An example of a movie review. positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive).

A: I have seen all the films directed by Robert Redford and appreciated his love of the American people and the land. In A River Runs Through It, Redford displays the lyric romanticism and visual splendor of the high Rocky Mountains of Montana as if he were a 19th century landscape painter of the ilk of Thomas Moran or Albert Bierstadt. This film makes love to the visual and the word with text by author Norman Maclean, and stunning camera work by Phillippe Rousselot (Serpent's Kiss, Reigne Margot).

Redford's cast is perfect. Tom Skerritt is the Rev. MacLean, a man whose methods of education include fly fishing as well as the Bible, Brenda Blythen, the mother, and his sons, Craig Schaffer and Brad Pitt create a family whose interactions reflect the same problems all encounter with growing teenage sons, and later, complex young men. Both Schaffer and Pitt are totally believable as the brothers whose love of fly fishing and each other will tie them together forever. It is the relationships between men, father and sons, brothers, and their women to the outside world that grounds A River Runs Through It to a vein of storytelling that is missing in so many of Hollywood films produced in recent years.

What makes these relationships special however, is the attention Redford gives to the language as spoken in dialogue. This is a literate script, beautiful to hear and unforgettable when coupled with the stunning Montana rivers and mountains. The words and setting are equal to performances by a cast that rises to their material. While the idea of fly fishing may seem an odd device to center a story, it is not so implausible in Redford's directorial hands. Given the material, Redford's ode to a simpler time and life is worth revisiting again and again.
Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: The movie starts with a pair of campers, a man and a woman presumably together, hiking alone in the vast wilderness. Sure enough the man hears something and it pangs him so much he goes to investigate it. Our killer greets him with a stab to the stomach. He then chases the girl and slashes her throat. The camera during the opening scene is from the point of view as the killer.

We next meet our four main characters, two couples, one in which is on the rocks. The men joke about how the woman would never be able to handle camping alone at a double date, sparking the token blonde's ambition to leave a week early. Unexpectedly, the men leave the same day and their car breaks down.. They end up arriving in the evening. When the men arrive, they are warned about people disappearing in the forest by a crazy Ralph doppleganger. They ignore the warning and venture into the blackening night and an eighties song plays in the background with lyrics about being murdered in the dark forest. The men get lost.

In the next scene we realize that this isn't just another The Burning clone, but a ghost story! The women, scared and lonely are huddling together by the fire. Two children appear in the shadows and decide to play peeping Tom. Well they are obviously ghosts by the way their voices echo! Their mother appears with blood dripping from a hole in her forehead and asks the two ladies if they've seen her children, before disappearing of course.

The children run home to papa and tell him about the two beautiful ladies by the river. This causes quite a stir and he gets up, grabbing his knife from atop the fireplace. "Daddy's going hunting," The little girl, exclaims with bad acting. It is apparent here, that the dad isn't a ghost like his children.

Freaked out by something in the woods, the token blonde splits, running blindly into the night, carrying a knife. She encounters the father who explains he's starving and it will be quick. This doesn't make sense because of the panther growls we heard earlier (Maybe he's allergic! Are panthers honestly even in California?) She ends up wounding him slightly before getting stabbed in the head. A thunderstorm erupts and the men seek shelter, which turns out to be where papa resides. Clearly someone lives here because there's a fire and something weird is roasting over it. The children appear and warn them of papa, who shows up moments later. They disappear as soon as he arrives.

For whatever reason, our killer only goes after females. He invites the men to have something to eat and tells us the story about his ex wife. We are given a flashback of his wife getting caught cheating. The old man doesn't tell them however that he kills her and her lover afterwards, but daydreams about it. We aren't given the reason for the children's demise. The men go to sleep and are left unharmed. The next morning the men discover the empty campground of their wives. After a brief discussion they split up. One is to stay at the campsite, while the other goes and gets help. The one that is going back to his car breaks his leg. We are then reunited with the children as they explain to the surviving woman that they are ghosts who killed themselves from being sad about their mother. They agree to help the woman reunite with her friends

The following scene defies the logic of the movie when papa kills the guy waiting at the campsite. He was also dating or married to the blonde. Somehow the children realize he is murdered and tell the woman about it. She decides to see it for herself and obviously runs into the killer. Luckily the children make him stop by threatening to leave him forever. You know where this is going.

Overall the movie deserves four stars out of ten, and that's being generous. For all its misgivings, the musical score is well done. It's still watchable too. There are some camera angles that look professional, and some of the sets are done well. The plot is unbelievable. There is such a thing as willing suspension of disbelief, but with the toad 6 miles away; I can't imagine the token blonde would take off like that in the middle of the night. I mean, come on!

- Alan "Skip" Bannacheck
Problem: Write a negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: I read some gushing reviews here on IMDb and thought I would give this movie a look. Disappointed. On the plus side the male leads are good, and some interesting photography but as a whole this movie fails to convince. Seems to be full of its' own self indulgent importance in trying to say something meaningful but falls way short and all in all the picture is an unconvincing mess.

It is one of those films classified as a film noir which can be defined as follows:

"A film noir is marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, menace and cynical characters".

Well that is the story here: 3 losers stumble upon each other with their collective problems that include mental illness, alcoholism, laziness, indebtedness etc and together they conspire to kidnap a child and outwit each other.

Would have been a much better movie if the story was confined more to the kidnap instead of the character failings of the kidnappers. I thought the female lead was way out of her depth and came across as an amateur actress.

Whilst some good moments, I finished up feeling I had wasted my time.

4/10.
An example of a movie review. negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive).

A:
In 1692 Salem, a devious child's lies about a slave's involvement in witchcraft sends an entire community into an uproar. Costume drama starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray isn't stuffy, though neither is it a vivid depiction of contagious hysteria. Worked on by three writers (Walter Ferris, Durward Grimstead, and Bradley King), the story elements are rather interesting (especially coming out of Hollywood in 1937), though to anyone who has since read Arthur Miller's "The Crucible", the hoked-up melodrama on display here won't be tolerated for very long. Biggest problem with the picture may lie in the casting: Colbert and MacMurray are an ill-matched pair of lovers hindered by the witch-hunt, MacMurray being far too contemporary a presence for these surroundings. *1/2 from ****