CUDA
ADVANCED ENGLISH
Project: Movie
Review
Andrea Karschenboim, Laura
Karschenboim and Magdalena Ghio
Contents:
 Aims
 Analysis
 Conclusion
 Sources
1) Aims
The main aims of this project are to find out the elements of a movie review and
to learn which lexical words give an evaluative character.
2) Analysis
We browsed the reviews of The Life of David Gale on the Internet. Most are
scathingly negative. As we are convinced that the movie was very interesting
and so touching, we tried to understand why so many eminent critics detested it.
Although it is true that The life of David Gale has the rhythms of something
adapted from a long and complex detective novel, there were certain scenes that
had us on the edge of our seats. It's necessary to pay careful attention because
nearly every detail is important; and as the movie doesn't spell everything out at
the end, a little bit of deduction is necessary to sort everything out.
It is a controversial movie because it focus on whether the American judicial
system can be manipulated. It also leads to debate the moral correctness or
incorrectness of the Death Penalty.
Hence, the anti-death penalty message was very important. Texas is the home of
the assembly line death penalty. The governor is shown as a pro-capital
punishment. Many of the problems of Southern death penalty justice are on
display here, including inept defense lawyers, endless delays while prisoners sit
on death row, hopeless last minute appeals that stretch the judicial system out of
shape, overwhelmed death penalty opponents, and innocent men who are
condemned to death because of judicial error.
3) Conclusion
A movie review is a report by somebody in a newspaper or magazine giving her
or his opinion of a film.
Words like: sloppy, low-key manner, corageous, solid, flawless, accurately,
smart and foolproof give an evaluative character. These words are nouns,
adjectives and adverbs.
We can change the tone of a movie review by turning the unfavourable nouns,
adverbs and adjectives -that give an evaluative character- into favourable ones,
and viceversa, as shown below:
“Despite the solid cast, this rather preposterous thriller never really
clicks or excites, whilst its big twists and contrivances keep spiralling
downward into rather ridiculous territory. Much like "Vanilla Sky", the
first act is actually an interesting bit of filmmaking but the other two
are just woeful pieces of junk which are amongst the most blatant
attempts you'll ever see at manipulating an audience's emotion - if it
was an intelligently penned story we might not mind so much but the
script sadly lacks that heft. Alan Parker's hamhanded direction doesn't
help either - everything is clearly spelled out to the point that
practically all the story's tension is robbed, whilst its anti-capital
punishment stance is forced down our throats to the point even
advocates will get pissed.”
Together with its solid cast, this edge-of-the-seat thriller excites the audience,
it´s a good discussion piece, much like “Mississippi Burning”, also directed by
Alan Parker. The three parts into which the film is divided are equally
suspenseful and thought provoking. The last two ones definitely direct our
attention not only to the plot but to the very serious subjects of the merits of
death penalty. The script keeps the audience off –balance and entertained for the
running length. Alan Parker’s bright direction leads us to an unexpected end
which, in turn, makes us brood lengthy on the manipulation of American
judicial system.
4) Sources
www.darkhorizons.com
www.entertteinyourbrain.com
www.futuremovies.co.uk
www.discoverkate.com
www.cnn.com
www.nytimes.com