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Review vs. Analysis — What's the Difference?

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Difference Between Review and Analysis

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Film & Television Studies

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  • Reviews vs Criticism

Reviews vs Film Criticism

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While the terms "review" and "criticism" are often used interchangeably, there are differences between them. Note how motion pictures are often referred to as "films" when discussing criticism, and "movies" when discussing reviews.

Film criticism is the study, interpretation, and evaluation of a film and its place in cinema history. Film criticism usually offers interpretation of its meaning, analysis of its structure and style, judgement of its worth by comparison with other films, and an estimation of its likely effect on viewers. Film theory (e.g. feminist, postmodernist, etc.) often informs the critical analysis of a film. Criticism may examine a particular film, or may look at a group of films in the same genre, or a director's or actor's body of work.

Film criticism differs from movie reviews in several ways: it entails both analysis and judgement; it may be published many years after a film is released; it is usually longer and more complex than a movie review. A movie review documents the critical reception of a film at its time of theatrical or dvd release. It is more "consumer-oriented," placing more emphasis on recommendation than analysis.

Reviews of feature films or mainstream films may be found in online databases, newspapers, and general interest magazines (e.g. New York Times , Village Voice , Cineaste ).

In-depth criticism and analyses of some feature films or mainstream films, foreign films, independent films, documentaries, etc. may be found in more scholarly or academic publications (e.g. Film Quarterly , Cinema Journal , Film International ).

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The following sources will help you locate film reviews and criticism. In order to find a film review, you need to know the film title and film release date. If you do not have this information, consult either Halliwell's Film Guide , the Oxford Companion to Film , the International Directory of Films and Filmmakers (Vol. 1) or the Motion Picture Guide .

What are the differences between film reviews and film criticism?

Film reviews are written for the general public by usually journalists or other non-academics and appear in newspapers, magazines or online around the time the film is released in theatres. Their purpose is to describe the plot, characters, director, etc in order to help determine whether or not a film should be seen.

Film criticism is the study, interpretation and evaluation of a film with regard to issues such as historical context, theory or technical analysis. Film criticism is written by academics and is published in books or scholarly journals. It may sometimes address a specific apsect of a ilm or focus on the work of a particul director or genre. Critical reviews may be published many years after a film is released.

Databases for Finding Reviews & Criticism

Film and Television Literature Index Comprehensive bibliographic database to film and television literature

Additional Review Resources Online

Movie Review Query Engine (MRQE)

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Magill's Survey of Cinema: First and Second Series

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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.)

movie review and analysis difference

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.

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Film: Movie Reviews and Film Criticism

  • Movie Reviews and Film Criticism
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Finding Movie Reviews and Film Criticism

Film criticism provides evidence for Film & Digital Arts criticism assignments. This research guide distinguishes movie reviews from film criticism and pr ovides resources that will help you find criticism and reviews. See the Articles & Databases and Web Resources sections of this research guide for a list of search tools.

Movie Reviews

The purpose of a movie review is consumer in nature. The reviewer is making a judgment about the quality of the movie with the intention of telling the reader whether or not it is worth the time, effort, and money to watch. The reviewer assumes that the reader has not seen the movie and therefore is careful to reveal no spoilers. Reviews tend to be written when the movie is released into theaters, on video or DVD, or in streaming. The quality of reviews varies greatly, ranging from a simple plot summary with a thumbs up or thumbs down to an in-depth examination informed by expertise from film schools and years of film analysis and reviews. Regardless, the purpose of a review is to make a viewing recom mendation.

Examples of movie reviews of Pulp Fiction include:

  • James Berardinelli
  • Roger Ebert
  • Andrew Wickliffe

Film Criticism

The purpose of film criticism is scholarly in nature. The film scholar is also making a judgment of the quality, but is doing so with the intention of making an argument about the meaning of the film or films by providing reasoned consideration and evidence. The scholar assumes that the reader has seen the film in order to better engage the argument – spoilers are irrelevant.

Film scholars have a distinct lens that they use in interpreting films. Their arguments might be based on filmmaker intent with an auteur lens, a formalist analysis of style and aesthetics or visual narrative, or an examination of the biographical or historical context. Their arguments might disconnect and dismantle the meaning of the film from its author’s intent by making a poststructuralist, semiotic, psychoanalytic, or literary analysis from the perspective of the viewer and of society. Their arguments might be a means to social justice intending to challenge the dominant power structures and the status quo by applying ideological Marxist, feminist, postcolonial, or queer approaches. Regardless, the purpose of criticism is to make a scholarly argument.

Examples of film criticism of Pulp Fiction include (you will need to be on campus or logged in to view):

  • Davis, Todd F., and Kenneth Womack. “Shepherding the Weak: The Ethics of Redemption in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Pulp Fiction.’” Literature Film Quarterly , vol. 26, no. 1, Jan. 1998, p. 60-66. EBSCOhost permalink .
  • Jewers, Caroline. “Heroes and Heroin: From ‘True Romance’ to ‘Pulp Fiction.’” Journal of Popular Culture , vol. 33, 2000, pp. 39-61. Link
  • Kimball, A.Samuel. “‘Bad-Ass Dudes’ in Pulp Fiction: Homophobia and the Counterphobic Idealization of Women.” Quarterly Review of Film & Video , vol. 16, no. 2, Sept. 1997, pp. 171-192. Link

Criticism as Evidence

As in criticism, the purpose of film assignments tends to be making your own argument about a film or films using reasoned consideration and evidence. The nature of the evidence that will best serve your needs is criticism, not reviews. This research guide shows how to find both criticism and reviews, because the simple fact is that not all films receive critical treatment, but virtually all are reviewed. In those cases where there is no criticism available, you may use reviews as a starting point, especially if they are the more in-depth examinations informed by expertise. However, you will most likely end up making your own reasoned consideration a centerpiece of the study without providing the evidence a film criticism provides.

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The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Film Analysis

What this handout is about.

This handout introduces film analysis and and offers strategies and resources for approaching film analysis assignments.

Writing the film analysis essay

Writing a film analysis requires you to consider the composition of the film—the individual parts and choices made that come together to create the finished piece. Film analysis goes beyond the analysis of the film as literature to include camera angles, lighting, set design, sound elements, costume choices, editing, etc. in making an argument. The first step to analyzing the film is to watch it with a plan.

Watching the film

First it’s important to watch the film carefully with a critical eye. Consider why you’ve been assigned to watch a film and write an analysis. How does this activity fit into the course? Why have you been assigned this particular film? What are you looking for in connection to the course content? Let’s practice with this clip from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Here are some tips on how to watch the clip critically, just as you would an entire film:

  • Give the clip your undivided attention at least once. Pay close attention to details and make observations that might start leading to bigger questions.
  • Watch the clip a second time. For this viewing, you will want to focus specifically on those elements of film analysis that your class has focused on, so review your course notes. For example, from whose perspective is this clip shot? What choices help convey that perspective? What is the overall tone, theme, or effect of this clip?
  • Take notes while you watch for the second time. Notes will help you keep track of what you noticed and when, if you include timestamps in your notes. Timestamps are vital for citing scenes from a film!

For more information on watching a film, check out the Learning Center’s handout on watching film analytically . For more resources on researching film, including glossaries of film terms, see UNC Library’s research guide on film & cinema .

Brainstorming ideas

Once you’ve watched the film twice, it’s time to brainstorm some ideas based on your notes. Brainstorming is a major step that helps develop and explore ideas. As you brainstorm, you may want to cluster your ideas around central topics or themes that emerge as you review your notes. Did you ask several questions about color? Were you curious about repeated images? Perhaps these are directions you can pursue.

If you’re writing an argumentative essay, you can use the connections that you develop while brainstorming to draft a thesis statement . Consider the assignment and prompt when formulating a thesis, as well as what kind of evidence you will present to support your claims. Your evidence could be dialogue, sound edits, cinematography decisions, etc. Much of how you make these decisions will depend on the type of film analysis you are conducting, an important decision covered in the next section.

After brainstorming, you can draft an outline of your film analysis using the same strategies that you would for other writing assignments. Here are a few more tips to keep in mind as you prepare for this stage of the assignment:

  • Make sure you understand the prompt and what you are being asked to do. Remember that this is ultimately an assignment, so your thesis should answer what the prompt asks. Check with your professor if you are unsure.
  • In most cases, the director’s name is used to talk about the film as a whole, for instance, “Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo .” However, some writers may want to include the names of other persons who helped to create the film, including the actors, the cinematographer, and the sound editor, among others.
  • When describing a sequence in a film, use the literary present. An example could be, “In Vertigo , Hitchcock employs techniques of observation to dramatize the act of detection.”
  • Finding a screenplay/script of the movie may be helpful and save you time when compiling citations. But keep in mind that there may be differences between the screenplay and the actual product (and these differences might be a topic of discussion!).
  • Go beyond describing basic film elements by articulating the significance of these elements in support of your particular position. For example, you may have an interpretation of the striking color green in Vertigo , but you would only mention this if it was relevant to your argument. For more help on using evidence effectively, see the section on “using evidence” in our evidence handout .

Also be sure to avoid confusing the terms shot, scene, and sequence. Remember, a shot ends every time the camera cuts; a scene can be composed of several related shots; and a sequence is a set of related scenes.

Different types of film analysis

As you consider your notes, outline, and general thesis about a film, the majority of your assignment will depend on what type of film analysis you are conducting. This section explores some of the different types of film analyses you may have been assigned to write.

Semiotic analysis

Semiotic analysis is the interpretation of signs and symbols, typically involving metaphors and analogies to both inanimate objects and characters within a film. Because symbols have several meanings, writers often need to determine what a particular symbol means in the film and in a broader cultural or historical context.

For instance, a writer could explore the symbolism of the flowers in Vertigo by connecting the images of them falling apart to the vulnerability of the heroine.

Here are a few other questions to consider for this type of analysis:

  • What objects or images are repeated throughout the film?
  • How does the director associate a character with small signs, such as certain colors, clothing, food, or language use?
  • How does a symbol or object relate to other symbols and objects, that is, what is the relationship between the film’s signs?

Many films are rich with symbolism, and it can be easy to get lost in the details. Remember to bring a semiotic analysis back around to answering the question “So what?” in your thesis.

Narrative analysis

Narrative analysis is an examination of the story elements, including narrative structure, character, and plot. This type of analysis considers the entirety of the film and the story it seeks to tell.

For example, you could take the same object from the previous example—the flowers—which meant one thing in a semiotic analysis, and ask instead about their narrative role. That is, you might analyze how Hitchcock introduces the flowers at the beginning of the film in order to return to them later to draw out the completion of the heroine’s character arc.

To create this type of analysis, you could consider questions like:

  • How does the film correspond to the Three-Act Structure: Act One: Setup; Act Two: Confrontation; and Act Three: Resolution?
  • What is the plot of the film? How does this plot differ from the narrative, that is, how the story is told? For example, are events presented out of order and to what effect?
  • Does the plot revolve around one character? Does the plot revolve around multiple characters? How do these characters develop across the film?

When writing a narrative analysis, take care not to spend too time on summarizing at the expense of your argument. See our handout on summarizing for more tips on making summary serve analysis.

Cultural/historical analysis

One of the most common types of analysis is the examination of a film’s relationship to its broader cultural, historical, or theoretical contexts. Whether films intentionally comment on their context or not, they are always a product of the culture or period in which they were created. By placing the film in a particular context, this type of analysis asks how the film models, challenges, or subverts different types of relations, whether historical, social, or even theoretical.

For example, the clip from Vertigo depicts a man observing a woman without her knowing it. You could examine how this aspect of the film addresses a midcentury social concern about observation, such as the sexual policing of women, or a political one, such as Cold War-era McCarthyism.

A few of the many questions you could ask in this vein include:

  • How does the film comment on, reinforce, or even critique social and political issues at the time it was released, including questions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality?
  • How might a biographical understanding of the film’s creators and their historical moment affect the way you view the film?
  • How might a specific film theory, such as Queer Theory, Structuralist Theory, or Marxist Film Theory, provide a language or set of terms for articulating the attributes of the film?

Take advantage of class resources to explore possible approaches to cultural/historical film analyses, and find out whether you will be expected to do additional research into the film’s context.

Mise-en-scène analysis

A mise-en-scène analysis attends to how the filmmakers have arranged compositional elements in a film and specifically within a scene or even a single shot. This type of analysis organizes the individual elements of a scene to explore how they come together to produce meaning. You may focus on anything that adds meaning to the formal effect produced by a given scene, including: blocking, lighting, design, color, costume, as well as how these attributes work in conjunction with decisions related to sound, cinematography, and editing. For example, in the clip from Vertigo , a mise-en-scène analysis might ask how numerous elements, from lighting to camera angles, work together to present the viewer with the perspective of Jimmy Stewart’s character.

To conduct this type of analysis, you could ask:

  • What effects are created in a scene, and what is their purpose?
  • How does this scene represent the theme of the movie?
  • How does a scene work to express a broader point to the film’s plot?

This detailed approach to analyzing the formal elements of film can help you come up with concrete evidence for more general film analysis assignments.

Reviewing your draft

Once you have a draft, it’s helpful to get feedback on what you’ve written to see if your analysis holds together and you’ve conveyed your point. You may not necessarily need to find someone who has seen the film! Ask a writing coach, roommate, or family member to read over your draft and share key takeaways from what you have written so far.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Aumont, Jacques, and Michel Marie. 1988. L’analyse Des Films . Paris: Nathan.

Media & Design Center. n.d. “Film and Cinema Research.” UNC University Libraries. Last updated February 10, 2021. https://guides.lib.unc.edu/filmresearch .

Oxford Royale Academy. n.d. “7 Ways to Watch Film.” Oxford Royale Academy. Accessed April 2021. https://www.oxford-royale.com/articles/7-ways-watch-films-critically/ .

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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movie review and analysis difference

Quick Guide on How to Write a Movie Review Essay

movie review and analysis difference

What Is a Movie Review

The internet has revolutionized the realm of film criticism. No matter a movie's level of quality, it is always worth analyzing. Despite the growing number of individuals attempting to write about movies, few are successful. Most people do not provide insightful analysis, instead simply state how much they liked or disliked the film.

A movie criticism, usually composed by a professional in film studies, takes a comprehensive look at the film from a historical, social, political, or theoretical standpoint. This is unlike the opinion or suggestion given in a movie review, which is shorter and more concise.

A remarkable aspect of a good film review is that it doesn't just rate the movie but provides explicit views that form the critique's basis. This form of writing, like crafting essays, research papers, and term papers, should be insightful and draw the reader in quickly. It's important to discuss the reputation of the lead actors and directors and to write about what you expected and if they were met. The reviewer must explain a story's development without recalling major plot points and endings. The review must be concise, engaging, and should involve metaphors, specific words, analogies, etc.

Movie Review Purpose

Most film reviews are intended to guide readers in deciding whether to view, rent, or purchase the film. They should provide the necessary information to aid readers in deciding without divulging any fundamental details, such as the storyline or any surprises. This paper is common in schools because the lecturer wants to evaluate the student's ability to think critically and report the event easily for others to understand.

Movie reviews typically present a brief summary of the film's storyline. They provide readers with an overview of the characters, relationships, and scenarios but do not convey the complete narrative. Perusing the review should be different from seeing the movie. Nonetheless, feel free to highlight the essential moments or pivotal points that make the film worthwhile viewing.

Our college essay writing service has put together some advice on composing a movie review essay like a real critic, so let's explore the article further!

How to Write a Movie Review: Movie Review Outline

The structure is key when it comes to the quality of your paper. Don't neglect the power of a good outline, no matter what paper you're writing. Outlines help you stay on track and make sure your paper flows well.

Taking the time to arrange your ideas before starting to write is an effective way to save time further down the line. With a well-structured plan already in place, you won't have to worry about other elements. This will also make the writing process less stressful. Here is a guide on how to organize your movie review outline:

Writing a Movie Review_ Step-by-Step Guide

How Do You Start a Movie Review Essay: Introduction

The introductory paragraph is the first obvious step in crafting a movie review essay outline. Here, you want to quickly captivate the reader. Deliver your viewpoint instantly and make it unambiguous. Don't leave the audience wondering whether you enjoyed the film. Tell them right off the bat so you have time to justify your assessment throughout the remainder of the process.

In the introduction movie review should also describe your thesis. Develop the main concept for your essay that you can support using your perceptions of the movie's various aspects. The reader should be able to tell from this statement if you thought the film was fantastic, awful, or simply alright. By including a thesis statement, you may move your analysis beyond the plot synopsis phase into the movie critique category, which is considered a separate creative process.

Crafting Your Essay Movie Review Analysis

According to our research paper service , film analysis is similar to building a case. You're attempting to influence the reader to follow your recommendation to watch or disregard the film. So, you must ensure your essay movie review will be convincing. Giving instances that demonstrate the validity of your personal opinion is the only method to do this. If you find any dialogue in the movie that you think best exemplifies whether the work is strong or not, utilize quotes. This also applies to all of the movie's artistic decisions. But, just because a movie's narrative isn't strong or engaging doesn't indicate the rest of the film is worthless. Carefully highlight how some factors might undermine the movie in your explanation.

The movie's plot is only one component and shouldn't dominate the overall piece. The following are the important aspects to include in your movie review structure:

Cinematography - Cinematography covers much more than simply camera angles. It includes how the picture is lit, how it moves, appears, and what lenses are used. Here you can try the following analysis: 'Warm, gentle colors are used throughout the film, combined with soothing whites and grays, to simultaneously create and gradually tear away the characters' romantic sentiments for one another. There is a painting-like quality to each image.'

Editing - The editing is arguably the absolute star of what creates a good movie review example. It affects both the duration and the flow of a movie. Without effective editing, there would be uncomfortable gaps between pictures and many errors.

Costuming - The clothing the characters wear is called a costume, but there are a number of things to consider while evaluating movie costumes. You should be able to decide if the outfits suit the characters and the movie's atmosphere.

Casting and Acting - Finding the ideal performers to bring characters to life is the goal of casting. This sometimes entails seeing performers portray both familiar personas and figures who are entirely at odds with who they are. Casting, therefore, involves more than just finding talented performers. You can assess the acting in the following way: 'Even though he excels while on the go, his stoic behaviorism causes him to fall short of his co-star during calm scenes where he keeps a blank look on his face.'

Once you have finished analyzing the acting, directing, cinematography, setting, etc., wrap up with concise, stimulating wording to sustain readers' attention. Don't forget to provide a few examples to support your statements about the film.

Concluding Your Essay Movie Review

Finalize your review by coming full circle. Close the review by returning to your introductory fact or thesis. Give your readers a refresher on the movie's most intriguing aspects. It's important to remember that before choosing a movie, viewers check reviews. Finish with a statement indicating whether it is worthwhile for them to view. Be specific about who this movie will be more fascinating to and why in your suggestions. Remember that your ending is your last shot at influencing your audience, so use it wisely.

No matter the kind of movie review you have to complete, our professional specialists are willing to help you. Directly forward your needs to our research paper service and get it done quickly.

Need Help With MOVIE REVIEW WRITING?

No matter what type of movie review you want, our qualified specialists are ready to assist you.

Short Movie Review Form

If you are currently working on a new or old movie review, reading our suggestions should be sufficient to help you earn an A. So what if you'll be writing many reviews in the future? In this situation, we advise you to develop a uniform movie review template, which will enable you to save time and complete your upcoming projects successfully.

So, how to write a movie review template, you may ask? Well, our essay helper prepared a simple yet great movie review template you may use as a foundation for your own writing if you need some help getting started:

movie review form

Example Papers

Once you know how to review a movie and learn the most valuable tips to handle this assignment, it is time to look at some movie review examples to get you on the right track.

Check out the following pieces to see which of these movie review essay examples you might want to keep at hand when working on your own assignment:

FAQs on Writing an Essay Movie Review

Here are the most frequently asked questions on how to write a movie review. We provided extra details on movie analysis to simplify writing film reviews.

What are the 6 Important Things to Include in a Film Review?

The following six elements should be present in any film review:

  • A plot summary - Here, you should provide the movie title, its release date, the key members of the cast, the filmmaker or producer, and its subject matter.
  • Your original impression - Here, you should discuss your initial impressions before seeing the movie and contrast them with how you felt afterward.
  • Commentary on the acting - As was previously said, you can evaluate the actors' onscreen performance in the specific movie here. You can also talk about how it stacks up against the movies the actors have appeared in.
  • Analysis of technical elements - You can describe camera methods, lighting, color, editing, sound, and audio, among other things.
  • An evaluation of the film's overall success -Here, you should evaluate if the movie accomplished its goals, whether the messages it was intended to convey were clearly understood, or whether they were lost in translation.
  • Your final recommendation - This summarizes both the critic's last observation and the film's overall message or what we may learn from it. Finally, you should inform the reader if they should watch the movie and what aspects they may or may not enjoy.

How Long Should a Movie Review Be?

Generally, film reviews range from 600 to 1200 words, though there is no particular format that must be followed. Yet, usually, a movie review format includes the following:

  • Introduction
  • Plot Summary
  • Description
  • Conclusion/Evaluation

Before starting your movie review writing, do a lot of research. You might want to spend some time familiarizing yourself with the director's, writer's, or actor's body of work before watching the movie, which will take you longer than creating the narrative.

What are the 5 C's in Film?

One may argue that the five C's of cinematography, as described by Joseph V. Mascelli, are fundamental ideas necessary to create a movie. To guarantee the finest possible quality, every idea must be carefully taken into account when creating, filming, and editing a movie.

  • Camera Angles - A scene may be set up for viewers to follow by strategically placing the camera and using visual clues to show how actors relate to one another, their surroundings, and the actions on the screen.
  • Continuity - A realistic visual experience is made possible by fluid internal logic. On the other hand, viewers will struggle to follow the plot if scenes are inconsistent graphically. Moreover, continuity errors can destroy a scene's emotional resonance.
  • Cutting - Sensible trimming may advance the story when it is meticulously planned, with insight and forethought. It is important to connect each shot in a scene and the scenes themselves so that their overall impact, rather than just their separate elements, elicits the intended emotions from the spectator.
  • Close-ups - The addition of close-ups may significantly alter a scenario. Viewers can be encouraged to feel intense feelings together with the characters on screen, even without language.
  • Composition - Lighting, color, space, mood, and tone are some of the components that make up a cinematic scene. This is particularly intriguing because the composition may draw attention to a movie's topic and represent the cinematography style of both the filmmaker and the cinematographer.

Helpful Tips on Writing Movie Reviews

Here are some extra helpful tips to keep in mind when unsure how to write a movie review essay:

Mistakes to Avoid While Making a Movie Review

  • Add Your Own Personal Feel to Your Movie Critique - You might not have much spare time for your pastime of reviewing. You won't be able to write a movie review, though, if you just wing it without reading what others have said. Make a note of the things that intrigued you, alarmed you, made you uncomfortable, or caused you to pause and consider something, and then use that list as the basis for your research.
  • Develop a Distinctive Writing Style - Have an idol—it's good for you. You must be careful not to just paraphrase and duplicate what they say without adding your own original viewpoint. Instead, in order to stand out from the throng, you must discover your own voice. When writing movie reviews, you should also have a distinct writing style.
  • Include Extensive Information -Mention the film's photographer, special effects designer, and director. Your review might be significantly impacted by this. Then you may list all the memorable movie moments that also stuck with you.
  • Voice Your Views and Back Up Your Criticism - Give your own assessment of the film. Make sure you have evidence to support your criticisms. Use the movie's details that most shocked or humiliated you. Review genuine information rather than merely expressing your opinions without supporting details.

Final Thoughts

Composing a good movie review essay sample is easy if you follow this article's main steps and techniques. Furthermore, we strongly believe that this guide will assist you in achieving remarkable outcomes and ease your writing process. The staff at EssayPro is always available to provide a helping hand if you need a little additional push with movie review examples or even if it's simply coming up with a catchy essay title .

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Similarities in movie review content by critics and general users impact movie sales, study shows

Published: October 06, 2022

Author: Shannon Roddel

Shijie Lu

Consumers often read online reviews before seeing a movie at the theater. In 2018, 63 percent of U.S. adults indicated moderate to heavy reliance on online reviews before seeing a movie.

While research has extensively explored the impact of online reviews on movie sales by focusing on review ratings and volume, scholars have less understanding of how similarities in review content by critics and general users impact consumers.

By analyzing movie reviews from Rotten Tomatoes, a film and TV review website, new research from the University of Notre Dame proposes a “topic consistency” measure to capture the degree of overlap between critic and user review content and finds that it does impact movie sales. If both critics and users discuss the same aspects, it will be more memorable and increase the likelihood people will go see a movie.

“ Does Topic Consistency Matter? A Study of Critic and User Reviews in the Movie Industry ” is forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing from Shijie Lu , the Howard J. and Geraldine F. Korth Associate Professor of Marketing at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.

The study also shows the association is more prominent with movies that have mediocre review ratings than it is for movies with extreme ratings. It is also stronger when ratings by critics are similar to those of users — for example, when both include mentions of things like plot or acting. “We were surprised to find the content overlap between the two groups is a positive predictor of box office revenue,” Lu said, “whereas the content overlap within each group is not.”

The study examined both critic and user reviews for the movie “La La Land,” each discussing the movie’s award potential.

“This is likely to make a potential moviegoer remember this particular attribute and therefore make them more likely to see the movie in theaters,” Lu said. “On the other hand, if critics and users are discussing totally different aspects of the movie, it will be less memorable and lower the likelihood of seeing a movie.”

Pages From Shijie Lu Topic Consistency Crop

The findings can have a positive impact for movie producers and marketing agencies. Lu advises both to expand their attention beyond conventional online review information and actively listen to both professional critics and general consumers.

“ To take advantage of the topic consistency effect, producers should identify similarities and differences between critics’ and everyday moviegoers’ responses and engage with both types of reviewers to find commonalities between reviews,” Lu said. “Those should be leveraged and utilized as a part of the movie’s promotion strategy.”

Also, they can generate the common ground for discussion topics.

“They should introduce a common theme for critics and users to discuss,” Lu said. “We observe that an increase of one standard deviation in topic consistency produces a 4.6 percent increase in box office revenue, all else being equal.”

“Also, t opic-driven promotion can be applied to movie trailers, posters, blogs and TV and online commercials. This will naturally lead critics and users to address the topics in question,” Lu added.

Lu says the concept and measurement of topic consistency could be extended to reviews for other types of products that are difficult to evaluate before use, including cosmetics and book publishing.

Co-authors of the study include Eunsoo Kim from Nanyang Technological University, MengQi (Annie) Ding from Western University and Xin (Shane) Wang from Virginia Tech.

Contact: Shijie Lu,574-631-5883, [email protected]

Film Inquiry

Film Writing: Essays vs Reviews

Film Inquiry

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movie review and analysis difference

Sam is 25 years old from the West Midlands region…

movie review and analysis difference

In any sector where publishing one’s writing, there are various types into which one can subvert their writing style. The four most basic are expository, narrative, descriptive and persuasive. When it comes to writing for film and media, though, all four of these sorts can be used. For example, both descriptive and persuasive writing could be used in a review or essay in which the reader’s objective is to convince their audience based on what has been written.

Although film essays and film reviews take the form of a number of writing styles, there are often misconceptions between the two. Reviews often generally talk to the entire audience who have not seen a film and write in the first-person, whereas the film essay targets an academic audience and has a more specific process with a set of rules.

Having briefly outlined the difference between film essays and film reviews, this article will now elaborate on each writing style by answering the following questions – Why do they differ? What are their approaches? How long should they be? Who are the target readers? What is to be included in the main body? What style of language should be used? How do they use exterior sources? What are the results and how should they conclude?

Film Essays

How do essays work.

Although it can often depend on the subject area, writing essays is a fundamental task for any forthcoming assignments during college and higher education studies. It is represented as an assessment tool that exemplifies not only your academic writing skills, but further evaluation on critical thinking within your subject. The essay follows a simple structure – a beginning, middle and end, but how they are delivered is entirely down to the writer and the reader’s critical interpretation.

The essay is required to go into more depth about a certain topic, but how it is written is specific. Regarding film and media, the essay needs to critically analyse relevant elements from a film (or group of them), which serve as examples when arguing the essay’s question. These examples could be chosen based on one’s own ideas, which are simply formulated into an argument. For instance, one might want to write an essay about Quentin Tarantino and his repeated use of violence. The response to writing it would simply be to use scene examples and analyse them to structure that argument.

How could film academics approach essays?

It is firstly important to point out that when writing essays, there is no right or wrong answer. In the medium of film, especially, because we go into the films with different expectations and have various opinions. However, there is a right and wrong answer as to how the academic takes their approach to their work. Unlike reviews, you cannot write about how you feel and what you think in an essay.

Inception (2010) - source: Warner Bros Pictures

Considering this, there are questions that the writer needs to ask themselves when approaching essays – what evidence am I showing? Why is the content relevant? How am I going to support these claims from ideas I’ve gathered? The writer originates their ideas from indications in films, but the execution of the written analysis must be at an academic style. Also, the ideas are usually meant to be timely in connection to why the idea is important now, which is what the second question indicated. You are voicing your interpretation of an idea, but the paper contents are practically like a report and critique of your observations.

For example, one may write an analysis about differences between dreams and reality in Christopher Nolan’s Inception . One would not illustrate their own opinion in an essay, but would look at relevant aspects to further examine the point. These may include analysis of mise-en-scéne, props, figural expressions from characters and how the camera shots are created. Using evidence from the film, and analysing it, the academic writer can then justify their arguments.

How long should the essay be?

Film essays require not only analysis of relevant scenes relating to the essay question or hypothesis, they are also dependent on research and literature relating to the topic. In this sense, the writer needs the required space to fit in both the literature, whether using quotes or paraphrased sentences, and one’s own analysis. This can often be difficult due to a word limit (which can vary from 1000 words or more), but the key to a good film essay is that it is only establishes the most important points, using both the literature and scenes or characters used for analysis.

Who are the essay’s target readers?

The essay is aimed at an academic reader. In particular regards to the academic, the key individuals could either be lecturers within the industry or individuals working in a research faculty. The film essay could also be a useful resource for people, such as students, who are either required to write about a related subject or will use the essay’s research in their work towards an independent project (such as a Master’s or PhD thesis). Of course, anyone can choose to read the essays but their target readers are primarily academics or learning ones.

What is to be included in the essay’s main body?

The idea of a main body in an essay format is for each paragraph to serve as a mini-answer to the question, but not one which finalises it. Each section must be a valid explanation from analysis that contributes to your final answer, which comes in the conclusion. This could either be factual information (which could surprise the reader) or a justifiable example. The purpose of the paragraph must be necessary, too, in order to help support the argument claim.

Rear Window (1954) - source: Paramount Pictures

For example, an essay question may ask – “to what extent does Alfred Hitchc*ck display the auteur theory and male gaze in his films?” In this one, both of these theories must be researched, applied to Hitchc*ck , then textually analysis must be done of the relevant films. Those concerning the male gaze being films such as Rear Window and Vertigo , while sequences from North by Northwest , Psycho and The Birds may be more applicable to the auteur theory. Scenes analysed, therefore, support the essay claim based on the title and justify the arguments. This strategy is to be repeated in the main body before drawing up your summarised conclusion.

What style of language should be used in the essay?

When writing essays in general, there are boundaries concerning style of written language. Although the reader knows that the author is writing in their own voice from their own idea, they are not speaking the voice of opinion. The reader must be on an equal level to the writer. So, how does the essay formulate its written style without it being too opinionated?

The fact that they target academics already suggests a specific tool must be used. In addition to writing expressively in an analytical style, we must use referencing. It is a clear mention to an academic’s former research and a side note to how your work applies, which clearly differs from reviews. From that argument elaborated from somebody else’s work, you then create your own ideas and assumptions. However, first-person terms such as “I think…”, “my” or generally “I” should be avoided. Follow this guideline from Cite This For Me  for help with referencing.

Instead of speaking in first-person, the idea at academic level is to use a sentence structure such as – “According to Laura Mulvey , the male gaze is defined as…” before continuing with a direct or paraphrased quote. An in-text reference is to be included, too, for two reasons – to clarify the quoted source and to avoid plagiarism.

How should we use exterior sources for the essay?

When writing at academic level, there are still rules to follow concerning how authors use other academic sources. Now, whether it is at essay level or mere film review standards, editors and academics still expect to see certain regulations. An essay is heavily reliant on researched literature to support one’s own claims.

Laura Mulvey is a renowned example of a film theorist whose work on the male gaze shaped film and media studies, namely through her essay titled here .

Transformers (2007) source: Paramount Pictures

Some of these literature sources can be implemented in an essay and can serve to underpin and support one’s own claims. For instance, some may want to write about Immanuel Kant’s philosophy on morality in relation to a drama film or Charles Darwin/Francis Galton’s theory of evolution and eugenics when discussing early science-fiction cinema. The writer is not to copy the academic’s work, but to instead utilise it in arguing their own original ideas.

What are the results and how should you conclude your essay?

It is particularly important to ensure that your results are the answers to your essay title, whether it is a question or not. The answers are all divided into several sections within the main body, but the summarised response comes at the very end in the conclusion. For example, an essay arguing about 3D cinema being the future or a financial gimmick should be concluded with a finalised summary of your findings. At the same time, there should still be room available either for readers to reflect on or for academics to elaborate further on the research.

Film Reviews

How do reviews work.

As opposed to essays, film reviews are heavily reliant on critical reception. They are written reports about a film and are from the viewpoint of the writer. The majority of reviews are published around the time of the film’s release, sometimes just before the premiere or during its theatrical run in the cinemas.

The film review critiques a film based on its featured elements, which could be acting, production aspects (such as lighting, cinematography or visual effects), narrative structure, screenwriting or directing. Its purpose is to weigh the ups and downs but, like an essay, to draw a conclusion as to whether the film is considered good, average or bad. To make it more interesting and engaging for the readers, reviews often appear in the form of star ratings with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest.

To learn more about critiquing the different elements of film, read this article on film analysis.

How could writers approach reviews?

The review is mainly from a biased, one-sided viewpoint and the idea is that relevant points discussed are meant to persuade the readers. It is not strictly forceful that people must go and see a film or not, but the implication is that expectations may change whether for good or bad. The reviewer’s words are intended to be reliable to other people who have yet to see the film, despite us knowing that all opinions differ. The question remains – if all our opinions differ, why do readers engage with another’s writing? It could be out of curiosity on whether a film they’ve wanted to see is good, or perhaps they hope the film will be bad.

Similar to an essay, it is crucial for the writer to know enough details about the film before writing the review. Apart from that, for reviews, writers gather the specifics from their own thoughts whereas academics base their writing more on factual information. It is fairer to the film for the writer to eventually draw up a reasonable decision about the film after watching it.

The Hangover (2009) - source: Warner Bros.

What about while actually watching a film? Some writers collect their thoughts afterwards when writing the review, but others may work easier by taking quick notes during the screening. This is entirely down to preference and memory skills, but both do prove to be viable strategies when approaching reviews throughout the film viewing. Taking notes may actually be useful, though, because key elements can easily be missed during a first-time viewing. Watching the film for a second time may be an option if note-taking is not the writer’s approach.

How long should reviews be?

A review is usually expected to be approximately 700-1000 words. It is written at this length because each of the aspects discussed within the review (acting, production, narrative, directing) are more concise, particularly as the points are made clearer for the reader. Also, as reviews are a personal account, it may seem boring to read page after page of a review when the reader’s opinion may differ. The length could distract from the reader’s enjoyment, particularly as it is from only the writer’s opinion. So, whether the writer enjoyed the film or not, keeping the written piece brief and straight to the point is the key to an exceptional film review.

Who are the review’s target readers?

As opposed to the essay, the review’s target audience is everybody . The entire purpose of the review is for its content to be persuasive and reliable enough for an audience to base its decision on. Readers can see published reviews in one of two ways – either in print or online (usually as part of a magazine or one’s personal blog). Both of these are popular mediums of publishing film reviews and as they are easily reachable to people now, the general public can access any of these sources and read reviews from there.

What is to be included in the review’s main body?

Similar to an essay, a review’s main body should include paragraphs featuring mini-responses to the eventual conclusion. A review needs to look for and discuss the following aspects – actors, structure, music, mise-en-scéne and possible connections with the audience (especially if any moral messages are included or the film raised controversy). Each of these characteristics could be summarised in a single paragraph, but as long as it meets a reasonable length and has concise language.

It may also be vital to highlight that the biggest fault of many reviews, especially these days, is their overwhelming use of spoilers. Anything like that should not be in the review at all. From a plot point to a character twist, it unfairly ruins the expectations and often excitement for the reader, but also the regard of the writer. It defeats the purpose, so no spoilers are to be included. Only include information that the reader already knows or should be thinking about during the expectation phase. However, spoilers can be included in the essay as their readers are expected to know all about the film as it centres more on analysis.

The Exorcist (1973) source: Warner Bros

Reviewers instead analyse their points about a film and formulate their opinion through a valid argument. Furthermore, the review is a written discussion about a film and should not be written simply as first-person sentences. For example, comments like “ The Dark Knight Rises  was a good film but could have been better”, “I liked The Hangover because it was funny” and “I didn’t like The Exorcist because it was scary” are not enough. Why could The Dark Knight Rises have been better? Why was The Hangover funny? Why was The Exorcist too scary? These points need valid justification. They don’t have to be proof of anything, but could be aspects which may elicit further argument.

What style of language should be used in the review?

To elaborate from the previous point, the written language of a film review should be subject to the writer speaking in their own voice and creating their own interpretation. Reviews are written from a personal point-of-view but in a written form of expression. The writing aims to sell the opinion to persuade the reader but, depending on the publishing site, the reviewer can use first-person terms. Particularly if it is a personal blog that centres only on the opinions and thoughts of that writer, using first-person vocabulary such as “I” and “my” can be used.

However, if the review is going to be among the work of other reviewers as part of a specific business, whether online or print, then first-person can be dismissed. It is meant to be written as personal regardless, but, particularly if for a magazine, the idea is to pen the review professionally within a balanced structure.

How should we use exterior sources for the review?

Using literature as a supportive tool is not so relevant in writing film reviews because, as repeatedly stated, they are more centred on publishing from a personal perspective. They do not need to back up one’s idea or claim as a review is subject to individual opinion. The review does require valid reasoning in its claims, but only the academic essay uses resources to support theirs.

What are the results and how should you conclude your review?

Again like the essay, the results of the review are the findings you have gathered from the main body of your writing. The reviewer condenses their thoughts by drawing up a fair summary of whether a film should be seen or not. It should always conclude with a sense of excitement for the reader or, if a film is disappointing, a sense of dignity.

However, there are rules to consider when writing the conclusion of a review. The most fundamental problem of review conclusions is when the writer addresses the film with a personal attack. Opinions differ, of course, and it is understandable that a writer would want to express theirs but boundaries are crucial. A misstep like this could lead to controversial consequences, reflecting badly on the writer’s career. The review should conclude with the reader regenerating their own expectations based on what they have read. Therefore, the reviewer should be as expressive in writing the review as they should be equally generous to the reader.

So, which of these two film writing formats is easier to use – an essay or a review? It is a simple question that is difficult to answer as it is usually dependent on the writer’s preference. Although reviews are considered easier, as one can begin their writing by voicing their opinion, it is still a style that shouldn’t be compared to writing an essay. There is a similar process to doing them each properly, but the approach and eventual presentations of each are different from one another.

To put it simply, reviews are a journalistic style of writing for a general audience, whereas essays are more academic for scholars and researchers in higher education faculties. I have not declared which is the most useful or most creative format to use in relation to cinema, but instead raised the compare-and-contrasting points between writing film essays and film reviews. Therefore, clarifying for readers that despite being commonly misinterpreted as similar, they are different and there are different writing tools to use.

What is your preferred style of film writing? Did you find this guide useful?

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movie review and analysis difference

Sam is 25 years old from the West Midlands region of the UK, who has a passion for the world of cinema and publishing. He is currently studying a postgraduate degree in Film & Television: Research and Production at the University of Birmingham. He is currently working in theatre and academic support.

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Should we trust critics’ movie reviews?

movie review and analysis difference

We’ve all watched a movie because it had good reviews, and we’ve all been disappointed by at least one that didn’t live up to the hype. Obviously we know that cinematic tastes and preferences vary from individual to individual, but yet we often rely on the opinions of a small group of professionals to tell us whether we should watch something or not. These movie critics are well-respected and knowledgeable, but should we take their assessments with a pinch of salt?

That’s where Relative Insight comes in. Text analysis is the perfect tool to understand if public response echoes critic opinion. Relative Insight uses comparison methodology to uncover the similarities and differences between two sets of language data (aka anything with words).

In this case, we compiled a document of movie reviews taken from Rotten Tomatoes . After uploading nearly 200,000 words to the platform, we used Relative Insight to pinpoint the topics, words, phrases, grammar and emotion unique to reviews written by critics, and compared those to the reviews left by the movie-going public. Here’s what we found:

Critics avoided straight-forward assessments of films, favouring descriptive reports of the narrative and character portrayals, and we saw a diverse set of descriptive words ranging from grizzled to gargantuan. You won’t see a critic calling a movie ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but you will see them using adjectives to describe the film, its setting, characters, and the critic’s viewing experience. 

movie review and analysis difference

Our analysis saw critics exploring and noting the literary devices used throughout the film. They were able to recognize techniques like metaphor , allegory and narrative employed by writers and directors. These literary devices result in deeper meaning and garnered positive responses from critics.

Critics also recognized when films spoke to larger political or social movements . Reviews often mentioned the impact of a narrative on audiences in the context of current events. Films that succeeded in this challenge were favoured by critics. 

movie review and analysis difference

We found critics more likely to give directors and actors recognition for their performance or contribution to a film, and we also noticed how they stepped outside the fictional universe of the movie to evaluate the cast and crew by name – where normal audiences were more likely to use character names in their assessments. The selection of movie reviews we analyzed featured names like Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Robert Downey Jr. and Lupita Nyong’o.

Audience film reviews gave shorter, to the point analysis of films often relying on simple adjectives like good or bad, and these public reviewers often had very definite opinions on films. But these opinions from consumers varied greatly. While critics typically agreed on a film’s assessment, public opinion spanned a wide spectrum of judgement. 

movie review and analysis difference

Consumers seek excitement and suspense from a film. When a movie kept viewers on the edge of their seats, it was noted in the review. When a film failed to grab the viewer’s attention, it was their largest critique. This element could make or break a movie in the eyes of the viewer.

movie review and analysis difference

All’s well that ends well, right? Consumers valued the movie’s ending most over all other cinematic elements, using words like end and  final. If the film’s finale failed to offer a satisfying or shocking resolution, viewers were likely to be disappointed. 

Critics and consumers used different written language and techniques when reviewing movies . While critics provided detail and in-depth analysis, consumers used fewer words and simpler language to relay their opinions. 

This use of text analysis to compare audiences can be applied to a range of industries and demographics. Relative Insight analyzes any data set that contains words, including reviews, social media, forums and so much more.

Our technology works with existing metadata points to break down responses by different demographics including age or location, and these insights can uncover the unique opinions and preferences of a target audience, leading to powerful communications and marketing strategies.

Sign up to attend our upcoming webinar event “Are you passing the vibe check? How to talk to Gen Z” – if you can’t make it, register anyway and we’ll send you the recording.

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Movie review analysis: Emotion analysis of IMDb movie reviews

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Pamela Paul

‘Barbie’ Is Bad. There, I Said It.

Against a yellow background, a squashed tomato lies on a Barbie doll.

By Pamela Paul

Opinion Columnist

We can all agree 2023 was a good year for the movies. Critically and commercially, several movies did well, and only one of those successes took place within the Marvel cinematic universe. Even the 10 Oscar nominees for best picture, announced on Tuesday, included nine actually good films.

Is it safe now to call “Barbie” the outlier? Can I say that, despite winsome leads and likable elements, it didn’t cohere or accomplish anything interesting, without being written off as a) mean, b) old, c) hateful or d) humorless?

Every once in a while, a movie is so broadly anticipated, so welcomed, so celebrated that to disparage it feels like a deliberate provocation. After “Barbie” so buoyantly lifted box office figures, any criticism felt like a willful dismissal of the need to make Hollywood solvent after a season of hell. And it felt like a political statement. Disliking “Barbie” meant either dismissing the power of The Patriarchy or dismissing Modern Feminism. You were either anti-feminist or too feminist or just not the right kind.

Few dared rain on Barbie’s hot pink parade.

Those who openly hated it mostly did so for reasons having to do with what it “ stood for .” They abhorred its (oddly anachronistic) third-wave feminist politics. They despised its commercialism and dreaded the prospect of future films about Mattel properties like Barney and American Girl dolls. They hated the idea of a movie about a sexualized pinup-shaped doll whose toy laptop or Working Woman (“ I really talk! ”) packaging couldn’t hide the stereotypes under the outfit.

For those who hailed it, there was a manic quality to the “Barbie” enthusiasm, less an “I enjoyed” and more of an “I endorse.” How fabulous its consumer-friendly politics, its I-can’t-believe-they-let-us-do-this micro-subversions, its prepackaged combo of gentle satire and you-go-girl gumption. They loved it for reclaiming dolls and Bazooka-gum pink, its Rainbow Magic diversity, its smug assurance that everything contained within was legitimately feminist/female/fine. They approved of the fact that Weird Barbie’s quirks could X out Stereotypical Barbie’s perfection on some unspoken political balance sheet. That by being everything to everyone, a plastic doll could validate every child’s own unique and irrepressible individuality. To each her own Barbie!

And now there is a new Barbie cause to rally around: the Great Oscar Snub and what it all means — and why it is wrong. Neither Margot Robbie nor Greta Gerwig was nominated for her most prominent role: best actress or best director, respectively. “ How is that even possible ?” one TV host exclaimed.

“To many, the snubbing of the pair further validated the film’s message about how difficult it can be for women to succeed in — and be recognized for — their contributions in a society saturated by sexism,” CNN explained . Ryan Gosling, nominated as best supporting actor for his role as Ken, issued a statement denouncing the snubs and hailing his colleagues.

But hold on. Didn’t another woman, Justine Triet, get nominated for best director (for “Anatomy of a Fall”)? As for “Barbie,” didn’t Gerwig herself get nominated for best adapted screenplay and the always sublime America Ferrera get nominated for best supporting actress? A record three of the best picture nominees were directed by women . It’s not as if women were shut out.

Every time a woman fails to win an accolade doesn’t mean failure for womanhood. Surely women aren’t so pitiable as to need a participation certificate every time we try. We’re well beyond the point where a female artist can’t be criticized on the merits and can’t be expected to handle it as well as any man. (Which means it still hurts like hell for either sex — but not because of their sex.)

Margot Robbie had far less to do in “Barbie” than she did in “I, Tonya,” for which she justifiably got an Oscar nod . In this movie, she was charming and utterly fine, but that doesn’t make it a rare dramatic achievement.

With “Barbie,” Gerwig upped her commercial game from acclaimed art house to bona fide blockbuster. She was demonstrably ambitious in her conception of what could have been an all-out disaster. She got people to go back to the movies. All of these are successes worthy of celebration. But they are not the same as directing a good film.

Surely it is possible to criticize “Barbie” as a creative endeavor. To state that despite its overstuffed playroom aesthetic and musical glaze, the movie was boring. There were no recognizable human characters, something four “Toy Story” movies have shown can be done in a movie populated by toys.

There were no actual stakes, no plot to follow in any real or pretend world that remotely made sense. In lieu of genuine laughs, there were only winking ha-has at a single joke improbably stretched into a feature-length movie. The result produced the forced jollity of a room in which the audience is strenuously urged to “sing along now!”

A few reviewers had the gall to call it. The New York Post described it as “exhausting” and a “self-absorbed and overwrought disappointment,” a judgment for which the reviewer was likely shunned as a houseguest for the remaining summer season.

In our culture of fandoms, hashtags, TikTok sensations, semi-ironic Instagrammable cosplay, embedded anonymous reviews, sponsored endorsements and online grass-roots marketing campaigns, not every critical opinion is a deliberate commentary on the culture or the virtue-signaling of an open letter. Sometimes an opinion isn’t some kind of performance or signifier.

There’s a crucial difference between liking the idea of a movie and liking the movie itself. Just as you could like “Jaws” without wanting to instigate a decades-long paranoia about shark attacks, you can dislike “Barbie” without hating on women. Sometimes a movie is just a movie. And sometimes, alas, not a good one.

Source photographs by Paperkites and rusak/Getty Images

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , X and Threads .

Pamela Paul is an Opinion columnist at The Times, writing about culture, politics, ideas and the way we live now.

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Qualitative vs. Quantitative: Key Differences in Research Types

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Let's say you want to learn how a group will vote in an election. You face a classic decision of gathering qualitative vs. quantitative data.

With one method, you can ask voters open-ended questions that encourage them to share how they feel, what issues matter to them and the reasons they will vote in a specific way. With the other, you can ask closed-ended questions, giving respondents a list of options. You will then turn that information into statistics.

Neither method is more right than the other, but they serve different purposes. Learn more about the key differences between qualitative and quantitative research and how you can use them.

What Is Qualitative Research?

What is quantitative research, qualitative vs. quantitative research: 3 key differences, benefits of combining qualitative and quantitative research.

Qualitative research aims to explore and understand the depth, context and nuances of human experiences, behaviors and phenomena. This methodological approach emphasizes gathering rich, nonnumerical information through methods such as interviews, focus groups , observations and content analysis.

In qualitative research, the emphasis is on uncovering patterns and meanings within a specific social or cultural context. Researchers delve into the subjective aspects of human behavior , opinions and emotions.

This approach is particularly valuable for exploring complex and multifaceted issues, providing a deeper understanding of the intricacies involved.

Common qualitative research methods include open-ended interviews, where participants can express their thoughts freely, and thematic analysis, which involves identifying recurring themes in the data.

Examples of How to Use Qualitative Research

The flexibility of qualitative research allows researchers to adapt their methods based on emerging insights, fostering a more organic and holistic exploration of the research topic. This is a widely used method in social sciences, psychology and market research.

Here are just a few ways you can use qualitative research.

  • To understand the people who make up a community : If you want to learn more about a community, you can talk to them or observe them to learn more about their customs, norms and values.
  • To examine people's experiences within the healthcare system : While you can certainly look at statistics to gauge if someone feels positively or negatively about their healthcare experiences, you may not gain a deep understanding of why they feel that way. For example, if a nurse went above and beyond for a patient, they might say they are content with the care they received. But if medical professional after medical professional dismissed a person over several years, they will have more negative comments.
  • To explore the effectiveness of your marketing campaign : Marketing is a field that typically collects statistical data, but it can also benefit from qualitative research. For example, if you have a successful campaign, you can interview people to learn what resonated with them and why. If you learn they liked the humor because it shows you don't take yourself too seriously, you can try to replicate that feeling in future campaigns.

Types of Qualitative Data Collection

Qualitative data captures the qualities, characteristics or attributes of a subject. It can take various forms, including:

  • Audio data : Recordings of interviews, discussions or any other auditory information. This can be useful when dealing with events from the past. Setting up a recording device also allows a researcher to stay in the moment without having to jot down notes.
  • Observational data : With this type of qualitative data analysis, you can record behavior, events or interactions.
  • Textual data : Use verbal or written information gathered through interviews, open-ended surveys or focus groups to learn more about a topic.
  • Visual data : You can learn new information through images, photographs, videos or other visual materials.

Quantitative research is a systematic empirical investigation that involves the collection and analysis of numerical data. This approach seeks to understand, explain or predict phenomena by gathering quantifiable information and applying statistical methods for analysis.

Unlike qualitative research, which focuses on nonnumerical, descriptive data, quantitative research data involves measurements, counts and statistical techniques to draw objective conclusions.

Examples of How to Use Quantitative Research

Quantitative research focuses on statistical analysis. Here are a few ways you can employ quantitative research methods.

  • Studying the employment rates of a city : Through this research you can gauge whether any patterns exist over a given time period.
  • Seeing how air pollution has affected a neighborhood : If the creation of a highway led to more air pollution in a neighborhood, you can collect data to learn about the health impacts on the area's residents. For example, you can see what percentage of people developed respiratory issues after moving to the neighborhood.

Types of Quantitative Data

Quantitative data refers to numerical information you can measure and count. Here are a few statistics you can use.

  • Heights, yards, volume and more : You can use different measurements to gain insight on different types of research, such as learning the average distance workers are willing to travel for work or figuring out the average height of a ballerina.
  • Temperature : Measure in either degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit. Or, if you're looking for the coldest place in the universe , you may measure in Kelvins.
  • Sales figures : With this information, you can look at a store's performance over time, compare one company to another or learn what the average amount of sales is in a specific industry.

Quantitative and qualitative research methods are both valid and useful ways to collect data. Here are a few ways that they differ.

  • Data collection method : Quantitative research uses standardized instruments, such as surveys, experiments or structured observations, to gather numerical data. Qualitative research uses open-ended methods like interviews, focus groups or content analysis.
  • Nature of data : Quantitative research involves numerical data that you can measure and analyze statistically, whereas qualitative research involves exploring the depth and richness of experiences through nonnumerical, descriptive data.
  • Sampling : Quantitative research involves larger sample sizes to ensure statistical validity and generalizability of findings to a population. With qualitative research, it's better to work with a smaller sample size to gain in-depth insights into specific contexts or experiences.

You can simultaneously study qualitative and quantitative data. This method , known as mixed methods research, offers several benefits, including:

  • A comprehensive understanding : Integration of qualitative and quantitative data provides a more comprehensive understanding of the research problem. Qualitative data helps explain the context and nuances, while quantitative data offers statistical generalizability.
  • Contextualization : Qualitative data helps contextualize quantitative findings by providing explanations into the why and how behind statistical patterns. This deeper understanding contributes to more informed interpretations of quantitative results.
  • Triangulation : Triangulation involves using multiple methods to validate or corroborate findings. Combining qualitative and quantitative data allows researchers to cross-verify results, enhancing the overall validity and reliability of the study.

This article was created in conjunction with AI technology, then fact-checked and edited by a HowStuffWorks editor.

Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article:

Witch hunt, or justice? Jennifer Crumbley's case heads to jury on dramatic note

movie review and analysis difference

Jennifer Crumbley's historic school shooting trial ended on a dramatic note Friday, with one side claiming the prosecution was "so desperate" to blame someone for the Oxford school shooting that it mounted a "witch hunt" against an innocent mother, while the other side accused the mom of being selfish and negligent, refusing to do even the "smallest" things that could have saved the lives of four children killed by her son.

Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Matthews sent jurors home after the closing arguments, with deliberations to begin Monday.

In closing, the prosecutor turned Crumbley's testimony against her, reminding the jury: "She said she wouldn't do one thing different."

That's what Crumbley said on Thursday, but added: "I wish he would have killed us instead."

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald, who more than two years ago made history when she announced unprecedented criminal charges against the parents of the Oxford school shooter, had the last word with jurors on Friday as she bears the burden of proving four lives were lost due to alleged gross negligence by Crumbley.

Jennifer Crumbley, who is the first parent in America to face conviction in a mass school shooting, is charged with involuntary manslaughter for buying her son the gun that he used in the 2021 massacre and never disclosing that gun to school officials when given the chance. Her husband, James, is also charged and goes to trial in March. Her son Ethan Crumbley pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

A key issue in the parents' case is reasonable foreseeability, an element that must be proven by the prosecution. The defense says this is a hurdle the prosecution can't clear, arguing there is no evidence that Crumbley could have reasonably foreseen that her son would shoot up his school.

"No one expected this," defense attorney Shannon Smith said. "No one could have expected this, including Mrs. Crumbley."

And the school's assistant principal who knew the shooter since middle school. Smith urged jurors to recall the testimony of Assistant Principal Kristy Gibson-Marshall, who encountered the gunman in a hallway during his rampage: "I asked if he was OK. It just didn't seem right that it would be him ... I didn't think it was possible that he was the shooter."

Smith argued this case is one of hindsight.

"When you look back in hindsight, it is easy to say, this could have been different, that could have been different, this could have changed," Smith said, maintaining the prosecution built a false narrative by presenting "unnecessary" evidence out of context.

"The prosecutor has cherry-picked little pieces of evidence out of a mountain of evidence," Smith said. "… and when you get cherry-picked bits of evidence, it's easy to reach wrong conclusions."

'He literally drew a picture'

During her closing, McDonald zeroed in on what is perhaps the most damning element in this case: a violent drawing that the shooter made on the morning of the rampage and his parents' reactions to that drawing once they were summoned to the school.

The shooter had drawn a picture of a gun on a geometry worksheet, along with a human body dripping with blood, and the words: "The thoughts won't stop, Help me ... Blood Everywhere"

“He literally drew a picture” of what he was going to do, said McDonald, arguing the Crumbleys could have and should have done a number of things when they saw the alarming note, including:

  • They should have informed the school that their son had access to a gun, one they had gifted him four days earlier.
  • They should have asked their son where the gun was.
  • They should have pulled their son aside, talked to him, hugged him and asked him what was wrong.

But the Crumbleys did none of that, McDonald said. Rather the couple left their son at school and returned to their jobs.

Two hours later, their son fired his first shot in a rampage that would claim the lives of Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; and Justin Shilling, 17 . Six other students and a teacher were injured.

'Her son is still alive. Find her guilty.'

McDonald stressed to jurors multiple times that the Crumbleys, more than anyone else, could have prevented the tragedy with "small" things.

"The tragic part about it is none of it was hard. None of it," McDonald said. "The smallest thing, just the smallest thing, could have saved Hana, and Tate and Justin and Madisyn."

To prove gross negligence, the prosecution must show that the Crumbleys had a "reasonable foreseeability" that their son was going to shoot up his school given what they knew about him. Prosecutors say he was a troubled boy spiraling downward, but his parents ignored his mental health troubles and fostered his love of guns instead.

Crumbley, 45, took the stand in her own defense and disputed the prosecutor's claims, telling jurors she was a "hypervigilant" mother who took her son on family vacations, hiking trips, monitored his homework, drove him to soccer and bowling, and brought along his closest friend on family trips.

She said she never saw any signs that her son was mentally ill or needed counseling, other than him having anxiety over school, and that she never could have predicted her son would shoot up his school. She also told the jury that she has lost "a lot" since the shooting: her child, home, family life, friends - but that the real victims are those who lost their children.

It's probably the only thing Crumbley and the prosecutor agreed on.

"When she took the stand and she testified about her own loss … she hasn't lost everything ladies and gentleman," McDonald said in closing. "Her son is still alive. Find her guilty."

Defense works to outline reasonable doubts

Smith spent twice as long as the prosecutor in closing, and started by citing prosecutor's final words about the case: "This is shocking, unthinkable, unbelievable, unfathomable," Smith said, stressing there's a reason for all this:

"No one expected this," said Smith, who accused the prosecution of trying to portray her client as the worst parent in the world.

"She's not a perfect person or a perfect parent," Smith said, noting her client got on the stand and exposed "every nook and cranny" of her life to the world.

"She wanted you to see the whole truth … where she had to show you that she has made immoral decisions to have an affair … Mrs. Crumbley got up there and literally stripped her armor and let the prosecution cross-examine her about what happened in her messy life," said Smith.

"If you hate her … that's OK," Smith said. "You don't have to like her."

"Can every parent really be responsible for everything their children to do, especially when it's not foreseeable?"

'This case is a very dangerous one for parents out there'

During her closing, Smith talked about when parents should be held responsible for their children's acts.

Referring to her own teenage son, Smith said: "If he starts looking at nude pictures on his cellphone that I got him on his birthday, should I be held accountable? … Am I responsible if he sends a picture of his penis to a girl?"

That's what happened here, she said, stressing repeatedly that the shooting was not foreseeable for Jennifer Crumbley — or school officials for that matter, she said, pointing out that educators, professionals in dealing with student behavior, let Ethan Crumbley stay in school after the meeting with his parents.

"This case is a very dangerous one for parents out there. And it is the first of its kind," she said, adding: "The prosecution cannot prove its burden of proof."

She went on to blast the prosecution, saying it "was so desperate to bring this case" that it brought in a mountain of evidence that was "designed to inflame you and get you to hate Mrs. Crumbley, which, by the way, has been very effective."

Smith went piece by piece trying to dismantle the prosecution's case, which she said relied heavily on a small batch of text messages between the son and his mom, and the son and his friend — all of which she argued were refuted and explained during testimony.

Smith said the prosecution provided no context around little bits of “useless evidence,” like Jennifer Crumbley calling her son an “oopsie baby.”

“I call my son that, so what, does that mean I hate my son?” Smith said.

Then she brought up the shooter's texts to his mom about seeing a demon throw bowls around the house, and their house being haunted. That wasn't him hallucinating, she said, but as Crumbley said in her testimony, the family had a running family joke about ghosts in the house, where the son and dad named ghosts "Victoria" and "Boris Johnson." She said her son was always "messing with us" about ghosts, made videos of pretend ghosts slamming doors, and was convinced for more than a year that his house was haunted and played with a Ouiji board with his friend.

Smith said the prosecution used a small sample of text messages to his mother and a friend in which he mentioned ghosts and paranoia. But when put in context, she told jurors, the texts were not serious and were only a sliver of the more than 20,000 texts he exchanged with his friend alone - a stack she she showed the jury.

She proceeded to attack the prosecution's exhibits that she argues show nothing illegal.

'If they had better evidence, they would be up here showing' it

For example, prosecutors showed pictures of Jennifer Crumbley on her horse and texts to her husband that she was going to "get drunk" and go horseback riding on St. Patrick's Day. So what? she asked; her client was drinking on St. Patrick's Day.

"Big deal. Jennifer is at the barn. Their son is texting something weird," she said, saying it fit the family's playfulness.

"If they had better evidence, they would be up here showing" it, Smith said. "This is it, ladies and gentlemen."

In the end, she said: "The Crumbleys' son was a skilled manipulator, and they didn't realize it."

She said their son "has no history of hallucinations. He has never shown his parents signs of mental illness.

"No parent would purchase a weapon if they believed their child had mental illness," Smith said, noting that the Crumbleys already had two guns in their house previously "and nothing happened."

"They had no reason to believe that this third gun was going to make the difference," Smith said.

Smith told jurors: “The other thing that you can find as a reasonable doubt in the is the lack of evidence in the case as a whole. The prosecution has made very serious claims. And when you really look at it, they have very little evidence.”

She held up a large stack of Facebook messages between James and Jennifer Crumbley and showed that prosecutors are using a small amount of them as evidence.

Smith also showed a tall stack of text messages between Ethan Crumbley and his friend that she said contains more than 20,000 messages. The prosecution presented some of those messages where Jennifer Crumbley’s son wrote things including that he asked his dad to take him to the doctor, “but he just gave me some pills” and that when he asked to go to the doctor his mother “laughed.”

“I don’t disagree with the prosecution that these are alarming messages,” Smith said. But the shooter’s friend did not text him back or tell Jennifer Crumbley about them; Smith also said there is no evidence Jennifer Crumbley ever saw the messages.

She said her client also never saw the parts of her son’s journal presented by prosecutors.

“To evaluate this case you have to look at it from the perspective of what she knew,” Smith said. “So the journal information and the small amount of texts compared to all the texts with his friend are things she didn’t know about.”

Smith: Husband was responsible for guns

Smith also defended her client's withdrawal of thousands of dollars from the family's bank accounts after the shooting.

"For her wanting to have cash makes absolute sense," she said, arguing using credit cards anywhere would help people identify her at a time when the Crumbleys say they had been threatened. Smith said Jennifer Crumbley was scared, not fleeing, noting that she was carrying a syringe of horse medicine in her pocket.

"Her intent was not to flee. Her intent was to stay safe," Smith said, adding: "The Crumbleys weren't running. They just wanted to turn themselves in."

Smith noted the texts from the Crumbleys to their lawyers said just that, and their phone alarms were set to 6 a.m. for the following morning, which jurors saw.

Regarding the gun, Smith said:

"It is important to point out that James was responsible for storage of the gun," she said.

Smith also defended Jennifer Crumbley's dedication to work, which was also cast in a negative light by the prosecution, as it alleged she cared more about her job and horses than her son.

"Shes the one with the professional career … He's a DoorDash driver. She's trying to pay the bills. She's the breadwinner … She shouldn't be dinged for that," Smith said.

According to trial testimony, the gun at issue was hidden in the parents' armoire, and the bullets were hidden under a stack of jeans in a separate drawer. The key for the cable lock on the gun case was in a beer stein.

"If you are upset with how the gun was hidden, that's not your case … she is not the person responsible for storing this weapon," Smith said.

"It's a gross overstatement to keep saying the gun was his gift," Smith said, arguing it was more like giving a child a laptop, cellphone, car or jet ski to use. "It doesn't really mean the kids have free access to stuff. It comes with conditions and parameters."

"Unfortunately, the prosecution brought charges too soon," Smith said. "The prosecution and law enforcement have approached this case with tunnel vision from Day One."

Smith also criticized the prosecution for portraying her client as a cold, distant mother by pointing out that she didn't hug her son in the school office.

"Giving him a hug that day in the office was going to stop a mass shooting — there's nothing to prove that anything could stop a school shooting," Smith said.

Smith urged the jurors to dive into the couples' hundreds of text messages, saying they're going to find "a lot of instances where Mrs. Crumbley is anxious about where her son is," arguments between her and her husband and even sex talk.

"You will read a variety of messages that show real life, and it should make no difference that they mention their horse's name than their sons," Smith said, noting "even if they don't use their son's name," when they say "he," that's who they are talking about."

Smith stressed again that this case could set a dangerous precedent for any parent who is trying their best.

"I do wish, more than anything, that this case could bring justice to victims of the shooting, and to the victims of the terrorism that day," Smith said. "This is not justice. This is not how justice works. This does nothing for people who have lost everything … and it does nothing to (undo) the tragedy that unfolded on Nov. 30."

"The prosecution cannot prove that Mrs. Crumbley knew there was a danger by her son, or that she was grossly negligent, and there is no way she could foresee" the shooting, she said.

Prosecutor argues for conviction

McDonald, though, urged the jurors to convict. And in doing so, she urged jurors not to consider Crumbley's testimony that school officials were at fault for not searching her son's backpack, for assuring her that he was not a threat to the school, for giving him the option of staying in school after the drawing was discovered, and for not sharing with her problems the boy had been having at school during the year of the shooting, like falling asleep in class, feeling depressed, and writing an autobiography that said "My family is a mistake."

"I’m going to tell you right now that this is not an argument that the school did everything they should have done. I’m not going to say that to you,” McDonald said. “I’m not going to tell you that I like everything they testified to. I’m not going to tell you that I think it was OK they didn’t look in the backpack. I don’t think it was.'

She continued:

"But this is about Jennifer Crumbley’s actions and any attempt to make it about what these two individuals did or didn’t do, like it or not, who did not have any of the information that was so jarring, it’s about what she knew and what she didn’t say.”

McDonald asked the jury to consider the testimony of school counselor Shawn Hopkins, who said he called the parents to the school because he was concerned about the drawing their son had made in math class. Hopkins had sent the drawing to the mother, who then texted her husband: "EMERGENCY."

McDonald urged the jury to consider that reaction, arguing it shows the mom knew this was a serious matter.

McDonald next urged the jury to pay close attention to what happened inside the school counselor's office when the parents arrived.

"Jennifer Crumbley didn't hug her son," McDonald said. "Jennifer Crumbley didn't engage with her son at all in the entire 11 minutes she was there."

McDonald argued Crumbley never intended to stay long at the school, given she had told her boss she'd be back by 12 or 12:30.

She also urged jurors to remember what Oxford High counselor Shawn Hopkins told them — "that he felt compassion for the shooter." That's why, she argues, Hopkins let the shooter stay in school: He didn't want him to go home and be alone.

McDonald also reminded jurors about the testimony of Dean of Students Nicholas Ejak, who was in the counselor's office with the parents and the shooter that day. He testified that the mother seemed irritated about being called to the school, and abruptly ended the meeting, saying "Are we done here?"

McDonald then walked the jury through a timeline, and asked them to remember the parents' actions in the hours after the shooting, specifically the comment they made to police about the murder weapon.

When police asked the parents where the gun was located in their house before their son using it, Jennifer Crumbley said: "It was hidden."

McDonald also said the parents' actions proved that they could "reasonably foresee" that their son was going to shoot up his school, and had a duty to exercise "ordinary care" to protect the students from their son.

This, she said, was evident in the parents' actions in the counselor's office on the morning of the shooting.

“She could have told the school we gifted him a gun. She could have told him we care about you. We love you,” McDonald said.

“That worksheet right there is reasonable foreseeability,” McDonald said. “It’s not just any gun — it’s the defendant's son's gun …

“'The thoughts won’t stop. Help me' … that is foreseeability. He’s telling in that drawing, this is the gun that was purchased for me. ‘Help me. Blood everywhere. The world is dead. ‘”

"It's a rare case. It takes some really egregious facts. It takes the unthinkable,” McDonald said. “And she has done the unthinkable. And because of that four kids have died."

Contact Tresa Baldas: [email protected]

Contact Gina Kaufman: [email protected]. Follow her on X: @ReporterGina.

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Computer Science > Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

Title: instruction makes a difference.

Abstract: We introduce Instruction Document Visual Question Answering (iDocVQA) dataset and Large Language Document (LLaDoc) model, for training Language-Vision (LV) models for document analysis and predictions on document images, respectively. Usually, deep neural networks for the DocVQA task are trained on datasets lacking instructions. We show that using instruction-following datasets improves performance. We compare performance across document-related datasets using the recent state-of-the-art (SotA) Large Language and Vision Assistant (LLaVA)1.5 as the base model. We also evaluate the performance of the derived models for object hallucination using the Polling-based Object Probing Evaluation (POPE) dataset. The results show that instruction-tuning performance ranges from 11X to 32X of zero-shot performance and from 0.1% to 4.2% over non-instruction (traditional task) finetuning. Despite the gains, these still fall short of human performance (94.36%), implying there's much room for improvement.

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    Description While the plot summary will give the reader a general sense of what the film is about, also include a more detailed description of your particular cinematic experience watching the film. This may include your personal impression of what the film looks, feels, and sounds like.

  7. Research Guides: Film & Media: Reviews & Criticism

    Film criticism is the study, interpretation and evaluation of a film with regard to issues such as historical context, theory or technical analysis. Film criticism is written by academics and is published in books or scholarly journals. It may sometimes address a specific apsect of a ilm or focus on the work of a particul director or genre.

  8. Movie reviews and criticisms

    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 ...

  9. Film: Movie Reviews and Film Criticism

    The quality of reviews varies greatly, ranging from a simple plot summary with a thumbs up or thumbs down to an in-depth examination informed by expertise from film schools and years of film analysis and reviews. Regardless, the purpose of a review is to make a viewing recommendation. Examples of movie reviews of Pulp Fiction include:

  10. Sentiment Analysis

    Sentiment relates to the meaning of a word or sequence of words and is usually associated with an opinion or emotion. And analysis? Well, this is the process of looking at data and making inferences; in this case, using machine learning to learn and predict whether a movie review is positive or negative. Maybe you're interested in knowing ...

  11. How to Write a Movie Review: 5 Tips for Writing Movie Reviews

    1. Watch the entire film. It's important to watch the whole movie before writing your review, so you have the necessary information to write a thorough, thoughtful piece. If possible, watch the film more than once, taking notes on different aspects, like acting, cinematography, music, theme, and narrative arcs.

  12. (PDF) What Is Important When We Evaluate Movies? Insights from

    IMDB movie information is applied for statistical analysis, sentiment classification, genre-based clustering, and rating-based clustering with respect to movie release year, budget, etc., for ...

  13. Film Analysis

    Watching the film First it's important to watch the film carefully with a critical eye. Consider why you've been assigned to watch a film and write an analysis. How does this activity fit into the course? Why have you been assigned this particular film? What are you looking for in connection to the course content?

  14. Guide on Movie Review with Free Samples and Tips

    A remarkable aspect of a good film review is that it doesn't just rate the movie but provides explicit views that form the critique's basis. This form of writing, like crafting essays, research papers, and term papers, should be insightful and draw the reader in quickly. It's important to discuss the reputation of the lead actors and directors ...

  15. What makes for a good movie?

    Towards Data Science · 9 min read · Jan 16, 2021 Photo by Jeremy Yap on Unsplash For the past century or so, cinema has played the part of one of society's most widely consumed forms of entertainment, with a myriad of movies exploding onto the scene each year with as much vigour as popcorn kernels in a hot pan.

  16. How to Prepare Movie Review Data for Sentiment Analysis (Text

    Now that we know how to load the movie review text data, let's look at cleaning it. 3. Clean Text Data. In this section, we will look at what data cleaning we might want to do to the movie review data. We will assume that we will be using a bag-of-words model or perhaps a word embedding that does not require too much preparation. Split into ...

  17. Similarities in movie review content by critics and general users

    By analyzing movie reviews from Rotten Tomatoes, a film and TV review website, new research from the University of Notre Dame proposes a "topic consistency" measure to capture the degree of overlap between critic and user review content and finds that it does impact movie sales.

  18. Film Writing: Essays vs Reviews

    As opposed to essays, film reviews are heavily reliant on critical reception. They are written reports about a film and are from the viewpoint of the writer. The majority of reviews are published around the time of the film's release, sometimes just before the premiere or during its theatrical run in the cinemas.

  19. Should we trust critics' movie reviews?

    Critics Critics avoided straight-forward assessments of films, favouring descriptive reports of the narrative and character portrayals, and we saw a diverse set of descriptive words ranging from grizzled to gargantuan.

  20. PDF Movies Reviews Sentiment Analysis and Classification

    A movie review is an article reflecting its writers' opinion ... the difference between subjectivity detection and polarity ... in a movie review analysis system. Their approach combined

  21. Movie review analysis: Emotion analysis of IMDb movie reviews

    This paper argues that there is a better way: reviewers movie scores and reviews can be analyzed with respect to their emotion content, aggregated and projected onto a movie, resulting in an emotion map for a movie.

  22. Genre analysis of movies using a topic model of plot summaries

    In understanding the corpus, it is also instructive to note the primary language of the work. While the summaries were taken from English Wikipedia, the original work itself was often not in English (Table 1).. 2.2 Topic modeling 2.2.1 Overview of the method. Topic modeling is a probabilistic approach that works backward from the assumption that a corpus of documents can be modeled using a ...

  23. (PDF) Movies Reviews Sentiment Analysis and Classification

    Sentiment analysis seeks to identify the view- point(s) underlying a text span; an example appli- cation is classifying a movie review as "thumbs up" or "thumbs down".

  24. Opinion

    There, I Said It. Jan. 24, 2024. Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times. 2034. By Pamela Paul. Opinion Columnist. We can all agree 2023 was a good year for the movies. Critically and ...

  25. Turf Monster: Jets' Michael Carter II Rips MetLife Stadium

    New York Jets defender Michael Carter II is skeptical about an NFL/NFLPA study that claims there's no difference between injuries on grass and artificial turf.

  26. Qualitative vs. Quantitative: Key Differences in Research Types

    This method, known as mixed methods research, offers several benefits, including: A comprehensive understanding: Integration of qualitative and quantitative data provides a more comprehensive understanding of the research problem. Qualitative data helps explain the context and nuances, while quantitative data offers statistical generalizability.

  27. Witch hunt, or justice? Jennifer Crumbley's fate in jury's hands

    Smith argued this case is one of hindsight. "When you look back in hindsight, it is easy to say, this could have been different, that could have been different, this could have changed," Smith ...

  28. [2402.00453] Instruction Makes a Difference

    Instruction Makes a Difference. We introduce Instruction Document Visual Question Answering (iDocVQA) dataset and Large Language Document (LLaDoc) model, for training Language-Vision (LV) models for document analysis and predictions on document images, respectively. Usually, deep neural networks for the DocVQA task are trained on datasets ...

  29. Terry Rozier Says Losing is 'In the DNA' in Charlotte

    In a recent interview, Rozier spoke out about the difference, if any, between losing in Charlotte versus losing in Miami. "It's the total opposite. In Charlotte, you're kinda used to losing.