Jon Havey
1/13/10
Literacy Writing
During the summer of 2008 I discovered a love for film. I had a very small
movie collection at this time of about twenty or thirty movies, however, this did not
last long. I began collecting movie after movie after movie and now I have more
than four hundred all numbered and documented in a binder for organizational
purposes. Around the same time I was thinking about writing movie reviews on a
blog or some sort of website. I had had the idea for a long time, but never got around
to doing it. I have always read the critic and user reviews that are posted on
yahoo.com and thought it would be a lot of fun to write some of my own. I ended up
making a goal for myself. I told myself that once “The Dark Knight” was released I
was going to start writing movie reviews.
The release of “The Dark Knight” finally arrived and I ended up seeing the
film three times during the first week it was out. After the third viewing, I decided
that it was the time to stop putting off my goal and start writing reviews. I decided
to create a new yahoo email account with a user name having to do with movies and
that was solely made for reviewing. I came up with
jhaveymoviereviews@yahoo.com. Since “The Dark Knight” was the first movie from
the theatres that I ever reviewed, as I look back on it and compare it to the movies I
have reviewed recently, it is very short and vague about the technical aspects of the
film. The following is the original review:
The Dark Knight (2008)
Can you say O S C A R?
(Jul 18, 2008)
“Everyone is saying Heath Ledger is amazing and diserves an oscar which he does. I
mean come on " Why so serious?" but I want to give credit to all of the other actors
especially Mr. Bale and Mr. Cane. Best batman and butlerever. The story is unbeatable
and this movie will go down in history as the best superhero movie ever made and it is in
the league of The Godfather Pt 2, the empire strikes back and the two towers as one of
the best sequels ever made that is even better than the original. The night is darkest
before the dawn.” (jhaveymoviereviews@yahoo.com)
As you can see there are also multiple spelling mistakes, but at that time I did
not care because I was just excited to have finally written my first review. I had
gotten over the hump and had a newfound love for writing and critiquing films.
However, I still had doubts about how long I was actually going to write reviews.
My doubts dissipated fast though; this was just the beginning. I began writing
multiple reviews every single day. I do admit that I was lazy and took breaks on
certain days. I also found it hard to keep up with the amount of movies that I
watched. On average I was watching around three movies a day and as I wrote more
and more reviews they got longer and longer and more analytical. Therefore, I
began making a list of all the movies I had seen and crossed them off once I saw
them. I tended to fall behind a lot still, but I was having fun and that is all that
mattered. However, I had a solution to the problem. I decided that I would only
review films that were released within a year of me watching them, therefore
making it much easier to keep up.
I started to teach myself about all the different directors throughout history
and the movies that they had created and why. I bought books that had lists of the
top 100 movies ever made and read reviews on them to help me out with my own
reviews. I even went to AFI’s (American Film Institute) website and printed out ten
different lists of the best movies ever made and the best movies in each genre. I
made my own checklist in order to keep track of the movies I saw on the lists. This
helped my film knowledge flourish. I am a much better critic now because of the
classic films. I knew that the only way that I was going to be as good as I wanted to
be was by reading as much about movies as I could and watching as many movies as
possible while still having fun and enjoying to do it.
Once school started I had to balance school homework and the movie
reviews that I was writing. This wasn’t very hard, but I was extremely excited for my
favorite time of the movie season: November through March. I don’t know what the
official name for this season of movies is but I call it “Award Season,” because the
majority of films that are nominated for any Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globe
Awards, or Academy Awards are released during this season. Every year before the
nominations are even announced I make a list of the five best Pictures, Actors,
Actresses, Directors, Screenplays, Scores etc. and I go to as many movies in the
theatres as possible. I enjoyed these few months even more in 2008 because this
was the first time I had been writing reviews. This also marked the point when I
started writing two or three page reviews. This caused me to cut back on the
quantity of reviews I wrote and focus on the quality.
I have written over 400 reviews since the summer of 2008 and have watched
more movies than I can count. The review that I pride myself most to this day is my
review on “Milk” that I wrote a year ago. The following is an excerpt from my Milk
review and when compared to “The Dark Knight” Review there is an obvious
progression:
Milk
Sean Penn is Harvey Milk”
Overall= A+
Story= A
Acting= A+
Direction= AVisuals= A
REVIEW
By: Jonathan Havey
“Milk is a very inspirational film about the gay rights movement centered in San
Francisco. Sean Penn has an award winning performance playing the first openly gay
man to be voted into public office in America. Sean Penn is Harvey Milk. He has
recreated Harvey Milk in every single way. They even look very similar… I am surprised
this wasn’t nominated for best picture for the Golden Globes. I believe that the Academy
would be making a horrible mistake if Milk isn’t nominated for Best Picture. This film
brings hope to everyone and shows that despite all the hate, there are good people in this
world. Sean Penn is the face of hope. He is Harvey Milk.”
(jhaveymoviereviews@yahoo.com)