Project: Film Review
3-4 pages (800-1000 words)
Your task for Project III is to write a review of your film. Hopefully, thanks to your work on the Annotated Bibliography, you have several good samples of reviews on which to base your own. There isn't one "correct" structure for a review, but I do want to see you do three major things with your review:
1. Give a summary of the plot. Your goal here is not to get too in-depth, but don't worry about making a "spoiler-free" review. (Think less of the reviews you might see on Rotten Tomatoes the week a film comes out, and more about some of the longer, more in-depth reviews you collected in Project II.) Don't pretend like your film has just come out, or like the twists/endings aren't already known. Instead, focus on those details of the plot that you are most interested in discussing.
2. Situate your film within the larger conversations you have been looking at since Project I. This might include the film's place in a larger franchise, conversations about ‘strong female leads,' representation and stereotypes that people were excited/worried about, controversies you wrote about in Project II, discussion of real-world political context, or whatever else has interested you the most. Once you set up the conversation, explain how you feel the film did compared to the conversations you've read so far.
3. Take a stand on whether this is a worthwhile film, and why an audience should (or should not) want to see it. You can also be specific here about which audiences you feel would most enjoy it.
Because film reviews are generally subjective and informal, you don't need to have a Works Cited page or any MLA parenthetical citation in your review. This doesn't mean that you don't need to worry about quotation, paraphrasing, and citations, though. As you situate your film in a larger conversation, you should use embedded quotes and paraphrasing from articles and videos that help make your point (probably sources you collected in Projects I and II), including good use of signal phrases. Then, instead of using parenthetical citation, use a hyperlink (highlight text, right click, choose ‘link'/'hyperlink' and paste the URL you want to link to) to show your sources. For example, this review of Avengers: Age of Ultron makes use of links to help set up the general conversation before the author presents their viewpoint.