Film Review and Filmview

Cinema is a form of art to be enjoyed. The viewer only must judge it, based on its artistic value and the message which is expressed by that art.

Every art will be reviewed by the audience. They will appreciate the art if they like, otherwise they will quit the art and will go to their work or to the next art. A few among them only make their reviews as a document to analyze the art and the artist.

Reviewing itself is an art. And it should be another form of creation, based on the art which is to be reviewed. Reviews are not meant only for criticizing the bad aspects in the art, but also for appreciating the good aspects.

A few critics are usually using the reviews only to criticize the mistakes and other few are using the reviews to appreciate the good points only. They will search the points for that purpose by using their knowledge and talent.

A good critic should find all the good and bad points, should judge the effects of them on the total art and should suggest the ways to improve the good and to avoid the bad in the future creation.

Of course, I found only a very few good critics in Tamil Literature field. And the books of appreciation or criticizing are also very rare.

The situation in the film field is worse than it. I didn’t see a good film critic so far. After the revolution of social media like facebook and twitter became wider, almost all the film goers had started to write reviews on films.

All these reviews have some common qualities. The reviews will not be more than two pages. Everyone will note the artists, director and technicians list. Everyone will tell the synopsis of the story.  And they will point out some scenes (almost everyone will pick up the same, or only those scenes will be there in the film to be picked up) to appreciate or criticize.

And everyone will make a final comment (punch!) as to show their literary knowledge. And as an end, they will give a grade or mark as a teacher who taught all these artistes, creators and technicians! 

This type of review is really an imitation of reviews coming in the popular magazines. Still now the magazines are following this same method of reviewing.

Another type of reviews is coming in some other magazines. (So called small literary magazines and film magazines.) The reviews of this type are published mainly to show the intellectual status of the magazine and the writers only. (They may be called as critics!) It will be in detail. Sometimes, too large to remember!

They will review the films as they want. The writers will criticize the creators as they taught the director to make the film and the director done mistakes in that process by disobeying the writers. And they will appreciate some points as the directors made them as the writers feel.

They will write in many pages about the making and politics in the story or dialogues by comparing to the ‘world films’. (Usually they will never consider the local films as world films.)

The social media critics will review all the films they watched. (Mostly all the films released, as a duty! They fear that others will forget them if didn’t do so.) Small magazine writers will review the films, which are became popular or widely acclaimed by many other medias.

If one intellectual wrote a review on a film, others also have to write reviews on the same film. Otherwise, the writers will become not intellectual writers, and the magazines will lose their intellectual status. So the writers are compelling to write reviews. Even in small magazines, the films are hot cake. Even they accept it or not, it is true. That is another reason for those reviews.

When some of my friends asked me to write film reviews, I am confused to follow the both type of reviews. I want to mix both these types together to reach a wide number of readers and to do some justice to the method of review.

As a screen writer and a fan of films (all type of films from so called ‘bit films’ to ‘internationally acclaimed films’), I am starting to review films in my own way without going to both extremes. I am going to concentrate mainly on the script and only on some selected films. (This is not my job and so I could not review all films.)

I will select films as the selection itself an appreciation from my part. And I am going to review films in the name of Filmview.

Hope the film lovers will like my Filmviews also.