Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: Primal Species (1996, Dir. Jonathan Winfrey)

International terrorists get a surprise when their cargo turn out to contain living dinosaurs. The army commando team now have to think fast, if they want to prevent the extinction of the human species, instead of the reptiles.

You look at the cover and you gain your first impressions of the film. That is pretty much it. The acting is only just acceptable from a few characters. The story is poor, with the whole film based on the army and the marines trying to kill the dinosaurs. This film came out three years after 'Jurassic Park'. Instead, this film looks to have come out 13 years before 'Jurassic Park'. The dinosaurs costumes are so poorly made, and i do mean costumes. There are obviously people dressed up, and this film makes no attempts at hiding this. A scene when a dinosaur runs down a corridor is created in a way, in which it looks like someone is riding the creature. The is one good thing, which comes out of this film. The short running time. At only 1 hour and 15 minutes, it doesn't waste too much of your life, but still try to avoid it altogether.

"It's like a Friday the 13th Nightmare." - Officer (Brian Currie)

Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: VILLA RIDES (1968) turns out to be something of a big disappointment! And even though Sam Peckinpah had a hand in the screenplay, along with Robert Towne, it still emerges as a leadenly written movie dryly directed by the undistinguished Buzz Kulik. Firstly, top billed Yul Brynner as Pancho Villa is wrong for the part! He's not charismatic enough to play the great Mexican revolutionary! His one note performance lacks the fire and gusto Anthony Quinn or Gilbert Roland could have brought to the role. Brynner simply looks like a Russian aristocrat dressed up like a Mexican bandit who is in the middle of the Mexican revolution instead of the Russian one. Also, second billed Robert Mitchum is totally wasted in the picture! His part as a biplane flying ace lobbing home-made bombs from the air in the cause of the revolution is a poorly written meager role that could have been played by any minor star. Mitch hasn't a decent line in the entire movie and brings to one's mind his other Mexican revolution picture the far superior "Bandido" (1956) which unfortunately nobody seems to have any interest in releasing on DVD. Besides lacking any kind of style "Villa Rides" also suffers badly without the presence of a female star! There is starlet Grazia Buccella as a young Mexican girl who gives Mitchum the glad eye but her casting is merely perfunctory. Someone like Claudia Cardinale or Jean Peters could have perhaps added a couple of badly needed notches to the faltering story line.

There are a couple of good action scenes in the movie but a couple of good action scenes do not a movie make and the less than perfect Panavision picture quality plus the over repetitive Maurice Jarre theme tune doesn't help matters.

As is Paramount's wont there are no extras - not even a trailer! Yup, a disappointing movie and DVD presentation that could have been and should have been a whole lot better.

Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: I first saw this film in 1980 in the midday movie spot. After many subsequent viewings (and purchase of the video) it still makes me laugh out loud.

Yes, it's a relic of another age - a domestic comedy set in affluent middle class America - but well executed is well executed. But it's also a document of its age - a celebration of post-war optimism, the baby boom and the nascent consumer age. This film is no "guilty" pleasure.

Three wonderful sophisticated leads actors - urbane Melvyn Douglas; bemused Cary Grant; daffily determined Myrna Loy - complement each other and a memorable team of characters.

My favourite scenes - "It means we gotta blast" and "Miss Stellwaggen" and "This little piggy".

Love it.

Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here:
Which do you think the average person would know more/less about: Iranian cinema or Iranian football? Interestingly, the two come to the forefront of controversial Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi's latest film entitled 'Offside', a tale that uses football or access to football as a backdrop for a series of scenes revolving around one's right to do something or go somewhere and an individual's right to extend that courtesy if and when they'd like to. The odd thing is, you don't come away from Offside having learnt about Iranian football or too much about Iranian cinema (unless it's an education in Panahi's controversial style), but you do come away feeling enlightened, that at least someone from Iran has taken a controversial issue that is clearly still very much in force in a nation like Iran, and is willing to present it to an international audience rather than exploit it.

I can remember the 2006 World Cup, I'm sure many people can. It was the summer after my initial year out at university and after the slog that was my first year, a summer of World Cup football acted as a nicely timed tonic. Needless to say, I saw practically every game bar the ones they show simultaneously with the other ones at the very end of the group stages so that to avoid incidences as seen in Spain '82 when it was thought West Germany and Austria transpired to get a result between them that would see them both through at the expense of Algeria.

Anyone in Britain that was watching the BBC's broadcast of the Iran Mexico game, both nations' first of the tournament, may remember that at the top of the show, the BBC's football anchorman Gary Lineker let off a snide comment to introduce the match. It went something like: 'We've seen giants Germany, England, Argentina and Holland play but now we get to see.........Mexico and Iran battle it out'. The emphasis on the latter two being inferior was clear and that maybe watching them was a chore. It's a shame because there are people, and films like Offside present them, who are really willing to see Iran play to the point where they risk their well-being to achieve it and it's sad when people in a position of power dismiss what they deem 'inferior' when there are others who'd do anything to have the chance to otherwise engage.

When immediately thinking of the words 'Iran', 'football' and 'World Cup', my mind flies back to the France '98 game between said nation and America. Here is a film about a World Cup game of sorts involving Iran but where some or indeed most Iranian filmmakers may well have opted to present a tale revolving around Iran's famous victory over The United States and what that meant to them, director Panahi chooses to look at what goes on behind the scenes and presents a story from the stands as women are barred from football matches and are not allowed to live the ecstasy of winning a game of immense magnitude. You can imagine a heavy handed film detailing Iran's 'victory' as a lumbering propaganda film designed to exploit as they 'defeat' a Western power or 'enemy' at a sport they perhaps were not expected to do so in.

A couple of films that spring to mind when it comes to beating the unbeatable at their own game are 2001 Indian film 'Lagaan', in which the Indian peasants defeat the ruling British at cricket. Similalry, 2005's 'The Game of Their Lives' sees the Americans defeat the English at a football match only this time in the 1950 World Cup. The differences between these films and Offside are immense; Offside is looking at a situation behind a state's mentality and dares to explore an essence of Feminism as the girls, trying to see their beloved Iran defeat Bahrain and qualify for the World Cup, are rounded up like animals and kept in a crude purgatory mere feet from a barred window that would allow them to see the game. The reasoning is to do with the foul language the men 'may', not will, but 'may' use during the game. The film presents Iran as so incompetent that they cannot take away a man's right to swear and ban the bad language but must ban a woman's right to see the game all together it is no wonder Panahi's film was itself banned in Iran.

But Panahi remembers to include what makes the rule so crazy in the first place by frequently allowing his female characters to both smoke cigarettes and use mobile phones, two things the doctors and scientists will have you think are far more dangerous to the human body/mind than hearing a little bit of foul language at a football match. Panahi pays special attention to the title of his film 'Offside' which itself is a ruling within football detailing when an 'attacker' is 'caught' trying to gain an advantage in the field of play. The parallels run with the womens' position in the film as these advancing (supposedly without right) individuals are caught trying to put one over the opposition team; that being the state itself.

I think Offside is one of the better films to come out of the Middle East and surrounding Gulf area that I've seen. It's a tense but humbling film about people who do not carry any acting history according to the IMDb and thus, the acting is raw and real adding that quaint neo-realist aura to it all. The immediate ending is haunting and the constant verbal battle between the male soldiers and female wrong-doers who dared to defy the state is wonderful. I also think for anyone to actually dislike the film for the reasons I've mentioned shows a distinct level of callous, either that or you work in the Iranian government.