The Popular Review

Of the genres of film writing that students are commonly asked to read and/or
write, the popular review i s the one that is not strictly academic. Even the most
casual film buffs actively seek out and read popular reviews as they determine
which movie they should go see over the weekend.
The primary function of the popular review is to encourage audiences to see
a particular film . . . or to stay away at all costs. At its simplest, the essence o f
any popular review is o n e of two evaluative claims: "This is a good movie, " or
" this is a bad movie. " More than just rating the entertainment value of movies,
film critics also participate in a long tradition of public discourse on film and
culture. By debating the relative worth of individual films i n w idely read publi­
cations, critics raise their readers' awareness of film as a serious art form worthy
of careful consideration. This tradition has thrived on a diversity of o pinions,
including those of such notable figures as James Agee (The Nation) , Edith Oliver
(The New Yorker) , Andrew Sarris (The Village Voice) , Pauline Kael (The New
Yorker) , Stanley Kauffmann ( The New Republic) , Richard Schickel (Time) , and
Peter Travers (Rolling Stone) .
To support a claim, the popular reviewer must measure the film against a set
of standards, or criteria. Effective reviewers are conscious of what criteria they
use to evaluate films, and t h ey make these criteria clear to their readers. [n other
words, readers should understand why a reviewer liked a fil m , so they can deter­
mine whether or not to trust the reviewer's judgement. In turn, a reviewer must
carefully consider whom she is addressing, and evaluate a film using criteria her
audience will recognize and might accept. Reviews in Rolling Stone magazine,
for example, target the magazine's primary readership: males in their late teens
and early twenties. [ n contrast , readers of The New Yorker tend to be older,
middle-class intellectuals, and the magazine's film reviews generally address the
values of that specific audience. Reviews in political magazines such as The
Weekly Standard or The A merican Prospect evaluate films in large part based on
their political values.
The reasons for liking or disliking a film have to be considered carefully.
Anyone who has had the experience of l i king a film only after a second viewing
understands that one cannot always trust an initial response. Any number of
factors may limit a viewer's ability to appreciate a movie after j ust one viewing.
Perhaps the theater's environment or other patrons inhibited enjoyment ;
perhaps the film was simply too complex to comprehend fully after j ust one
screening. When writing a review, try to avoid knee-jerk reactions. Instead,
begin by considering what a film is trying to accomplish and how it tries to
accomplish these things. The most convincing evaluative claims follow careful
interpretive analysis.
While most popular reviews are easier to read than academic papers, they are
not necessarily easier to write. In fact, since effective popular reviews usually
take into account a film's thematic concerns and its aesthetic techniques without
assuming that the reader has any formal training in film aesthetics, the popular
review can be more difficult to write than an academic argument.

Fou r Types of Wri ti n g A b o u t F i l m 53


3.9 Cartoon ish, m ascu l i ne violence i n
Sin City.
Consider the following review
of Robert Rodriguez's controver­
sial Sin City (2005 ; fig. 3.9) , by
Cynthia Fuchs. Notice how the
review begins by acknowl edging
the critical buzz generated by the
countless editorials and reviews
that lambasted the film for its vio­
lence and misogyny. But Fuchs
defends Sin City by situating it
w ithin the specifi c cinematic tra­
dition of film nair. In fact, reading
this revi ew should provoke a
comparison between The Big
Heat and Sin City. Fuchs mea­
sures the aesthetic value of the
film only after considering its the­
matic ambitions as an entry in the
film noir genre. The concluding
paragraphs of this review don't merely praise the film-they interpret Sin City
and consider how effectively Rodriguez's stylistic choices complement its theme.

"Old Days"
'There's no trumped-up realism here. It's more like a pure fever
dream.'-Frank Miller

Mickey Rourke gets electrocuted, Bruce W i llis i s hung, Devon

Aoki kicks ass, Jessica Alba dances on a pole. What else d o you
need to know?
The pulpy excesses of Sin City are gaudy, gorgeous, and in some
corners, already renowned, as they are seized more or less whole
from Frank Miller's noiry graphic novel series. Indeed, the film's
dedication to its source is notorious in its own way: when Robert
Rodriguez learned that DGA (Directors Guild of America) rules
prohibited him from sharing directing credits with M iller, he did the
right thing. He quit the organization and made the movie he
wanted to make, with Miller and his friend Quentin ( "Special G uest
Director") Tarantino. Fuck the man.
And long live the man, too. For, at the ghastly, desolate,
silhouetted heart of Sin City, drawn from three of Miller's books
(The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill, and That Yellow Bastard) are
men of all shapes and sizes, variously desperate, cruel, frightened ,
and ferocious, not precisely seeking redemption, but willing to take
it. Their patter is hardboiled ( " Don't scream or I ' ll plug ya") , their
bodies beaten down ( " You're pushing sixty and you got a bum
ticker, " Willis's Hartigan tells himself) , their perspectives ravaged
by one bad knock after another. Marv (Rourke) , face deformed and
soul destroyed by the murder of his one nigh t ' s true love, the

54 C h apter 3: Writ i n g About Film

 hooker Goldie (Jamie King) , pauses in his vengeful killing spree to
wonder, " What if I ' ve imagined all of this? What if I 've turned into
what they always said I would, a maniac, a psycho killer? " Ah well,
next cadaver. 1 1 Fuchs begi n s her· r·eview b y al l u d i ng to
The three maj or stories all concern revenge: Hartigan wants to the controversy sparked by the fi lm. Th is
rh etori cal strategy bri ngs readers i n to an
protect Nancy, the traumatized kidnap victim he saves from certain
o ngoi n g conversatio n about the fi lm
grisly death (Makenzie Vega as " skinny little Nancy, " Jessica Alba as a n d , before th at, the graph ic novel s i [
her grown-up stripper self) ; Marv seeks the annihilation of everyone was based o n . Of cou rse, n o t a l l films
are comroversi al, and so not al l
even slightly associated with Goldie's murder, including the
revi ewers can si tu ate fi lms i n relati on to
cannibalistic Card i nal Roark (Rutger Hauer) and his Senator brother the [i d e of p u b l i c o p i n i o n .
(Powers Boothe) ; and ex-con/ex-photojournalist Dwight (the
supremely brooding Clive O wen) runs i nto trouble i n the form o f a
rogue cop (there's no other kind here) named Jackie Boy (Benicio
Del Toro) , who gleefully abuses his ex, who happens to be Dwight' s
recently acquired, huge-eyed waitress girlfriend Shellie (Brittany
Murphy) .
D istraught , ornery, self-critical, these heroes are certainly more
"anti " types than straight-ahead. At the same time, their targets are
unambiguous. I n Sin City, the villains are outsized. The Cardinal
and his spastically effective boy-toy assassin Kevin (Elijah Wood)
eat corpses (and keep the heads as wall-mounted trophies, a detail
observed by a victim-to-be) . The cops, who are purportedly mad
about Jackie Boy 's death in Old Tow n , actually want to regain
control of that lucrative turf: hookers in thigh boots and j angly
chains run the streets without oversight by male pimps; they see
themselves as free, and the undifferentiated cops see them as
money to be made. And poor Hartigan is up agai nst a re-engineered
child molester, now l iterally a Yel low Bastard (Nick Stahl as a
spitefully rejiggered sort of Gollum) , and spawn of Senator Roark,
which means he's just about u ntouchable, at least by anyone who
plans to stay alive.
On some level, the film is about looking-long and hard-at pop
culture, those self-reflections that are most titillating, traumatizing,
and repulsive. And the film is quite aware of what's at issue here,
the pain of looking and the cost of not looking. As Hartigan warns
the child he saves, " Cover your eyes, Nancy l I don't want you to
see this . " Its panics and calamities are dazzling, its rei nventions 2 Even when a fi lm is not controversial , a
less straight-up new than innovations on t hemes. But these review can eval u ate i [ with i n a parTicu l ar
context. Reviewers often acknowl edge a
themes-men beating their chests, men legitimizing their violence, fi lm's p rod uctio n h istory, the level of
men fearing each other-could not be more relevant 2 p u bl ic a n ti ci p ation regard ing i ts rel ease,
So, while tales are broadly brilliant and colorful in their grand or biogra p h i cal i n formatio n about the
person nel i n volved . H e re Fuchs makes a
outlines, they are also familiar and repetitive. Strangely and maybe
subtle reference to the h istori cal events
luckily, the players are as cartoonish as their parts, as if to redouble coi n ci d i ng wi th [he rel ease of the fi lm:
the excess and the irony at every turn. Mickey Rourke seems-very [he u . s . war i n Iraq and the struggle
u nnervingly-born to play Marv, all wrecked lumps and b eat-down aga i n st [errorism . Does t h i s comment
reveal the values she bri ngs to the
countenance, and Owen makes his own dour, battered beauty review? What assumpti ons is she making
subordinate to Dwight ' s devastation. And Willis, bless him, is almost abou[ her readers h ere?

Fou r Types o f Writing A b o u t F i l m 55

3 As with m o re formal modes of wri ti ng,
the review requ i res the wri ter to gather
" evidence"-to descri be and com ment on
detail s d rawn from the fi l m . In most
cases, the fi l m revi ewer faces inflexi ble
word count l i m its, so th is detai l is used
spari ngly. In this revi ew Fuchs focuses a
good deal of atten tion on the mal e
actors-a strategic move on her part,
since her review interprets the fi l m as a
commentary on mascu l in ity.
4 Fu chs's I'eview e m ploys a th ree-part
structu re com mon to pop u l ar fi l m
criticism. The first section pithily evokes
the author's o pi n ion-i t sets the mood,
so to speak. The second section offers a
succin ct plot s u m mary-just enough to
give the reader an i m pression of the fi l m
without spoi l i ng i t. The thi rd section
goes i nto more detai l about why the
reviewer praises or condem n s the fi l m .
Fuchs begins the th i rd section of her
review he re. Notice how she p u l l s various
strands of thought together, l i n ki ng her
appreciation of the fi l m's u n u sual vi sual
style with its portrai t of m ascu l i n ity.
This chapter concludes Part One of this book. Chapter 1 explained the con­
nection between film analysis and film appreciation, and Chapter 2 introduced
56
his own comic book character b y now, even aside from t h e scowl.3
You don't come to Sin City for illumination or transformatio n ; you
come for reinforcement. You know how these things go, and the film
delivers. The backdrops are stark (mostly black-and-white-and-gray,
with splashes of color, in cars, neon signs, and blood) , the guys
brooding, the dames bodacious, i ncluding Marv's best pal, the
" dyke " Lucile (Carla Gugino, a long way from Mrs. Spy Kids) , whose
first appearance in her apartment, wearing only a thong as she
saunters to her bathroom and soothes the once-again shattered Marv,
doesn't titillate so much as it astounds.
The exhaustive transliteration of Miller's baleful graphic novel
provides a nerdish satisfaction: the panels have become
storyboards, and the film o ften lifts them as if right off the page,
with actors shot against green screens and depth reduced to
shadows and light.4 But the movie offers other rewards. Primarily, it
complicates masculinity, that seeming bedrock of the genre. Though
these guys look like basic dark-comic-book heroes, they ' re also
quite miserable. Yes, they haul their asses into action to rescue or
avenge ladies, the blondes in particular (Goldie, Shellie) incarnating
classic " motivation. " But they 're sad too. Like, do we have to do
this all again? This even as the O l d Town girls seem at first self­
sufficient: Gail (Rosario Dawson) and Miho (Aoki) are deadly
accurate with assorted weapons. Like the guys, though, they ' re
undone by a traitor within their ranks, and so need a little help
from Gail's ex, Dwight. (The cross-referencing of exes and relations
is almost enough to demand a chart.)
But the boys' burden here is not j ust female or even moral,
though they complain of both mightily. It's more complicated, born
of tradition, ambition, and inertia. These big l ugs can 't imagine
their way out of predicaments without the usual recourse to some
version of balls-out violence or the always gratifying sadism.
Occasionally they make this load seem poetic ( "This is the old
days, the all or nothin ' days , " observes Marv, "They're back ") , at
others frustrating (Marv again: "It really gets my goat when guys
rough up dames") or fun . As Dwight explains, " You gotta stand up
for your friends. Sometimes that means dying. Sometimes it means
killing a whole lotta people. "
But the masculine prerogative is always a load. It's painful and
costly and seductive. Men are damaged no matter what they do­
by betrayal, disillusionment, experience and revelation. And that's
the story of Sin City, the one it tells insistently, horrifically, and
over and over again. I t 's hard to b e a boy.
-originally published in Popmatters.com, 1 April 200S . Reprinted
co urtesy of the author.
C h a p t e r 3: Wri t i n g A b o u t F i l m
strategies for taking the first steps toward film analysis. This chapter has shown
how interpretation and writing go hand in hand, and both are activities t hat
engage scholars and fil m enthusiasts alike. Despite the obvious differences
between formal academic analysis and popular film reviews, both approaches
demand an appreciation of how films systematically use narrative, visual, and
sound details to evoke characters, t h emes, and abstract ideas. They also demand
that attention be paid to the writing genre and its audience.
Part Two o f this book b u ilds o n the materials covered in the first three chap­
ters by providing the vocabulary and i ntellectual tools needed to describe cine­
matic techniques, begin ning with a discussion of narrative form, and moving
through visual elements and sound. Developing the ability to notice-and the
vocabulary to describe-specifi c visual, sound , and storytelling techniques and
their potential effects on viewers is critical to constructing clear and thoughtfu l
interpretive claims. B y the end of Part Two , readers should be able t o write i n
each of t h e four modes outlined in Chapter 3, using t h e proper terminology to
construct cogent arguments about cinema.

Four Types of Writi n g A b o u t F i l m 57