<p>Hello to all. Lately I’ve become very intrigued with movies (when I have the time to watch them) and love reading review after review that the New York Times has to offer (at first I signed up for the email service and now I check even before they email me!) I want to start learning how to review movies. Not that I want to pursue it as a career, but my interest is piqued. My parents suggest reading lots of reviews (as I am), watching classic movies (as I hope to do), and watching movies with the extra commentary (u know, that extra stuff in the DVD menus). What do y’all think?</p>
<p>O btw, my school doesn’t have a newspaper so I’m not really sure where to go with this. Should I try freelancing in the local paper?</p>
<p>Do just those things</p>
<p>Visit IMDb, rottentomatoes, and yahoo reviews and read both critic and user reviews. See what themes people look for in films…understood the importance of character development, be able to identify good acting. All those things</p>
<p>I like movies too, I’ll browse the IMDb forums for a movie as soon as I see it just to see what other people think of it. It’s even fun with terrible movies so I can see what people agree/disagree about.</p>
<p>And a piece of advice, try and watch the classics first. A clear example – I watched The Godfather way too late and it wasn’t as original because there’s references and similar styles adapted everywhere, so I wasn’t as in to it.</p>
<p>I would also try to watch movie and come up with your own review, and then read all the reviews you can find (professional, imbd, etc.) to see how yours compared, what you missed and what you saw. also read reviews THEN watch the movie knowing what to look for.</p>
<p>I used to review movies (and do on-set interviews with directors, actors, etc.) for the horror magazines Fangoria, Rue Morgue, Cemetery Dance, among others. If you have any questions, PM me.</p>
<p>Take journalism or film or any other relevant classes at a local community college, over the summer or during the regular school year.</p>
<p>Start a film club?</p>
<p>Watch films made by the directors who know how. I’m very biased, but to me the best film making was done during the Hayes Code (oh no!!) and foreign cinema untill the 1980s. If you look at what good directors do (Kazan, Welles, Godard, Riefenstahl, Dreyer, Fellini, Passolini, Truffaut, Hitchcock, Chaplin, Bergman, the list is enormous) then you can see the merit and downfalls of any movie you watch. The Critereon Collection is chock-full of masterpieces. </p>
<p>That is, if you’re crazy and obsessive like I was my freshman and sophomore years about film. 
That’s all I did, and I found myself my sophomore year just naturally writing reviews for whatever I saw. I only posted them on my blog, but hey, it was still an oujtlet. </p>
<p>As for getting your reviews published, I can’t help you with that. :(</p>
<p>Maybe your local newspaper has something where they let students write reviews for movies and the publication pays for the tickets. I was planning to do that but it just didn’t fit into my schedule (submitted every monday of each week).</p>
<p>Just watch a lot of movies so that you have a big reservoir of knowledge to base your opinions on. You don’t have to turn into a total snob and scour every indie film ever made, or look for the long lost reels of an obscure Hungarian director, but you should at least know the Hollywood classics.</p>
<p>I recommend Roger Ebert as a fantastic film critic. He was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for criticism (in 1975, since then Stephen Hunter won in 2003 and Joe Morgenstern in 2005), and I’d recommend reading his reviews to become more familiar with film reviews. (He’s currently still recovering from a surgery, as he has been for the last few months, so for the time being he’s rarely writing reviews, though his website still has his archived reviews from before June).</p>
<p>Speaking on Ebert…a great starting point for films to see are his list of “great movies” that you can find on his website. I like it much more than AFI’s list of 100 greatest films of all time or whatever. </p>
<p>On the front page mentioned is a director that is a must see…Kurosawa! I forgot to list him.</p>
<p>thanks guys!!! wow this is why I love CC - people actually know how to make things happen and there’s such a diverse group of people with different interests!</p>