Movie Reviews Index

Welcome to Anomalous Material! Here I will explain how I review movies as well as clarify my grading scale. Before I get started, a short disclaimer, my movie reviews are only my opinion on a piece of film-making.  Watching a movie is entirely an objective experience and there is nothing more valuable than to make your own opinion by actually watching the movies yourself. Nevertheless, time and money are only a finite resource so that’s where I come into play

• Acting performances: Nothing annoys me more than mediocre acting especially from actors who are paid the big bucks. After all, all we are doing is watching people pretending to be some imaginary characters. If any one of them is not very good at pretending, then our suspension of disbelief is gone and the whole thing falls apart. On the other hand, nothing is better than acting that sweeps you off your feet. More often that not, a great lead performance is enough to save any movie from mediocrity but at the same time, it’s always sad to see an actor act his heart out on a sinking ship. Some of the question I try to answer are: How believable are the actors, individually and together? How difficult is the part? Is the actor performing at a high level despite an underwritten character? Has the actor been playing the same variation of the character before? Is the actor fully involved in the character or just going through the motions? Is the interpretation coherent with the direction of the movie?
• The ability from the film-makers to tell the story: This all starts with the director, who is the captain of the ship, but also include screenplay/plot/dialogue and editing. Story-telling is simply the ability from the people who made the movie to convey a story and emotionally engage the viewer as if he/she was part of the movie. The best story-tellers allow our imaginations to wander long after the movie is over. Some additional things I tend to ask myself are: Is the director clearly expressing his interpretation and is he conveying that effectively? Does he extract the best performances from his actors that are consistent with his concept? Does the screenplay have dead weight like underdeveloped characters or scenes that don’t advance the movie? Is the film well edited?
• Production value: Those are all the little things that add to the movie experience such as photography, cinematography, costumes, set design, CGI, sound, and musical soundtrack. Those only need to be good enough unless it’s a big expensive mainstream production in which case, the expectations are through the roof.

I don’t review every movie I see, hence you will probably not see a ton of grades in the D and F range simply because there is no reason for me to review bad movies. I like to stray off the beaten path and try to focus on less mainstream films but I do review those big Hollywood production when I feel like it. Finally, I despise reading reviews that don’t offer any constructive criticism and are basically veiled (or not) insults at the people who made the movie. I will try my best to avoid that.

Grading scale: