Film critique is not quite as easy as watching a movie, it requires more brain power than that. Some people feel that they can shut off their brains when watching a movie, however critics do the opposite. It’s important to note that everything in a movie is there for a reason, and as a critic it is your job to think of why it might be there, the filmmakers intended impact on the audience, and how well it was achieved (if at all). So after reading this article, watching a film should be not quite as easy as before since you now know what to look for, you will never watch a movie in the same way again.

Criticising a movie can amount to more than whether or not you liked it. You could discuss in detail which parts of the movie you particularly liked and which parts you would have changed if you had been behind the camera. And I know what you’re thinking, "I couldn’t do any better". But with the right amount of knowledge and the ability to form an opinion (which I assume you all have) anyone can have the skill to choose the parts of a movie they would have done differently. Now I’m not saying that this will turn you into the next Stephen Spielberg, but with a certain amount of technical know-how and a level of awareness when it comes to Hollywood conventions and audience response, anyone can recognise a hit from a flop.

At the very least this article will allow you to be able to generate conversation at a dinner party. Film is probably the most popular form of art (yes, art!) in the 21st century and is always a good topic of conversation. And at the most this article could spark an interest in the subject and inspire you to find out more, as film critique is an interesting hobby to have, even if you’re not writing reviews, you can still form an interesting and valid point of view about a film that could come up at your next dinner party (assuming you hold regular dinner parties, of course).

One of the most recognisable aspects of a movie, maybe apart from the storyline, is the genre of a movie. No one needs to be told what a romantic comedy is, or a horror, or a western. We know all of this from experience alone and we can attribute each of these genres with a feeling as, with each genre comes an intended affect. Romantic comedies are supposed to make the audience feel good, horror films are intended to scare the audience, and westerns excite the audience with action and adventure. And even though these genres may appear obvious to us, there are certain aspects to each which help us to define the genre. These are called "generic conventions", which is just a fancy way of saying "things that pop up in each movie within that genre". For example, blood, murderers and blue lighting are all generic conventions of horror, as they all appear in most horror movies; therefore ‘Scream’ (Wes Craven, 1996) is a conventional horror movie as it holds each of these factors. Movies can also cross over into other genres to form "hybrid genres" such as ‘Back to the Future: Part 3’ (Robert Zemeckis, 1990), because as well as being a sci-fi/ comedy movie, it also holds many generic conventions of westerns, being set in 1885 in California, having shoot-outs and cowboys and Indians.

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