An example of a movie review. positive.

A: It's remarkable that for 'Young Mr. Lincoln's' supporting players Ford cast lesser known, other-than-star actors. This not only heightens his film's focus on the central character of Lincoln, but it also affords the audience a refreshing insight into Lincoln as a man of his place and time, a man embroiled, as each one of us inexorably is, in the issues and sentiments of his time and seeking his way to resolving them. It's not so much through Fonda's Lincoln's words and actions but in the faces, the reactions of the supporting players that Ford tells the story of the formation of the young Lincoln's worldview, sense of place in society and polity, and of how the people responded to Mr. Lincoln's words and deeds and placed their trust in this man whom they deemed to have earned their respect and heeding.

Give this a try: instead of focusing on Henry Fonda, next time you view 'Young Mr. Lincoln' shift your focus to the supporting characters - you will, I expect, be handsomely rewarded with a more profound appreciation of both Lincoln and Ford. I like to suspect that Ford's storytelling through the supporting characters' reactions to Fonda's Lincoln may have appealed to David Lean when he directed Omar Sharif in 'Doctor Zhivago', in which it's the supporting characters' reactions to Zhivago that actually tell about Zhivago.

An example of a movie review. negative.

A: I, like many people, saw this film in the theatre when it first came out in '97. It was a below average film at best, defiantly not the "masterpiece" that all these "Titanic" fanboys like to make it out as. First off, DiCaprio is a terrible actor no matter which way you look at it. People just like him because of his looks. His acting "skills" essentially consist of saying a lot of cheesy lines and trying to act sexy. Second, the film itself had a rather boring and simple plot: girl falls in love with guy, ship they're on sinks, lots of crappy love scenes thereafter. Anyone with an IQ above 50 will realize this isn't ingenious in any way whatsoever. Nor is it original. Plus the director felt the need to drag it out for 3+ hours. I could compress it into a 1 hour block without losing any of the plot. In conclusion, "Titanic" is the most overrated movie to date. Why it got so much attention and money is beyond me.

An example of a movie review. positive.

A:
A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Blade Runner, Sin City and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow if you are a fan of any of these then this will be well worth checking out.

French animation project 'Renaissance' took seven years to make on a shoestring budget and tonight I finally got to see it at a private screening for the International Film Festival in Stockholm. My spontaneous reaction is awe; my further reflection is 'huh, neat' and closer analysis regrettably gets a resounding 'meh'. It is a gorgeous science fiction triumph on the surface, but scratch it or even poke it a little and its unnecessarily complex plot becomes glaringly apparent, as do the flat characters.

Nevertheless it is clear that the people at Onyx films have done something spectacular with the aforementioned surface. The visuals are staggering. They have used live action motion capture fitted into key-frame animation, with stark jet black and bright white contrasts and a heavily shadowed rotoscoped background. For those of you who are not down with the 'technical lingo', the film looks like a fully-animated Sin City. Its fluid, transparent, dark and stylized template is complemented by great lurid lightning. It's a vision. Yet much credit is also due to the crisp sound effects that take the form of humming futuristic weapons, suspenseful music, heavy raindrops and glass shards breaking. It's every tech-nerd's wet dream...

The film zooms in on an eerily-lit, bleak, futurescape Paris in which a major corporation called 'Avalon' has begun to interweave in the lives of the citizens with surveillance (think the fluid transparent screens from Minority Report) and genetic engineering. The latter leads to a mysterious kidnapping of young researcher Ilona (voiced by the lovely Romola Garai). Cut to our hard-boiled cop-on-suspension and protagonist Karas (Daniel Craig) a man who takes the law into his own hands who is assigned the case of finding and retrieving Ilona. During this case, he is being aided by Illona's sister with whom he also begins a love affair. A very half-assed love affair, if I may say so.

The world of Renaissance is remarkable. Director Christian Volckman takes a fair jab at melting the noir themes and the result is an urban jungle filled with cads, rats, femme fatales and lonely detectives that hide in the shadows of the seedy slum. The problem is that the creators undoubtedly felt the need to have extremely clear and spelled-out archetypes in the story, or the film would have been "too surreal" for mainstream audiences, owing to its lurid animation format. It follows then that we have a multitude of cliched characters such as evil-laughing villains, sleazy crime bosses and butch tough-chicks who blow smoke every chance they get. It shoves noir in our faces, and it isn't necessary.

What is worse is that the dialogue is a little contrived. It seems as though every line exists for the sole reason of propelling the plot. This is nothing fatal because the plot is so complex once it gets going that it needs some clear direction. Daniel Craig helps here too by bringing a no-nonsense attitude to his hard-edged cop character. At one point in Renaissance, he is seen in a vivid car-chase that surely is one of the most adrenaline-pumping and top notch sequences of the film. Unfortunately, the novelty of the sci-fi visuals have worn off post this car chase and 'Renassaince' could benefit from being slightly shorter. In summary, a very interesting but flawed futuristic comic book experience.

7 out of 10