A Word on Reviews and my Process

Movie reviews are a hard thing to sell. People always read them thinking that this is just what one person thinks so why should I care what this person is saying? The thing is though there is a lot more than that that goes into a review. Everyone that is following me and coming to my page may have noticed that recently I reviewed the movie Tron. When I did this review I said that I personally did not like this movie but when you read the review I said pretty much only good things about it and I said that people should watch the movie. This means that when I wrote the review what I thought of the movie didn't come into play.I look at how the film was shot or how the script felt. I also like to look at was it an original story. But that is just extra details. What I'm trying to get at is why you should listen to reviews that are written by random people like me. Me personally I have watched over 1,000 movies so far in my life and I'm just counting that by the number of movies in my collection. They say once you've done something 100 times that makes you an expert at that thing, so since I'm an expert at watching movies I figured I'd work on my 100 reviews so I could be an expert at that too.

My personal method for writing a review is some what simple. No matter how many times I've seen the movie I always watch it once the week of the review and one more time all the way through right before I write the review. Then I even have the movie cued up in case I need to refresh my mind on a certain part of the movie. At this point I sit down with my computer and begin to type. The first thing I have to come up with is a clever and catchy title that will catch peoples attention. Next for the first paragraph I have to figure out what my biased opinion of the movie was. After that is figuring out a way to summarize an entire movie in one small paragraph. Finally, the hardest and longest part is keeping my personal feelings out of the writing of the whole review of the movie. The whole process takes anywhere from three to five hours and that doesn't include the time of me watching the movie earlier in the week.

The whole process sounds easy but the real challenge is keeping your feelings out of the review.

The Voices Giving a voice to Schizophrenia

                The Voices was a movie I decided to watch for two simple reasons. The first being that Ryan Reynolds was in it and the second reason was that it is a movie about mental illness and I like to see how accurate they are about the illness they are showing. I got a kick out of this movie. It made me laugh and at the same time it made me cringe. I’d like to say that everyone would love to see this but I know that that is far from the truth.

                Jerry, Ryan Reynolds, is just your average factory worker. He goes to the company picnic. He falls for the pretty girl in the office. He gets yelled at by his cat when he goes home at night. His dog keeps telling him not to listen to the cat. He even kills the pretty girl and keeps her head in his fridge……..Hmmm………wait a minute…………..Nope I guess Jerry isn’t just your average factory worker.

                The Voices is a movie about schizophrenia and while it does show a pretty extreme side of it it does seem that they did their homework. Most people hear schizophrenia and they think of a person with multiple personalities, but I’ve got a little secret for the world, multiple personality disorder is actually a disorder all its own. Schizophrenia is noted by a person hearing disembodied voices, hearing other people’s thoughts, or even the person can see things that are not really there. This movie covers these symptoms and more that are for more extreme cases. The thing that the writer, Michael R. Perry, did not look into was the medication. All anti psychotics take at least 5 days to get into the system, so this means that when Jerry takes the pills and goes to sleep for a couple hours he shouldn’t have noticed such a drastic change in his world. But I guess if we would have had to wait for 5 whole days before we saw the change it wouldn’t have been as jarring of an experience. The acting in this movie was really up there in skill. They took Ryan Reynolds, a confident person, and had him play a timid twitchy man. He did it amazingly. It was nothing like in Southland Tales when The Rock had to play a scared, nervous guy and all he would do is twiddle his fingers together and blink a lot. Ryan Reynolds actually came across as a normal guy with a problem. Then there was Anna Kendrick who also had the awkward role. She had always been shown as the leading lady, but in this movie she isn’t even the first pick for Jerry. The movie also had a different way of doing its music. The songs that Jerry hears and sings are just about his mood. There’s the happy song and the crying song, they simply sing about how Jerry feels at that particular moment in the movie. This movie is described as a dark comedy, but I would have to argue that it is a bit darker than it is comedic. There are definitely moments that make you laugh in this movie but there are far more that make you cringe and want to look away or plug your ears. It’s still a decent movie to watch and it can give you a look into what it is like to live with schizophrenia. It of course is not a movie for the faint of heart but if you have the stomach for it you should definitely check it out.

Are the voices in your head telling you anything about this movie? Well maybe you should give them a little more information before you make your decision about this movie. So here watch the trailer.

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