does the tomatometer work.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating system uses a scale better known as the “The Tomatometer.” This represents the percentage of positive reviews for a given film or show. The Tomatometer score is calculated after five reviews.

As the reviews come in, The Tomatometer measures the positive reviews against the negative ones and assigns either an overall score of fresh or rotten rating to the film or television show. 

A red tomato score indicating its fresh status, is designated when at least 60% of the reviews are positive. 

A green splat indicating rotten status, is displayed when less than 60% of the reviews are positive. 

If there is no score available, it usually just means the movie or show hasn’t been released or there aren’t enough reviews yet. So, now that we know how they’re calculated, who’s doing the reviewing? 

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How Does Rotten Tomatoes Rate Their Movies

How is rotten tomatoes rated .

Rotten Tomatoes is careful in its Critic curation. It won’t include just any critic’s review. It aggregates those who have been regularly putting out movie reviews over the last two years, and those who are considered active by Rotten Tomatoes standards. This just means they’ve published a review within the last year. While there are about 3,000 accepted reviewers (see the Tomatometer-approved critics criteria), usually only several hundred are actively reviewing for any given film. 

Many times, it’s much less. And Top Critics are counted with a separate score. So while the the Rotten Tomatoes rating system is really just general consensus, you can see some of the more renowned critics in a different space.

But it’s not just about the critics! You also get a fully rounded out review because you can also see how the audience feels. 

What is the Tomatometer?

Popcorn rating explained, rotten tomatoes audience score.

This is a great feature of the site because it provides information from everyday moviegoers but also gives you some insight to see how close this score is to the critics’ scores. It can help you gauge if it’s truly a must-see or probably-pass. And it’s calculated similarly to critic reviews.

The Audience Score is designated by a popcorn bucket.

The score is the percentage of users who have rated the movie or show positively. There is also a section for Verified Ratings which includes those that have actually bought tickets. 

To receive a full popcorn bucket , at least 60% of users give a film or show a star rating of 3.5 or higher.

A tipped over popcorn bucket indicates that less than 60% of users have given it a 3.5 or higher. 

The most interesting finds are the ones that have a green splat for critics, and a full bucket of popcorn from the audience. 

While it’s rarely ever vice-versa, it happens, and it’s then when Rotten Tomatoes ratings may seem more subjective, and we wonder if the system works. And while reviews are opinion to some extent, the site boasts something called Certified Fresh, which brings a little more objectivity to the critique. 

Audience Score Breakdown

Certified rotten tomatoes score, what is certified fresh.

What does Rotten Tomatoes mean by Certified Fresh?

If a film or television show is awarded a Certified Fresh status, it’s being acknowledged that it’s met these requirements:

• It has at least five reviews from Top Critics
• A steady Tomatometer score of at least 75%
• Limited release films must have at least 40 reviews
• Wide release films must have at least 80 reviews
• TV shows are eligible by season and must have at least 20 reviews per season

Of course these stats could fluctuate, especially within the first few days or weeks of a film’s release. If it meets these requirements, it is automatically flagged for review.

When the Rotten Tomatoes staff can determine the movie or show is unlikely to fall below these numbers, it achieves its Certified Fresh status.

Similarly, if the Tomatometer score ever falls below 70%, it will lose this status. Because the Rotten Tomatoes ratings system is so general, RT certified fresh consideration gives the site more objective credibility. 

What does Rotten Tomatoes mean for movies

Is rotten tomatoes good for movies.

So, what's the bottom line? With the movie theater business under constant assault from the rise of streaming services, audiences are less and less likely to venture out to the movies. If they do happen to make it outside the house, they'll likely be extra picky about how they spend their money.

Will they choose an "untested" wildcard movie or one that has general approval from fans and critics? The answer is self-evident. On its surface, the Rotten Tomatoes rating system and Tomatometer seem to be a legitimate resource for the discerning consumer. 

However, there is also a legitimate concern for low-budget indie movies who already have the cards stacked against them in distribution. Since they don't have the marketing budget of the Hollywood tentpoles, curious moviegoers have little else to go on besides the Tomatometer. These "little fish" movies live or die by this system, which is ultimately opinion-based and subjective.

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What is a Cliche? Learn from Examples

If you’re a filmmaker or just love the movies, using cliches are a sure fire way to get awarded a nice big green splat, or a tipped over popcorn bucket.  Next up, are some examples of these tired situations and ways to avoid them.

Up Next: Cliche explained →

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[ ri- vyoo ]

• a critical article or report, as in a periodical, on a book, play, recital, or the like; critique; evaluation.
• the process of going over a subject again in study or recitation in order to fix it in the memory or summarize the facts.
• an exercise designed or intended for study of this kind.
• a general survey of something, especially in words; a report or account of something.
• an inspection or examination by viewing, especially a formal inspection of any military or naval force, parade, or the like.

a literary review.

• a judicial reexamination, as by a higher court, of the decision or proceedings in a case.

Synonyms: reexamination , reconsideration

• a viewing of the past; contemplation or consideration of past events, circumstances, or facts.
• Bridge. a recapitulation of the bids made by all players.
• Theater. revue .

verb (used with object)

• to go over (lessons, studies, work, etc.) in review.
• to view, look at, or look over again.

to review the troops.

to review the situation.

Synonyms: criticize

• to look back upon; view retrospectively.
• to present a survey of in speech or writing.

a decision to review the case.

• Bridge. to repeat and summarize (all bids made by the players).

verb (used without object)

He reviews for some small-town newspaper.

/ rɪˈvjuː /

to review a situation

he reviewed his achievements with pride

the general reviewed his troops

• to read through or go over in order to correct
• law to re-examine (a decision) judicially
• to write a critical assessment of (a book, film, play, concert, etc), esp as a profession
• Also calledreviewal the act or an instance of reviewing

a review of the political situation

• a critical assessment of a book, film, play, concert, etc, esp one printed in a newspaper or periodical
• a publication containing such articles

the Saturday Review

• a second consideration; re-examination
• a retrospective survey
• a formal or official inspection
• the process of rereading a subject or notes on it, esp in preparation for an examination Also called (in Britain and certain other countries)revision
• law judicial re-examination of a case, esp by a superior court
• a less common spelling of revue

Discover More

Derived forms.

• reˈviewable , adjective
• reˈviewer , noun

Other Words From

• re·viewa·ble adjective
• re·viewa·bili·ty noun
• re·viewless adjective
• nonre·viewa·bili·ty noun
• nonre·viewa·ble adjective
• prere·view noun verb (used with object)
• rere·view verb
• unre·viewa·ble adjective
• unre·viewed adjective
• well-re·viewed adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of review 1

Synonym Study

Example sentences.

When in doubt, scour budget blanket reviews to make sure the one you’re eyeing will satisfy your dreams.

The task force was meant to conclude its review and give advice in time for administrators to update the 2021-2022 academic calendar.

Marshall wrote in an email to VOSD that the Housing Commission staff have done an expansive review of research and methods other jurisdictions have used.

If your business has a great review rating and flattering reviews, you’re very likely to earn a spot in the Google 3-Pack.

After earning rave reviews early in the pandemic, Newsom is now under heavy fire, even from allies, for his handling of the coronavirus.

In an email exchange a friend said many had repeated this same succinct review but they could never elaborate.

“[I]ndeed, the Civil War was more or less administered from there,” an Esquire review asserts.

The tweets linking to the National Review, that bastion of LGBT equality.

In any case, I welcome the conversation as part of the review of the upcoming slate that we're doing tomorrow.

John L. Smith is a columnist with the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

And now I am going on to a review of the broad facts of the educational organization of our present world.

We haven't even seen a review of the piece; the footlights go up with a jump, and now the curtain rises.

Nothing will be easier then to throw the Poles into the shade of the picture, or to occupy the foreground with a brilliant review.

She did not perceive that she was talking like her father as the sleek geldings ambled in review before them.

It would have been a sort of review—in the face of the city of Dublin, in open defiance of all order and government.

Related Words

More about review, what is a basic definition of  review .

A review is judgement or discussion of the quality of something. Review also means to go over a subject again as part of study or to look at something another time. Review has many other senses as both a noun and a verb.

A review is a critique of something—a look at something’s good and bad points. Reviews are very common in every industry, and many people rely on them to learn more about something they are interested in, especially something they want to buy. A person who writes a review is a reviewer .

• Real-life examples : You can find reviews of almost anything online, such as movies, books, vacation spots, and schools. Websites like Amazon, Google Maps, and Rotten Tomatoes offer reviews of things. Most companies will even boast about good reviews that they get.
• Used in a sentence : I want to see the new movie because I heard it got good reviews. 

Review is used in this sense as a verb to mean to write or otherwise create (like a video) a review of something.

• Used in a sentence : Cho began her career by reviewing television shows for her YouTube channel. 

Review is also used to mean to go over a subject again to master it or to remember the material better. Your school teachers likely reviewed previous lessons with your class more than once before a test. When studying a new language, you will review words and grammar rules many times to help commit them to memory.

• Real-life examples : One of the main reasons teachers assign homework is so students will review the topics they learned that day. College students will often review an entire semester’s worth of notes the night before an important exam.
• Used in a sentence : Diego reviewed the geometry chapters with his tutor to understand the math better. 

Review is used in this sense as a noun to refer to an exercise or session that involves reviewing subject matter.

• Used in a sentence : Prof. Lopez led the review of the properties of the noble gases. 

As a verb, review can also mean to read, view, or look at something again.

• Real-life examples : Someone putting together furniture will likely review the directions many times before they’re done. A chef will review a recipe that they are trying for the first time to make sure they don’t make a mistake. A writer will review their work for errors or grammar mistakes before giving it to an editor.
• Used in a sentence : Lola reviewed her letter to Santa Claus to make sure she included everything she wanted. 

Where does  review come from?

The first records of review come from around 1555. It ultimately comes from a combination of the Latin revidēre , meaning “to see again.”

Did you know ... ?

What are some other forms related to review ?

• reviewer (noun)
• reviewable (adjective)
• reviewability (noun)
• reviewless (adjective)
• nonreviewability (noun)

What are some synonyms for review ?

What are some words that share a root or word element with review ? 

• review copy

What are some words that often get used in discussing review ?

How is  review  used in real life?

Review is a very common word that often refers to criticisms of products or to reexamining information to understand it better.

I’m happy to announce that, after almost a year, I have watched every episode of the Simpsons available on disney+. My review: pretty good. — Mac Bacon (@therealmacbacon) December 1, 2020

Spanish teacher: We’ll review for the exam tomorrow. The entire class: Um the exam is tomorrow? — Carson Artrip (@CarsonArtrip) December 19, 2017

Battery works! Got it up and running. Now I just need to review the directions on how to use the darn thing. — batgrl1970 (@batgrl1970) May 7, 2009

Try using  review !

Is review used correctly in the following sentence?

Most critic reviews of the movie said it was terrible and not worth the ticket price.

Revolver Movie Explained (2005 Film Analysis)

Revolver is a 2005 film by Guy Ritchie, which is a one-time-only Psychological Thriller from the director. While you have to deal with a lot of non-linear storytelling in Ritchie’s films, this one is a mind-bender with plenty going on. The Revolver cast includes Jason Statham, Ray Liotta, Vincent Pastore, André Benjamin, and Mark Strong in central roles. The story is centered on a gambler released from prison who’s looking for revenge. Here’s the plot and ending of the movie Revolver explained.

Hollywordle – Check out my new Hollywood Wordle game!

Where To Watch?

To find where to stream any movie or series based on your country, use This Is Barry’s Where To Watch .

Oh, and if this article doesn’t answer all of your questions, drop me a comment or an FB chat message, and I’ll get you the answer .  You can find other film explanations using the search option on top of the site.

What is the movie Revolver about?

The central theme in the film is “Ego”. Ego is a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance. It is also part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for a sense of personal identity. While the second part of the definition of Ego is essential for everyone, the first part only does more bad than good. In the movie Revolver, their Ego is each one’s arch enemy.

When Egos are at war, people are known for doing things that they later regret. The Revolver movie professes that in a game of con, there is an opponent and a victim. And your own Ego is your opponent, and you become the victim. The film addresses the Ego as a different individual that cons you into believing that he is you. But in reality, your true self is better off without the Ego.

If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are – Mother Teresa.

The other theme is chess – the aspect of plotting, scheming and conning your opponent to take the bait and lose. Let’s now go through the events of the Revolver plot in chronological order.

Revolver Movie: Plot Explanation

Macha and mr. green.

Macha is a gang boss who controls illegal gambling across the city. He has a trio, the three Edies, goons, who are his muscle power. Macha loses his card man and is in the lookout for a replacement. Jake Green is a talented gambler. His brother, Billy, is married and has a daughter. The three Edies harass Billy’s family to force Mr. Green to play for Macha. At one of the games, Mr.Green retorts to an opponent’s insults by shooting him in the foot. In the confusion that follows, the money is gone. Mr. Green is eventually arrested. To ensure Macha’s name doesn’t come out, Billy’s family is kept hostage. Billy’s wife, unfortunately, takes a stray bullet and dies.

Mr. Green is sentenced to 14 years, which is cut down to 7 years because he opts for solitary confinement. In the neighbouring cells, he meets two people – one, a con-man, and the other, a chess player. Mr. Green is in the middle of their conversations passed around inside library books like The Mathematics of Quantum Mechanics.

Who are Avi and Zack in Revolver?

In the ending of the movie Revolver, it is revealed that Avi and Zack are the two prisoners in the adjacent cells. Now, I’m going to on a limb here and say that Avi and Zack are figments of Mr. Green’s mind. The solitary confinement gives birth to these two characters. Through his mental conversations, Mr. Green is able to device a rock-solid formula for the process of conning.

The film provides a few hints for this:

• Towards the end, on the roof, Mr. Green’s Ego says this “Don’t let them play head games with you, Jake.”, to which Avi replies, “Is it me that’s playing head games with you, Mr. Green?”. Avi hears everything inside Jake Green’s head because Avi and Zack are also part of his mind.
• In the end, Avi says this to Jake, “We didn’t do this because we like you. We did this because we are you”. I’d take this literally because it is Avi who keeps explaining that the Ego tricks you into thinking he is you.
• Nobody but Jake is seen talking to either Zack or Avi. There are moments in the film that gives a lot of Fight Club vibes.
• The way I see it, Jake Green’s subconscious is fighting his own Ego. So given that there was no one in the neighbouring cells, no one really escaped. Hence there was no evidence of their existence.

Who took Jake’s Money? Who wiped him clean?

After Jake Green is released, the three Eddies try to kill him. Mr. Green makes a deal with them to give 3-4% interest per month on their borrowed money by quoting that he’s working on a very profitable business. In reality, Mr. Green uses his own money to pay the 3-4% interest to the three Eddies. Slowly, over time, Mr. Green wins their trust, and they start giving him more money. Eventually, they end up borrowing from Macha. When the time is right, Mr. Green elopes with all of the money, and Macha tortures and kills the three Eddies because they are unable to return the borrowed money. 

While Jake Green narrates that Avi and Zack cleaned him out, he actually cleans himself out to get his revenge on the three Eddies for killing his brother’s wife.

Mr. Green becomes rich!

Using the formula that he devised in prison, Mr. Green starts winning big. He becomes rich enough to buy a chain of hotels. After a while, he goes to meet Macha and wins a ton of his money by tossing him for it. Macha is shaken by the lack of fear in Mr. Green. It’s important to note here that Macha, too, is plagued by his own Ego.

Zack makes his entry

Zack meets Mr. Green and hands him a card and says that he can protect him. Soon after, Mr. Green goes unconscious and tumbles down the stairs. The card that Zack gave reads “Take the Elevator”. This is a mental note from Zack because it’s Jake Green’s Ego that doesn’t like Elevators. Jake Green’s mind has already started the process of eliminating his Ego.

Mr. Green wakes up in the hospital, and the doctors tell him they’ll call with the results. When he goes home, Macha’s men attack, and Mr. Green manages to escape because he ducks to pick up a card left on the floor by Zack. After this, Zack shows up and saves Mr. Green and drives him away. Zack is not real, Mr. Green basically shoots his way out of there.

Who is Sorter? What’s up with him?

Sorter is Macha’s hired sharpshooter who is clearly battling his inner demons, his own Ego. It’s revealed that Mr. Green escaped alive because Sorter didn’t have a good feeling about killing him. The card and Zack is just Jake Green’s cerebral drama.

Avi and Jake Green’s medical condition

Zack takes Mr. Green to meet Avi, where they tell him that he’s got a deadly medical condition and will die in three days. This is a little trick that Mr. Green has pulled on himself. By letting him believe that he’s going to die, he is trying to sever the love for his money. Though Jake Green is unhealthy, he doesn’t have any fatal condition. I would imagine that the doctors were paid to lie, but they don’t know who’s paid them.

Why are Avi and Zack making Mr. Green give away all his money?

Now, this is the crux of the whole movie. Jake Green says this – “I know nothing hurts more than humiliation and a little money loss.” that’s his ultimate source of pain. In the end, Avi mentions that Mr. Green’s Ego is hiding behind his pain. So if the pain is surfaced, the Ego will show himself. As a first step towards embracing, Mr. Green is going to go through money loss. That is the reason his money is being given to people under the pretext of a Loan Shark business.

Who is Sam Gold in Revolver?

Sam Gold is not real. It is a persona that everyone aspires to become. He’s an all-powerful, feared man who everybody wants to do business with to become wealthier. Specifically, I believe Sam Gold is Mr. Green’s Ego that has been projected as an alias to everybody. It’s a tactic as part of a fantastical con-act.

Macha wants to make more money and has made a drug deal with Lily Walker, who claims to represent Mr. Gold, but even she has never seen him.

Getting even with Macha – what’s up with the cartoons?

Mr. Green first steals the drugs from Macha. When Macha tries to procure more drugs from a Chinese gang, that deal too is interrupted. Mr. Green (with Avi and Zack) steals both the drugs and the money. This is a severe blow to the Egos of the parties involved – Macha and Lord John (the leader of the Chinese gang). The animation in this sequence is to display an exaggerated version of events that happen. It focuses on the reactions of Macha and Lord John to express the extent of their inflated Egos.

Mr. Green soon finds out that his medical reports are clear, and he’s not going to die. That car crash and rewind scene are to show how Mr. Green has averted his death. He goes over to confront Avi and Zack. Macha’s men chase down Mr. Green. One of them carrying a shotgun accidentally blows his own head open with it, ending the chase. When they go to give Macha the news, a waitress who’s from the Chinese gang prepares to shoot Macha. Sorter sees her and fires at her. Knowing she must have an accomplice, he heads down and kills the getaway driver. Sorter then proceeds to eliminate all others from the rival gang and gets confirmation that Mr. Green has been behind everything.

Revolver Movie Meaning: Plot Twist

On the terrace of a building with a golden glow sign reading DIAMOND, Avi and Zack meet Mr. Green to let him know that the voice in his head is his Ego’s and not his own. Avi explains that his Ego is the enemy and is hiding behind his pain. And that Mr. Gold is simply the Ego that is driving him towards greed and power. Since no one has seen Mr. Gold, I’d reckon that it’s a cipher created by Mr. Green’s Ego to manipulate and control the various gangs. We’re also given a hint that Avi and Zack are not real as they hear Mr. Green’s thoughts.

Mr. Green takes down his Ego (the lift scene on the 13th floor)

Mr. Green evades security and walks up to a sleeping Macha. According to Mr. Green, humiliation, and a little money-loss are the sources of ultimate pain. Though he has a gun, Mr. Green decides to humiliate himself by begging and groveling for forgiveness from Macha. He exits by taking the lift – where he’ll find his Ego. Throughout this scene, you can see how his Ego is furious that he’s losing control. In the end, Mr. Green conquers his Ego, and a strange sense of peace falls upon him. Macha has Mr. Green at gunpoint. Macha’s Ego is scared because Mr. Green shows no sense of fear at all. Macha breaks down as his Ego is unable to handle the lack of power. He ends up screaming, “Fear me!” and that results in nothing. Mr. Green walks away.

Mr. Green takes Macha’s money and makes substantial donations all over the city under Macha’s name. This soon catches the attention of the media. Lily Walker shows up asking why their deal hasn’t concluded yet. She presents him with a wreath as a warning.

Soter’s Ego-Death

Macha orders his men to take Billy hostage to find the location of Mr. Green. You can see that Sorter is battling his own Ego and when they find Billy’s daughter, Sorter overpowers his Ego and begins to shoot at Macha’s men. Though he’s able to kill most of them, he gets killed by the last survivor. Macha’s goon takes Billy’s daughter over to him.

Revolver Movie Ending Explained

The ending of the movie Revolver reveals that Avi and Zack were Jack Green’s neighbours in prison. We also get a strong hint that they are not real and are parts of Mr. Green’s mind. Mr. Green takes Macha’s money to get his niece back. Macha’s Ego is in complete shambles and believes that only death awaits him as he has failed Mr. Gold. His Ego decides it is better to die at his own hands than by another. He imagines Mr. Green taunting him to shoot himself, and Macha blows his brains out.

Earlier Avi explains that the only way to make Jake Green face his Ego was to allow him to embrace his pain through humiliation and money loss. This is something that Macha wasn’t able to do. He continued protecting his Ego till the end and ended up making wrong decisions that put his life in threat. Instead of facing the situation, his tainted Ego pushes him to kill himself, and he does.

Barry is a technologist who helps start-ups build successful products. His love for movies and production has led him to write his well-received film explanation and analysis articles to help everyone appreciate the films better. He’s regularly available for a chat conversation on his website and consults on storyboarding from time to time. Click to browse all his film articles

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What Challengers understands about tennis

This is more than a sports movie – but it's also a film that grasps how uniquely competitive the tennis world is.

By Sarah Manavis

During my decade-long tennis career – in which I invested hours every day in playing, training, and travelling across my home state of Ohio for tournaments and camps; dedicating my whole life and personhood to become a professional in the sport – I was shadowed by one girl, exactly my age, who I met at my first-ever practise court around six years old. This girl (we can call her Molly) went to an expensive private school across town and looked like a tennis player. She was lithe and toned with long legs and surreally long arms. At first, she was better than me. I was shorter, curvier, lacking natural athleticism and more easily rattled. From practise matches after school to formal tournament games, I could never come close to beating her. And yet I was obsessed by the idea of it.

For most of that decade, this idea was a fantasy. But after nine years of losing to her, the gap between us closed. In my final season, in one of my final matches, in a final tie-break set – watched intently by both of our teams – I beat her. The glow of winning was short-lived: I had reached the outer limits of my abilities and six months later, I quit tennis forever. Molly would go on to get a tennis scholarship at a prestigious university, but she also quit the sport before graduating. Last I checked, she was working in corporate communications in the American south-west. It may well be that I was never Molly’s great rival; someone else might have occupied that rarefied space in her mind. But I know we both spent a lot of our parents’ money – and lost years of our youth – to a sport we ultimately couldn’t hack.

I couldn’t get Molly out of my head when watching Luca Guadagnino’s film Challengers , a drama about three tennis players – two professionals, and one who should have been more successful than either of them – and their (sexually charged) interpersonal dynamics. Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist) are childhood friends who both turned pro after attending a formal tennis school together, the latter reaching global fame as the former’s career barely took off. Art’s wife Tashi (Zendaya) was on track to be the real star of the trio but was forced to quit following a knee injury during a match at university, instead becoming Art’s coach and manager. The film is two hours of all three players deliberately pressing on each other’s weaknesses and cyclically succumbing to each other’s strengths, while fully aware of the mental block they have when it comes to each another.

The sex – or the threat of sex – has been the dominant talking point about the film. During much of the press tour, the lead actors have emphasised that while this is a movie about tennis, it’s also not really about tennis at all: it’s about three people locked in a competitive, erotically charged dynamic. While this may be true, tennis is the only backdrop – not just in sport, but any cultural institution in existence – that inherently breeds this single-minded self-obsession and obsessive focus on another single individual sustained over years, if not entire careers.

What makes tennis a uniquely fascinating sport is the solitude of the singles game. You have coaches, practise partners and peers – but on the court, you are your own team. This extends to a fixation on your opponents – and though you may have sets of rivals, even teams of rivals, your nemesis is just that one human being. At every age and every level, everyone striving to reach professional status has a Molly.

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You spend years picking apart and critiquing their game. At times you can’t help but masochistically admire it. You know them intimately, in a way you may not know even your closest friends. Over time, you also learn how the pair of you fit together, like two cogs. And even with all of this awareness, you may still fail to overcome the foundational psychological relationship you built in the early years of play – be it always missing your first serve, sending the ball too wide, or losing, even if you’re the better player.

This fundamental reality of what Tashi calls the “relationship” in tennis is what drives the suffocating exchanges in Challengers . While you get the sense that Art, Patrick and Tashi all understand how they work together and the way they push each other’s buttons, they can’t break out of their dynamics, loathing how it makes them act in ways they wish they could resist. The importance of the mental game is evident in Challengers . The American former world number four Brad Gilbert – who authored the strategy bible Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis 30 years ago – was a consultant on set and trained the three lead actors for three months before filming. While he guided scenes of impressively authentic faux-gameplay, you can’t help but think he was selected precisely because of his notoriety for teaching millions of tennis players about these psychological blocks. He is an expert not on how to be technically better than your opponent, but how to press on their flaws so that they crack, sometimes despite your relative lack of talent.

But what drives the real psychological drama of Challengers is the injury that shapes Tashi’s character, showing us a person more common than any other in the tennis world but rarely ever seen on screen: the nearly-was; the almost-star. The sport, arguably more prolifically than any other, is a graveyard of once-destined professionals who devoted their lives to becoming the best, putting tennis before education, friends or any semblance of self, only to discover they’ll never make it. Many, like Tashi, enter an industry in which every waking moment is an opportunity to witness the glamorous, legendary life that could have been yours. For those who never fully walk away, the agony never ends.

The film’s screenwriter, Justin Kuritzkes, has said Tashi’s character was in part inspired by Roger Federer’s wife, Mirka, after watching her in the stands as her husband competed – deep into his career – in a Grand Slam final. “She looked so stressed out, every point,” he said in an interview with GQ . “I was watching her and just thinking, ‘Why are you so stressed out? You guys have all the money in the world. You’ve won 20 Grand Slams. What’s so stressful to you? It has to be something else.’” He later found out she was a rising tennis star but had to quit after an injury, and became her husband’s manager instead. After minimal digging in the tennis world you will find multiple instances of this spectator story. While Patrick and Art may be each other’s Molly, the tragedy of Tashi’s typical tennis story is the fulcrum on which Challengers pivots.

There is a reason Challengers isn’t about football stars or basketball players – or even about other singles sports, like golf. There’s a reason it doesn’t explore the rivalries and relationships between artists or CEOs. The tennis world fosters a strange, unhealthy form of competition that is hard to find anywhere else.

Challengers is much more than a sport movie, and these characters are fleshed out in greater detail than the typical relationships we see between most tennis players. But it would be wrong to say that this story isn’t about what tennis does to normal people: the ways it binds them inextricably to one another.

[See also: How to fix English cricket ]

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How The Idea of You Changes the Book’s Hotly Debated Ending

Author Robinne Lee shares her thoughts on the book-to-screen switch-up.

Spoilers ahead for The Idea of You , both the book and film adaptation.

In the film, Solène (played by a dazzling Anne Hathaway) and Hayes (a capable, endearing Nicolas Galitzine) decide to end their romance after the widespread backlash begins to affect Solène’s daughter, Izzy (Ella Rubin), at school. But the Prime Video movie jumps forward in its final scenes, and depicts Hayes waltzing back into Solène’s gallery five years after their break-up. He’s eager to pick up where they once left off, especially now that they’re both older and Izzy’s in college. The argument here, of course, is that a 29-year-old Hayes romancing a 44-year-old woman is less controversial than a 24-year-old Hayes with a 39-year-old, and thus the risk of societal ostracism is lower.

I’m not sure how realistic this outcome would be in the actual celebrity industrial complex, which is likely why Lee’s book ends on such a contrasting note. In the novel, Hayes is 20, not yet of drinking age in America. (As in the movie, Solène is 39.) When Izzy’s classmates torture her on account of her mother’s relationship, Solène makes the executive decision to end it. She tells Hayes, “‘I can’t do this to Isabelle. I can’t do this to myself. I can’t follow you around the world. I’m not twenty. I have a career and I have a kid and I have responsibilities. And I have other people who need me.’”

The book ends with Hayes fighting for them to stay together, and Solène wounding him in a desperate bid to cut ties:

“You love me,” he said. “You loved me. You said you loved me. Why are you doing this?”

And I realized, then, that there was only one way to truly let him go. “Maybe it wasn’t you,” I said. “Maybe it was the idea of you.”

This gutting finale upset a number of Lee’s readers, particularly those under the impression that the book was a traditional romance novel. (In publishing, romances—at least those marketed as such—are expected to end with a so-called “HEA,” or Happily Ever After. This is largely considered a hard-and-fast rule of the genre , amongst both readers and industry professionals.) But Lee told ELLE.com she never intended for The Idea of You to be a true romance, but rather contemporary women’s fiction.

“I was really shocked when my publisher packaged it more as a romance,” Lee said, “and then readers who would come to me expecting that it was a romance wanted more, like, ‘Where’s my happy ending? And are you going to write a sequel?’” She continues, “I was like, ‘No, this is a one-off. It’s one story. Not every love story ends happily.’”

For that reason, amongst others, Lee considers the film (and its HEA) “a completely different entity” from the book. “I feel like my book is my baby, and this is its second cousin,” she said. “There’s some DNA, but not really.”

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‘NCIS: Hawaiʻi’ Series Finale Breakdown: [SPOILER] Shows Up, Leaving the Show Ending on a Major Cliffhanger

By William Earl

William Earl

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The sun has set on “NCIS: Hawai’i,” leaving the show on a wild cliffhanger.

The series, which ran on CBS for three seasons, said its final aloha on Monday night with a season finale-turned-series finale.

At the end of last week’s episode, the Compound X bioweapon was in the hands of the nefarious Dr. Annalise Cruz (Rachel Mars), the late Alexi Volkoff’s assistant. She also aimed to take out the NCIS ELITE team, to the horror of Sam Hanna (LL Cool J).

The episode opens with Sam risking exposing himself to Compound X in order to save his team — a heroic but potentially fatal move that his teammates stop him from doing.

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After thwarting a Compound X attack centered at a concert, the agents beat up and shoot some hired goons. Back at the command center, Tala suddenly pops up and holds Carla Chase (Seana Kofoed) at knifepoint, but a recovered Sam shoots her in the head to end things. Hooray!

Our heroes then have a very “Fast and the Furious”-esque surprise party to celebrate a job well done and Sam’s recovery, ending with some speeches that seem like an appropriate, if abrupt, way to end the series.

But then! In the final scene, which felt inspired by the post-credits of MCU movies, Jane heads home, expecting to find her daughter, Julie (Mahina Napoleon). Instead, she walks into the living room and sees Maggie Shaw (Julie White) on the couch! The last time Maggie was on the show, she was on the run at the end of the Season 2 finale — so the past must be racing back.

“You’re probably going to need a drink for what’s coming next,” Maggie says ominously, before the show cuts to credits that will never lead to a resolution.

The end of “NCIS: Hawai’i” also shocked Lachey. The lead took to Instagram Stories to share viewership figures for the sizable audience that the series had attracted, highlighting a four-episode stretch where it drew more than 10 million viewers across linear and streaming. In an earlier post immediately following news of the cancellation, Lachey wrote that she was “gutted, confused, blindsided,” but expressed gratitude to “confident, beloved fans.”

Farewell, “ NCIS: Hawaiʻi .”

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The peanut butter falcon ending explained.

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The Peanut Butter Falcon Review: The Adventures of Huckleberry Zak

Why shia labeouf didn't return as sam witwicky for transformers 4, white house war movie from oscar-winning director reportedly in the works at netflix.

• Friendship, wrestling, and unexpected victories - The Peanut Butter Falcon is a heartwarming and touching adventure for all viewers.
• Tyler's injury leaves questions but his resilience shines through - a true testament to the power of friendship and redemption.
• The film's ending may be abrupt, but it symbolizes growth and new beginnings for both Tyler and Zak, cementing their unbreakable bond.

The Peanut Butter Falcon tells a heartwarming story of friendship, but its ending is a little ambiguous. The 2019 movie follows Zak, a man with Down Syndrome (Zack Gottsagen) who escapes from his care facility hoping to become a professional wrestler. While heading to a North Carolina wrestling school run by his idol, the Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church), Zak meets craber Tyler (Shia LaBeouf), who is also on the run after he burned the equipment of his industry rivals. Tyler and Zak develop an unlikely friendship as they help each other become better versions of themselves.

Throughout the story of The Peanut Butter Falcon , Zak is followed by Eleanor (Dakota Johnson), who works in the nursing home where the man lives. Eleanor eventually catches up with Tyler and Zak. Though she wants to return to the care facility immediately, Tyler convinces her to let Zak live out his dream of meeting the Salt Water Redneck. They eventually make it to North Carolina, and the wrestler comes out of retirement to teach Zak a few things and get him into an actual wrestling match. However, things don't quite go to plan.

Fueled by LaBeouf and Gottsagen's screen chemistry, The Peanut Butter Falcon makes for a charmingly funny and often touching adventure.

What Happened To Tyler At The End Of Peanut Butter Falcon?

Tyler was seriously injured in the peanut butter falcon.

Zak's wrestling match was supposed to be just enough to make him feel like a real wrestler, but his opponent, Sam, didn't hold back. Still, Zak, dubbed the "Peanut Butter Falcon," surprised everyone with a victory. Tyler, one of the few not to underestimate Zak, was ecstatic, but just as he celebrated the win, his rival crabbers, Duncan and Ratboy, came up from behind and hit him over the head with a tire iron . The camera cuts away just before Tyler's head is struck, and the next scene showing Eleanor distressed in a hospital seems to imply that his injuries were severe.

The implication leading up to the end of Peanut Butter Falcon is that Tyler had been killed, and the scene in which Eleanor and Zak drive to Florida alone seems to confirm this. However, as they crossed the state line, Zak reached back to shake Tyler awake, and the camera revealed that he had been sleeping in the back seat. Tyler was certainly bruised and bloody, and the bandages across his face confirmed that his wounds had been severe. However, he was on the mend, and Tyler, Zak, and Eleanor headed off to Florida for a heartwarming movie ending.

Zak's Wrestling Match & Victory Explained

Zak surprised everyone by winning his wrestling match.

Throughout Peanut Butter Falcon , Zak is consistently underestimated, even by Eleanor. She clearly loved him like family, but this led her to coddle and protect him. The fact that Zak lived in a nursing home further emphasized the way the world seemed to have no place for him. He was young and able-bodied, highly clever, and deeply kind and compassionate. However, he could not exercise any of these qualities since he was trapped among those who were years to days away from the ends of their lives.

Tyler was likely the first person that Zak had met who didn't underestimate him, and the wrestling match near the end of Peanut Butter Falcon was a representation of this. The expectation had been that Zak would enter the ring and that Sam would let him get a few hits in to make him feel good. However, this wasn't the case. As the audience sat by awkwardly and let Sam beat Zak, Tyler cheered him forward, reminding him of his strength . This led Zak to lift Sam straight over his head and launch him out of the ring—an impossible move for even real professional wrestlers .

However, believability wasn't the point of this Peanut Butter Falcon scene.

Zak's winning move in the wrestling match was pretty outrageous and undoubtedly impossible for anyone to pull off in that way. However, believability wasn't the point of this Peanut Butter Falcon scene. Zak's victory represented the efficacy of Tyler's belief in him and the way that people of all abilities are only limited by the faith of their loved ones.

Shia LaBeouf's Transformers films were box office hits, but here's why he did not return as Sam Witwicky in Transformer 4: Age of Extinction.

Why Duncan & Ratboy Were After Tyler In Peanut Butter Falcon

Tyler owed duncan & ratboy a sort of debt in peanut butter falcon.

Tyler's injury at the end of Peanut Butter Falcon was a long time coming since he had been running away from Duncan and Ratboy for the majority of the film. The beginning saw Tyler lose his job after bringing in illegally caught crab, and his anger at this led him to burn up the supplies of his two crabber rivals. There was no way for Duncan and Ratboy to get their stuff back, and the gang-like culture of their industry kept them from leaving the situation to the police. The two villains wanted payment for their supplies in blood , and they made it clear in the 2019 movie that they would go any legths to get it.

Since the camera cut away from Tyler just before the car iron struck him, it's unclear how far Duncan and Ratboy took their revenge. They may have hit him a few times before fleeing, purposing leaving him alive to suffer. Or, the pair might have done their best to beat Tyler to death before being stopped. Duncan and Ratboy may have been arrested, or they might have fled the scene— Peanut Butter Falcon never says for sure. However, it's implied that Tyler had paid the necessary blood payment for his crime , and it can be assumed he was free to live safely in Florida with his new family.

The Peanut Butter Falcon is available to stream on Netflix.

Peanut Butter Falcon's Title Explained

"peanut butter falcon" meant more than just a wrestling name.

The title of Peanut Butter Falcon comes from the wrestler name Zak chose for himself in the movie, and even this holds meaning regarding his relationship with Tyler. Wrestling names are often strange and perhaps even a little nonsensical, but Peanut Butter Falcon certainly takes this to a different level. Zak came up with it while he and Tyler were using peanut butter as war paint, and a falcon just seemed to have popped into his head. Despite being a fairly ridiculous name, Tyler did nothing to dissuade Zak from using it. The fact that he embraced the name and used it freely reflected his quality of never placing limits on his friend.

The Real Meaning Of Peanut Butter Falcon's Ending

Tyler's ending in the peanut butter falcon was a baptism by fire.

The ending of Peanut Butter Falcon is a bit abrupt. One moment, Zak is wrestling and effortlessly tossing a man several times his size out of the ring, and the next, he, an injured Tyler, and Eleanor are headed for Florida. Tyler's injury also seemed highly dramatized since Eleanor's apparent distress at the hospital was clearly supposed to make audiences think he had died . However, when looking at Tyler and Zak's individual development, this ending makes a fair bit of sense.

By paying for his crimes with blood in The Peanut Butter Falcon , Tyler got his baptism by fire and was, therefore, free to leave his pain behind and start over.

Zak needed to prove his strength, and tossing Sam out of the ring was the perfect way. However, the movie's ending had more to do with Tyler. At the blind man's house, Zak was baptized, but Tyler mentioned that he was more of a " baptism by fire " type . He was in immense emotional pain from his brother's death, which left him in a destructive cycle of violence. By paying for his crimes with blood in The Peanut Butter Falcon , Tyler got his baptism by fire and was, therefore, free to leave his pain behind and start over. Of course, this was only possible because of his new friendships.

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‘young sheldon’ star iain armitage bids farewell in a social media post, ‘young sheldon’: how producers addressed the inevitable tragedy that rocks the cooper family.

By Lynette Rice

Lynette Rice

Senior TV Writer

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SPOILER ALERT! This story contains plot points from the May 11 episode of Young Sheldon on CBS .

For fans of The Big Bang Theory, Thursday’s episode of Young Sheldon shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise. With the May 16 series finale only a week away, viewers were waiting for the comedy’s title character to face a major family tragedy before going off to Caltech.

It finally happened in the episode titled “A New Home and a Traditional Texas Torture.”

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Off camera, George Cooper Sr. (Lance Barber) died from a heart attack. His two best friends delivered the tragic news to his family.

Here, executive producer Steve Holland explains the timing of George’s death and why it was important to keep it out of the final episode of the series.

DEADLINE: Is it weird writing about an outcome that fans of The Big Bang Theory already knew about and were expecting in Young Sheldon ‘s final season?

STEVE HOLLAND: I mean, it’s a little bit of a challenge. There are some pieces of the lore and some pieces of the ending that people know. But I think for us it’s also about trying to tell those stories in ways that are still surprising. Especially since the show has gone to Netflix, I think there is an audience that is younger and less familiar with Big Bang. So I actually don’t know the answer of how many people expect certain things to happen in the finale versus how many people will be surprised by them. It’s a good question.

DEADLINE: Was it established in Big Bang that George died of a heart attack?

HOLLAND: I don’t remember if it was sort of an implied heart attack. I’m not sure if we actually ever said heart attack. It’s what we had always thought, internally. We know Sheldon’s dad passed away when he was 14, but I don’t remember if we ever specifically said heart attack.

DEADLINE : Love the bait and switch with the ladder and how you put George on top of it to check out the roof !

HOLLAND: You get nervous anytime he’s wandering into traffic or going up the ladder. You’ve got to be nervous about what’s going to happen!

HOLLAND: It was always going to be off camera. We didn’t want to witness that moment of his death. We always knew we were going to deal with his death this season, but we never thought about seeing it on camera. So really the discussion was when it would happen in the course of the last few episodes and how the family would get the news.

DEADLINE: Why did you give him his dream job before he died?

HOLLAND: Because we’re mean! For a couple reasons. We wanted to give George a win after all these years. Because there’s a segment of the audience that is expecting the death to happen, and they assumed it would be this season, we thought, ‘well, maybe if we put it in episode 12, not even the penultimate episode, maybe that’ll be more of a surprise.’ And so then it’s about figuring out, well, what that episode is. And it felt like it’s a nice way, even though slightly mean way, to give George a little bit of a win and to have an episode feel like it was about something that wasn’t just about treading water until you get to this last moment. I think it makes that last moment even more surprising and impactful.

DEADLINE: So you knew for a while you didn’t want him to die in the final episode?

HOLLAND: We talked about it. I think early on our thought was probably that it would be the final episode or that the funeral would be the final episode. As we were talking about it, I think Chuck Lorre said the show has been such a positive, loving family show. Let’s not leave the audience wallowing in grief. Maybe there’s a way to do that and then move past it and show the family starting to put itself back together and end on a little bit more of a moment of hope.

The series finale of Young Sheldon airs Thursday, May 16, in two back-to-back episodes.

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Movie Reviews

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Jerzy Skolimowski's "EO," about a donkey wandering through modern Poland, is a rare animal picture that's not aimed at kids. In fact, small children, particularly ones conditioned by post-1950s Disney cartoons about lovable creatures, should not be allowed anywhere near it, because the movie doesn't stint on presentations of the cruelty and brutality that animals suffer in a world of humans, and that humans inflict on each other. This is not a case like " Babe " or the recent " Okja " where hard-edged presentations of human foibles and destructive actions alternate with heartwarming depictions of goodhearted folks trying their best to protect the creatures they love and respect. There are very few people in this film who even seem to notice animals—and when they do, it sometimes leads to the worst kind of attention. 

Like Robert Bresson's 1966 donkey-centric parable " Au Hasard Balthazar "— which provided the storytelling template for many other ambitious dramas such as " The Bear " and " War Horse " that focus on animals who are just animals, and don't talk or sing or otherwise attempt to entertain us—this one has the feeling of a pre-20th century fairy tale. The main goal is to create a fable that reminds the viewer of humans' connections to the natural world and serves up situations that have metaphorical dimensions beyond any physical actions that happen to be taking place at that moment.

The title character is grey with white flecks in his fur. We don't know his age or prior history. We first meet him in the opening credits sequence which, like so many parts of this film, is lit in expressionistic colors (red in this case) that verge on nightmarish or lurid. EO is in the center ring at a circus. His sweet and doting trainer Kasandra ( Sandra Drzymalska ) leads him through the tricks she's trained him to do. Then EO is separated from Kasandra when the circus is dismantled following a bankruptcy notice at the same time that animal rights activists are protesting the show for animal cruelty. 

And the odyssey begins. There are times when the framing of the tale suggests that we're watching a shaggier version of one of those family-friendly animal pictures where a heroic creature, usually a dog, is separated from its owner and travels hundreds of miles to reunite, surviving a series of mini-adventures through sheer ingenuity. That's not where Skolimowski and his co-writer  Ewa Piaskowska are taking us. This isn't even a picaresque narrative that puts EO at the center of every scene. Sometimes he's not onscreen and the movie shows us the geography of Poland and the way that humans and their buildings and roads and cars have claimed and in some cases disfigured it, while remaining largely indifferent to the natural world they've trampled and the animals they've tamed, displaced or destroyed. (A section featuring the great Isabelle Huppert could have been enlarged into its own movie; Huppert, like Marlon Brando before her, has otherworldly energy that makes it seem as if she sees more than we ever could.)

EO is small and typical—the kind of animal who seems beautiful after you get to know him, but who might not stand out in a stable full of donkeys. He could have been the model for the wisecracker in the " Shrek " movies. When Skolimowski and cinematographer Michal Dymek  photograph him in tight close-ups—sometimes so tight that the squarish, old-movie frame can barely contain the graceful line of EO's head in profile, one eye looming dead-center—you get a glimmer of what could possibly be wisdom. But that's just you the viewer projecting, in the way you might while visiting a farm or zoo. 

The filmmakers are resolute in keeping EO mysterious and letting him be an animal. We don't really know why he does or does not do things at any moment. Even when his trainer finds and briefly consoles him and then leaves him and he seems to go after her, there's no indication of what EO expects or hopes to achieve, much less his likelihood of success. He travels a ways and then stops, and more things happen.

But there's not always a discernible internal logic to the scenes and set pieces, and that can make parts of "EO" feel less like a coherent, if stripped-down, narrative than a highlight reel of clever cinematography techniques, including ostentatious acrobatic drone shots soaring high over the countryside, single-color filters (evocative of the final section of "2001: A Space Odyssey") and first-person "trick shots" where cameras have been attached to machines and other objects in motion. Some of these images are genuinely beautiful, eerie even. But others (including an early, brief sequence in a stable) veer towards fashion-magazine slick prettiness. And there are times when the film gets fixated on bold colors and striking angles (such as a very low-angled shot of a robot "dog" trundling through grass and across puddly dirt roads) to the detriment or neglect of EO. It's not enough to entirely derail the movie, but one might wish for a bit more aesthetic clarity from time to time.

One of the most upsetting sequences in the film finds EO chewing grass outside of a nightclub somewhere in the countryside when thugs with baseball bats pull up in cars, invade the club, beat and frighten the patrons, then barge back outside to drive away into the night. Somebody in one of the cars notices EO at the edge of the lot, and they all climb back out of the car and beat him, too, with the camera simulating EO's first-person perspective as the blows rain down on him. Why didn't EO run the second the cars pulled up and the men got out screaming with rage? This and other moments make it feel as if the potential for dramatic power overruled practical or logical considerations.

But such lapses are rare. For the most part, you feel as if you're in sure hands and can see what the storytellers are trying to do. It's as much an anthropological pseudo-documentary as it is a drama, one that sometimes evokes the Terrence Malick philosophy of " The Thin Red Line ," which began by insisting that humans are a part of nature and that when humans war with other humans, it is nature warring with itself. 

This is not the kind of movie that tries to convince viewers that animals are "just like us," even though quite a few scenes depict humans confirming that they, too, are animals, by intimidating and terrorizing individuals and groups in order to assert dominance or claim territory. At least EO escaped the circus. Humans built it and are the main attractions as well as the audience, and don't realize that they're running through the same routines, day after day. 

Now playing in select theaters. 

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

Sandra Drzymalska as Kasandra

Lorenzo Zurzolo as Vito

Mateusz Kościukiewicz as Mateo

Isabelle Huppert as The Countess

Tomasz Organek as Ziom

Lolita Chammah as Dora

Agata Sasinowska as Kaja

Anna Rokita as Dorota

• Jerzy Skolimowski
• Ewa Piaskowska

Cinematographer

• Michal Dymek
• Agnieszka Glińska
• Pawel Mykietyn

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