In writing various movie reviews for "MNLD," I hope to give people who haven't necessarily delved too deeply into the zombie genre a way to read up on a film before borrowing or buying it without ruining the movie for them in the process. At the same time, I'm hoping that the old hands on the zombie ranch* will find something interesting in the reviews as well. It's a tough balance, and one that my students' feedback has been instrumental in achieving or, at least, approaching.
*"Zombie Ranch," incidentally, is a webcomic that I discovered by typing "zombie ranch" into Google after typing "zombie ranch" into Blogger and thinking to myself, "I'll bet that's already a movie..."
With these goals in mind, I've set up all my reviews like so:
- I've included an image (the movie poster or cover, if available) and a memorable quotation from the film (usually my favorite line will get the nod here) to make the film easy to remember come Netflix or Best Buy time.
- I've briefly summarized the film in "blurb" form (that is, I've tried to set up the action without spoiling the plot).
- I've introduced and summarized the main characters (again, while trying not to spoil too much of the plot) so that I can dive right into the fun stuff when it's review time.
- I've rambled on about what I did and didn't like about the movie, and, in the case of particularly important films, I've added some bonus ramblings about their cinematic and cultural contributions (or lack thereof, for particularly unimportant films). In other words, I've reviewed the film. Surprise!
- I've rated the movie on a 5-point scale (more about the scale here).
