Purpose of a Magazine Film Review

The main purpose of a magazine film review is provide the audience with information based opinions from critics about an upcoming film, which they will be able to see very soon, and most importantly spend their time and money seeing it. A film review is different to a film poster because film posters will generally have a positive twist to it, but in a magazine it is the full review by the critic, who is able to say to the audience what he/she likes about the film and similarly dislikes. There are also many magazine film review conventions used differently to film posters, which I will explain later. Furthermore, in film reviews there are sometimes also breakout boxes which may show information about the director of the film, and what he/she wanted to do while making the film, this can be effective because it gives the audience an insight of what to expect.

How audiences interact and understand each film review generally all falls down to the style of magazine it is in, for example, Total Film for more casual, male audiences who like witty jokes. On the other hand, there are magazines such as sight & Sound, for more serious, academic audiences who want to know every aspect of the film. However, audiences may interact with these film reviews through all of the technical conventions used, such as a call to action, where they may visit websites or call a number for further information about the film they just read about. The main way audiences immediately understand a film review is through a very common system, which is the stars, the more stars a film gets, the better the film according to the critic. Generally, audiences that read lots of film reviews and know the best critics like Ginette Vincendeau, the more they will believe the article from this particular critic.

The direct impact of a film review is extremely vital, it has the ultimate power to make or break a film, especially in feature length films as they will find it very important for the success of their film. The film review is an important part of a film’s marketing campaign because even if the film makers do not have the budget to have lots of advertisements for their film, if they get an excellent review from a well known critic, they will be very successful. However, it can be easily seen that this does contain a large element of risk because if a film got a bad review after they asked for one, they will probably not do as successful as expected.