negative movie review synonym

Data Science in the Real World

Sentiment analysis — a how-to guide with movie reviews, how do you feel about sentiment analysis good/bad by the end of this article, you’ll feel positive.

Shiao-li Green

Towards Data Science

So, what exactly is sentiment? Sentiment relates to the meaning of a word or sequence of words and is usually associated with an opinion or emotion. And analysis? Well, this is the process of looking at data and making inferences; in this case, using machine learning to learn and predict whether a movie review is positive or negative.

Maybe you’re interested in knowing whether movie reviews are positive or negative, companies use sentiment analysis in a variety of settings, particularly for marketing purposes. Uses include social media monitoring, brand monitoring, customer feedback, customer service and market research (“Sentiment Analysis”).

This post will cover:

• The competition
• Pre-processing data

The Competition

We’ll be using the IMDB movie dataset which has 25,000 labelled reviews for training and 25,000 reviews for testing. The Kaggle challenge asks for binary classification (“Bag of Words Meets Bags of Popcorn”).

Let’s have a look at some summary statistics of the dataset (Li, 2019). We are told that there is an even split of positive and negative movie reviews. Here are some of the positive and negative reviews:

It’s also interesting to see the distribution of the length of movie reviews (word count) split according to sentiment. The spread is similar in shape for both types of reviews however negative reviews are on average a tad shorter.

Pre-processing

Text is messy, people love to throw in attempts at expressing themselves more clearly by adding extravagant punctuation and spelling words incorrectly. However, machine learning models can’t cope with text as input, so we need to map the characters and words to numerical representations.

Basic pre-processing for text consists of removing non-alphabetic characters, stop words (a set of very common words like the, a, and, etc.) and changing all words to lowercase. In this instance, we also need to remove HTML tags from the movie reviews. These steps can be packaged into the following function.

The table below shows how the most frequent words change once stop words are removed from the reviews.

How should we approach transforming word representations to numerical versions that a model can interpret? There are many ways, but for now, let’s try a few of the simple approaches.

Bag of Words

We obtain the vocabulary list from the corpus (whole text dataset). The length of the vocabulary list is equal to the length of the vector that will be output when we apply Bag of Words (BOW). For each item (could be an entry, sentence, line of text), we transform the text into a frequency count in the form of a vector. In this case, we limit it to the top 5000 words to restrict the dimensionality of the data. We code this by setting up a count vectorizer from sklearn’s library , fit it on the training data and then transform both the training and test data.

An example of how this works is in the grey box below. We look at all the unique words in the corpus and then count how many times these appear in each of the pieces of texts, resulting in a vector representation of each piece of text.

Word2vec (Word to Vector) is a two-layer neural net that processes text. Its input is a text corpus and its output is a set of vectors: feature vectors for words in that corpus. The algorithm was created by Google in 2013. The 50-D space can be visualised by using classical projection methods (e.g. PCA) to reduce the vectors to two-dimensional data that can be plotted on a graph.

Why would we use Word2vec instead of BOW? It is better at learning words in their surrounding context. The process is a bit more convoluted than implementing BOW so I won’t outline it here, but it can be found in the GitHub folder (Dar, Green, Kurban & Mitchell, 2019). In short, it requires tokenising reviews as sentences rather than words, determining the vector representations and then averaging them appropriately.

This is short for Term-frequency-Inverse-Document-Frequency and gives us a measure of how important a word is in the document.

Term frequency (the same as for bag of words):

Inverse document frequency measures how rare a term is across all documents (the higher the value, the rarer the word) [1] :

We combine these two to get Tf-Idf as follows:

To implement this representation, we use the TfidfTransformer function from sklearn’s library . Fitting occurs on the training set and the values for the same words are determined for the test set.

[1] Where ln is the natural logarithm.

We attempted two different models for this dataset: Naïve Bayes and Random Forest. Naïve Bayes builds on Bayes’ Theorem while a Random Forest is a group of decision trees. Consolidated code for these two implementations can be found in the NLP_IMDb Jupyter notebook in the GitHub Repository (Dar et al., 2019).

Naïve Bayes

This is a probabilistic machine learning model used for classification, based on Bayes Theorem:

B is the evidence while A is the hypothesis (Gandhi, 2018). We must assume that the features are independent (one does not affect the other).

Framing it in terms of this problem we have y representing a positive or negative review, X represents a vector of the features from the reviews. The equation we end up with for finding the class is:

This is implemented using sklearn’s Naïve Bayes package !

Random Forest

A random forest is a series of decision trees in which the leaf nodes indicate the predicted class. We can use the RandomForestClassifier function from sklearn’s ensemble package .

Each decision tree incorporates a selection of features and outputs a decision at the end. These results are then combined from all the decision trees to give the final class prediction. The diagram below from DataCamp visualises the process quite nicely.

Kaggle specifies using the area under the ROC curve as the metric for this competition. ROC is short for Receiving Operator Characteristic and is a probability curve. It plots the true positive rate against the false positive rate. [2] The higher the area under this curve, the better the model is at predicting the output. The graph for Bag of words and a Random Forest is below. The dotted line represents the baseline, which would be expected if the predictions were random.

We can inspect a few different permutations in the table below.

It’s interesting to see that Tf-Idf does marginally better and Naïve Bayes performs slightly better than the Random Forest. However, there is a significant drop in the performance of Naïve Bayes with Word2Vec features. This is likely because some information is lost when the representation is transformed to be positive (since Naïve Bayes only allows for positive values) and Gaussian Naïve Bayes is used instead.

[2] True positive represents when an item that is positive is predicted as positive. False positive represents when an item that is negative is predicted as positive.

This is just the start of sentiment analysis. Further approaches could use bigrams (sequences of two words) to attempt to retain more contextual meaning, using neural networks like LSTMs (Long Short-Term Memory) to extend the distance of relationships among words in the reviews and more.

Bag of Words Meets Bags of Popcorn. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/c/word2vec-nlp-tutorial/

Dar, O., Green, S., Kurban, R., & Mitchell, C. (2019). Sprint 3, Team 1. Retrieved from https://github.com/shiaoligreen/practical-data-science

Gandhi, R. (2018, May 5). Naïve Bayes Classifier. Retrieved from https://towardsdatascience.com/naive-bayes-classifier-81d512f50a7c

Li, S. (2019, March 18). A Complete Exploratory Data Analysis and Visualization for Text Data. Retrieved from https://towardsdatascience.com/a-complete-exploratory-data-analysis-and-visualization-for-text-data-29fb1b96fb6a

Sentiment Analysis. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://monkeylearn.com/sentiment-analysis/

Written by Shiao-li Green

Minerva Schools ‘20.

Text to speech

What is a Film Review — Definition, Examples & Top Critics

I n cinema, film reviews hold a significant place, serving as a bridge between the film industry and viewers. They provide an analytical perspective that helps audiences decide what to watch and understand the nuances of a film. In this article, we will delve into the definition of a film review, its critical components, and shed light on some iconic film review writers who have significantly shaped the field.

Watch: Christopher Nolan's Best Films Ranked

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What is Film Review in Cinema?

First, let’s define film review.

Film reviews hold a unique place in cinema acting as both promotional tools and critical analysis pieces. With the rise of platforms like Letterboxd and Rotten Tomatoes, they are becoming more relevant in the cinematic landscape.

FILM REVIEW DEFINITION

What is a film review.

A film review is a type of critique that provides an evaluation of a film, encompassing various aspects such as the plot, themes, direction, script, and performances. Originating in the early 20th century with the advent of cinema, film reviews have evolved from mere opinion pieces in newspapers to a significant form of journalistic writing. The primary purpose of a film review is to inform the reader about the film and offer an informed opinion about its various elements. It serves as a guide for viewers, helping them decide whether the film is worth their time and money.

Criteria for Movie Review:

Overview of the film, analysis of the plot and themes, evaluation of the script, direction, and acting, personal opinion and rating, movie review format, components of a good film review.

Film reviews are a blend of various vital components, each contributing to a comprehensive analysis. From evaluating performances and storytelling to dissecting technical aspects, a well-rounded review provides a holistic perspective. By examining these elements of a movie review format we can gain a deeper understanding of the film's impact and appreciate its artistic merit.

This includes a brief synopsis that sets the context without revealing any spoilers . The overview should pique the reader's interest and give them a sense of the film's storyline. Here is one of the greatest film critics, Roger Ebert, on what a film review should do. 

Roger Ebert What A Movie Review Should Do

This involves a deeper look into the narrative and the underlying themes of the film. It should explore the storyline's complexity, originality, and coherence.

This component assesses the technical aspects of the film, such as the screenplay , cinematography , direction, music, and performances. It also includes an assessment of how these elements contribute to the overall impact of the film. 

This is much more popular with the rise of film criticism on YouTube in which film critics can simultaneously play and dissect a scene for an audience. In this video by Nerdwriter1, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is dissected visually in a way that would be difficult or at least less effective without a video component.

One Way To Deconstruct There Will Be Blood

This is where the reviewer shares their personal view and overall impression of the film. It often includes a rating system, which can help readers quickly gauge the reviewer's opinion.

A good film review strikes a balance between objective analysis and personal perspective. It is also important that the review uses engaging language and style to hold the reader's attention.

What is Film Review Important For?

Influence of film reviews.

Film reviews have a significant impact on public opinion and can greatly influence the success of a film.  A positive review from a reputable critic can attract more viewers and increase the film's box office revenue. On the other hand, a negative review can dissuade audiences from watching the film.

Attracting Viewers

Positive reviews can generate buzz and attract a larger audience to the theaters. They serve as a powerful tool in building anticipation and interest among moviegoers. Take Rotten Tomatoes for example.

Many film goers opt to check the Rotten Tomatoes reviews of a film before they decide to watch or see it in cinema. 

While this can work well for some movies in attracting viewers, it can negatively impact other films. This is especially true with the way Rotten Tomatoes rating system works. For a great insight on to how the platform works and the possible problems with its ratings, check out the video below. 

The Problem With Rotten Tomatoes

Box office success.

Positive reviews often contribute to a film's box office success. When critics praise a movie, it can lead to increased ticket sales and financial profitability for the filmmakers.

Influence on Perception

Reviews shape how people perceive a film. Positive reviews create a positive perception, making viewers more likely to give the movie a chance. On the other hand, negative reviews can deter potential viewers and impact the film's overall reception.

Critical Acclaim

When a film receives critical acclaim from respected reviewers and publications, it can achieve iconic status. This recognition elevates the film's reputation and can lead to long-lasting popularity and cultural significance.

Parasite’s Historic Oscar Wins in 2020

Film reviews hold considerable sway in the film industry. They not only impact the number of viewers but also shape how a film is perceived and remembered.

Related Posts

• What is Cinematography? →
• Understanding Story Structure →
• How Does Rotten Tomatoes Work? →

Movie Review Example and Writers

Iconic film review writers.

The field of film criticism has been significantly influenced by several notable writers who have left a lasting impact on the industry. These writers, through their insightful analyses and thought-provoking perspectives, have shaped the way we perceive and appreciate films.

Their contributions have not only elevated the art of film criticism but have also enriched our understanding of cinema as a whole. 

Roger Ebert

Known for his acerbic wit and insightful commentaries, Ebert was one of the most influential film critics. His reviews, published in the Chicago Sun-Times for over four decades, were known for their accessible writing style and keen observations.

Pauline Kael

Writing for The New Yorker, Kael was known for her passionate and provocative reviews. She championed many underappreciated films and filmmakers, influencing public opinion and the course of American cinema.

Pauline Kael on Criticism

Andrew sarris.

A leading proponent of the auteur theory in America, Sarris's writings in The Village Voice and The New York Observer have had a profound impact on the way films are analyzed and appreciated.

Leonard Maltin

Renowned for his annual publication, "Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide," Maltin's reviews are known for their succinctness and precision. His work has guided generations of moviegoers.

Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide

These critics, with their unique perspectives and styles, have made enduring contributions to film criticism, influencing not just audiences but filmmakers as well.

Film reviews, like the movies themselves, are a form of art. They capture the essence of a film, dissect it, and present it to the audience in a refined form. With their insightful analysis, they help us, the viewers, to better understand and appreciate cinema. 

Remember, a review is not meant to replace or reflect your own judgment of a film but to complement and deepen your viewing pleasure. So, read, watch, and form your own judgment — because nothing compares to your own cinematic experience.

How Does Rotten Tomatoes Work?

As we delve deeper into the world of film reviews and their unique influence, let's turn our attention to a specific and influential platform. In the next article, we explore the intricacies of the Rotten Tomatoes ratings system.

Up Next: Rotten Tomatoes Explained →

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Why ‘bad’ reviews are equally valuable and how to do them well

Performing Arts

A negative review can be invaluable when done well. Image: Shutterstock.

The changing nature of arts criticism has been a long topic of discussion, even concern.

With the variety of shows on offer today and the sheer amount of writers, what good is a ’bad’ review going to do? Wouldn’t it be easier to just move on from disappointment and instead write on something that you actually liked, rather than risk the backlash of being ’judging’ or ‘cruel’?

But bad reviews play a bigger role than expressing one person’s opinion. In the UK it’s often embraced as a launchpad for critical discussion while on the other hand a critic’s ’kindness’ can be more damaging – especially as the world tries to run through its backlog of shows – than good.

A ’bad’ review shouldn’t be poorly written or lack coherence – indeed, they should be referred to simply as negative reviews, those which are critical, informed, and analyses the work in light of reasonable expectations and contextual relevance.

ArtsHub spoke with our very own editors on the value of negatives reviews and how to express your opinion with professionalism.

Negative reviews encourage learning and improvement

National Performing Arts Editor Richard Watts said: ’Given the plethora of responses to works that exist online – including dashed-off tweets by disgruntled audience members as well as a wide range of responses on blogs, Facebook and a diverse range of media outlets – I’d argue that there’s actually a greater need for informed, incisive and accurate criticism than ever before.

Indeed, ’stellar reviews and negative reviews are equally about professional practice,’ said Gina Fairley, ArtsHub’s National Visual Arts Editor.

She continued: ‘While a good review might drive ticket sales or turn into promo tags for the producer or organiser, a negative review can play a more valuable role for an artist to address their professional practice, and help grow it forward.’

For Reviews Editor Thuy On, it’s about ’keeping the producers accountable to a standard that’s acceptable.’

‘Although no critic enjoys writing a ”bad” review, if taken in good faith, the theatre company or book publisher or any other art form under public scrutiny may even learn something about what to do next time to lessen the chances of receiving another bad review,’ said On.

Read: What makes a perfect book review?

Features Writer Suzannah Conway, and also a regular reviewer on ArtsHub, holds a similar view.

Conway said: ’[Negative reviews] are definitely worthwhile. A company/artist can only improve their work if they can understand or learn from the works that didn’t impress or failed to reach accepted standards.’

And also it’s important to keep in mind the time and effort that writers actually put towards constructed criticism in the hopes of prompting reflection and evaluation.

Conway continued: ‘It’s much harder to write a bad review than a good one, of course. It’s easier to wax lyrical than to have to carefully craft a sensible, logical response that will be helpful to the person/company reviewed and hopefully make them improve. That is a key value in being critical – an ability to offer meaningful and valid criticism, never to be offensive, personal or rude.’

Tips for writing a negative review

If you recently saw something that didn’t quite live up to the hype, ’be brave enough to believe in the strength of your convictions,’ said On.

She continued: ’If you genuinely believed the arts product you are reviewing is underwhelming, then say so unequivocally.’

The editors and writers shared their top three tips for writing an effective negative review.

Be professional, not personal

Fairley said: ’You’re a professional, so be professional. Try to remove the “personal” and make sure you filter your comments through that professional lens.

‘If you are making a criticism, reason why and give solid context for that argument. A good review always places what you are reviewing in a broader context that extends the reader.

In addition, ’avoid charged language,’ said Fairley. ‘Would you say this to their face? Think of a negative review as leaving breadcrumbs to continue the journey forward – for the reviewee to walk away from reading and say “I get what they are saying.”

Conway also emphasised the need to keep it professional. ‘Know what you are talking about – there’s no point being critical if you don’t know your stuff.’ 

Further, ‘there is no excuse for behaving badly and being rude. Just because you didn’t like it, doesn’t mean everyone feels the same way,’ said Conway.

Being ’logical and concise in your criticism’ is the way to go, where ’professional and unemotional is so much better than saying something subject like ”I really hated this!”

Read: How to handle criticism and naysayers

Back your argument with specific examples

Just as it’s better to be specific with the qualities of a show or person that you admire, specificity can be incredibly useful in criticism.

On said: ‘Ensure that you bring up specific examples on what the production performed below par to support your argument. For instance, was the narrative muddy and incomprehensible due to a surfeit of narrators jumping around over four generations? Was the pacing, costumes and lighting in the theatre space counterproductive to the themes of the play? Was the exhibition venue inappropriate for the scale of the visual displays?’

In the exercise of pinpointing specific examples, Watts said it’s important to ’engage with the work you saw, not the work you hoped to see.’

In his experience, bad reviews – ones are poorly written – often falls into this trap. ’God knows I wrote a few bad reviews early in my career when I was more concerned with my  reaction  to a work (my belief that something was good or bad) as opposed to recognising that I needed to engage with the work and consider what it had to say and how successfully it said it.’

Give praise where it’s due

Many of the advice highlighted that being critical doesn’t equate to being cruel.

Watts said: ’Try not to be cruel, tempting as it might be if the production seems truly dire. Remember that every work of art in every medium is a labour of love for the person or people who have made it, and temper your venom with praise where it’s due. Did you consider the script banal and the performances flat and lacking in chemistry? Then make sure you highlight what is deserving of praise, such as the sound design and lighting. 

Conway shared a similar view: ‘Be respectful – the artist/company have probably done their best to get this on and deserve respect for their attempt at the very least.’

In most cases, it’s not helpful to compare the reviewed to anyone else or another work. Rather, focus on the production or exhibition at hand, and what they did or didn’t achieve.  

Conway also gave tips on the use of language to soften the blow of a bad review. Suggestive phrases such as ’it seemed as if’ or ’it would appear that’ could help people see your argument more clearly.

A final word of advice: remember why you set out to write a negative review in the first case, and use these pointers to see if it’s been well thought out.

Watts concluded: ‘A negative review serves several purposes: on one level it’s feedback for the artist (hopefully not too scathing) which might help them reconsider that particular work in the future, once they’re no longer so close to it that they can’t recognise its flaws.

‘Negative reviews also serve to help document an artistic career, tracing one’s development and mastery of a medium; like all reviews, they serve as documentation – an especially important consideration where ephemeral artforms like live performance are concerned.

‘And finally, a negative review also serves to advise potential audience members as to whether a particular production is worth spending their time and money on – an important consideration when one takes into account the ticket price of many mainstage productions around the country,’ said Watts.

On also added: ‘Remember you are writing for a potential audience, visitor or reader. It behooves you as a critic to let them know what is in store: good and bad.’

Originally published: 5 September 2022.

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Celina Lei is the Diversity and Inclusion Editor at ArtsHub. She acquired her M.A in Art, Law and Business in New York with a B.A. in Art History and Philosophy from the University of Melbourne. She has previously worked across global art hubs in Beijing, Hong Kong and New York in both the commercial art sector and art criticism. She took part in drafting NAVA’s revised Code of Practice - Art Fairs and was the project manager of ArtsHub’s diverse writers initiative, Amplify Collective. Most recently, Celina was one of three Australian participants in DFAT’s the Future of Leadership program. Celina is based in Naarm/Melbourne. Instagram @lleizy_

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Descriptive Words List of Adjectives Word Reference

Descriptive Words for Movie Reviews ( Positive & Negative )

What are some descriptive words for writing movie reviews .

Here is a list of words that can describe Movies very well.

Total number of Movie review words and adjectives: 83 words

Movie review words are listed in alphabetical order.

Download Movies Words PDF: Descriptive Words for Movies PDF

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You Can’t Please Everyone: Negative Reviews Of Some Of The Best Loved Films In Cinema History

Oliver lyttelton.

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As you may have noticed, the review embargo on “ The Dark Knight Rises ” broke yesterday, and the word, including that from our own Todd Gilchrist , is mostly good. We say mostly, because as with most films, there are objections from a few reviews — Christy Lemire from the Associated Press , Marshall Fine at Hollywood & Fine , Christopher Tookey at the Daily Mail , Devin Faraci at Bad Ass Digest — coming in on the negative side of the fence. And as has become increasingly common in the last few years — particularly with Christopher Nolan ‘s films,  Pixar  movies, and even “ The Avengers ” — the fans are in uproar at the sheer concept that reviewers dare give a negative notice to “The Dark Knight Rises” (regardless of the fact that these fans haven’t yet seen the film for themselves).

Comment sections have been deluged with idiot children Bat-fans, not just angry about negative reviews, but merely “good” ones — Playlist contributor James Rocchi has attracted ire for his 3/5 take on the film over at Movies.com . With chatter around ‘Rises’ only to increase in the next few days, we thought it seemed like a good time to remind everyone: everything gets a bad review at some point.

Some films are more divisive than others, and there were a few films — “ Singin’ In The Rain ,” “ Seven Samurai ,” “ North By Northwest ,” “ The Godfather ” — that we couldn’t find bad reviews from serious critics for. But generally speaking, there’s an always an outlier, and we’ve collected reviews from the releases of ten of the most beloved and acclaimed releases in history to prove our point. That’s not to say that the reviews below are wrong — most make their points well, and some are positively insightful. The fanboy trend of being unable to let any criticism pass is an insidious one: you should seek to challenge your views on a film, not shout down people for pointing out any possible flaws.

But for those who say they don’t listen to critics, we’ve also grabbed some excerpts of user reviews from the IMDB boards, to again show that opinion isn’t a black and white thing. And also because they’re funny. Read on for more, and feel free to speak up in the comments section and let us know what movies have set you against the critical grain.

“Citizen Kane” “The picture is very exciting to anyone who gets excited about how things are done in the movies… and in these things there is no doubt the picture is dramatic. But what goes on between the dramatic high points, the story? No. What goes on is talk and more talk. And while the stage may stand for this, the movies don’t.” – Otis Ferguson, The New Republic

“I watch movies constantly, an i rarely see movies that i have troubles watching all the way through. For one of my classes at school, i needed to watch afi’s top 10 movies. This movie was ranked at number one and I have no idea why. This movie was so boring I had to watch it several times because i kept falling asleep and missing certain parts. Fine, it was clever having Rosebud, and the importance of youth, but i felt that this is an example of a movie, that could be told in about 5 minutes, rather than stretching it out into one of the longest and most boring movies that i have ever seen. Now, i was also shocked at the acting. i generally find that acting supports a relatively weak script, however in this movie’s case, i felt that the relatively weak script was supporting the awful acting. i personally was not very impressed with the acting strictly because the reactions felt very forced and everything was very overdone. all in all i was not impressed at all with this film, regardless of past ratings.” – tennisislife67, IMDB

“The Godfather Part II” ‘The Godfather, Part II’… is not very far along before one realizes that it hasn’t anything more to say. Everything of any interest was thoroughly covered in the original film, but like many people who have nothing to say, ‘Part II’ won’t shut up… Even if ‘Part II’ were a lot more cohesive, revealing and exciting than it is, it probably would have run the risk of appearing to be the self-parody it now seems. Looking very expensive but spiritually desperate, ‘Part II’ has the air of a very long, very elaborate revue sketch. Nothing is sacred… Mr. Pacino, so fine the first time out, goes through the film looking glum, sighing wearily as he orders the execution of an old associate or a brother, winding up very lonely and powerful, which is just about the way he wound up before. Mr. De Niro, one of our best young actors, is interesting as the young Vito until, toward the end of his section of the film, he starts giving a nightclub imitation of Mr. Brando’s elderly Vito.” – Vincent Canby, New York Times

I really don’t understand the obsession with the Godfather trilogy, brought up with society around me proclaiming it to be a classic I rented the first and found it just bearable! Determined on my task of watching all three I rented the second, I barely made it through, i found the storyline confusing and didn’t see any of the quotes used in ‘You’ve got Mail’! Please don’t think that the only films I watch are chick flicks, I do like more serious, older films but … oh dear… maybe I just can’t relate to Italian mafia families, I must have wiped this film from my mind as I can hardly remember the storyline! I do not which to be stereotypical but maybe this really is a film for men! Please tell me there are other people out there who feel this way about these films! I can’t understand how they always get to the top of ‘Great film Lists’! If asked by a friend whether to watch this film I would say no, unless I wanted to punish them! P.S I still haven’t watched number three!!  – laura5578, IMDB

“Casablanca” “The love story that takes us from time to time into the past is horribly wooden, and clichés everywhere lower the tension.” — William Whitebait, The New Statesman

“So I finally got around to watching Casablanca, one of the greatest movies ever made, or so I’ve always heard. Does it live up to its hype? In a word, no. It was maudlin and melodramatic; Ingrid Bergman was homely, no matter how many softening effects were used in the close-ups of her face (did a rodent gnaw off the sides of her nose? To say nothing of that masculine jawbone and those underdeveloped lips…); Humphrey Bogart was about as slick and charismatic as the Hunchback of Notre-Dame; and the story was undisguised war propaganda. One would have to have the mental age of 5 to think this movie was in any way great. Watchable, yes, but not great, and certainly not deserving of being on the IMDb top 250. The movie was fast-paced, which was both good and bad: good because it would’ve been unbearable to watch otherwise, and bad because it didn’t give the viewer time to get attached to any of the characters (which is just as well, since as I’ve said, it was war propaganda and so the less effective, the better). – le_chiffre-1 , IMDB

“Raging Bull” “Robert De Niro is one of the most repugnant and unlikeable screen protagonists in some time… the director excels at whipping up an emotional storm, but seems unaware that there is any need for quieter, more introspective scenes in drama… the scenes it does choose to show are almost perversely chosen to alienate the audience – Joseph McBride, Variety

Oh my is this film terrible. I really wanted to like this film, honest; in fact, I bought it before actually seeing it. Seriously though, this film is grossly pregnant; there is nothing there; it’s fluff; get it? Forgebodit!! Boxing movies are stupid enough as is, next to football flicks of course. However, I thought, “Well it’s a Scorsese flick, he’ll do something meaningful.” Nope!!! Just a bunch of swearing, violent, irrational, testosterone-junkie wops walking around beating their women saying forgebodit. Peachy, let me tell ya; in fact, I want my time back, dig. This film is boring, redundant, annoying, and meaningless. The cinematography is somewhat sharp, but then again, somewhat sharp is just dull. One last thing, just because a film is black/white does not make it art…K?…K. – Kevin Cordia, IMDB

“Lawrence Of Arabia” “It is such a laboriously large conveyance of eye-filling outdoor spectacle—such as brilliant display of endless desert and camels and Arabs and sheiks and skirmishes with Turks and explosions and arguments with British military men—that the possibly human, moving T. E. Lawrence is lost in it. We know little more about this strange man when it is over than we did when it begins… The fault seems to lie, first in the concept of telling the story of this self-tortured man against a background of action that has the characteristic of a mammoth Western film. The nature of Lawrence cannot be captured in grand Super-Panavision shots of sunrise on the desert or in scenes of him arguing with a shrewd old British general in a massive Moorish hall… The fault is also in the lengthy but surprisingly lusterless dialogue of Robert Bolt’s over-written screenplay. Seldom has so little been said in so many words… sadly, this bold Sam Spiegel picture lacks the personal magnetism, the haunting strain of mysticism and poetry that we’ve been thinking all these years would be dominant when a film about Lawrence the mystic and the poet was made. It reduces a legendary figure to conventional movie-hero size amidst magnificent and exotic scenery but a conventional lot of action-film cliches. – Bosley Crowther, The New York Times

The first thing I’m looking for in a movie is “historical accuracy”.Since the movie takes its name from the leading character Lawrence let me ask you a question to those who casted a top-ten vote for this movie?Do you really know how Lawrence looked like?Six foot two inch Peter O’Toole differed strikingly with the real Lawrence, who was almost nine inches shorter.Lawrence was not a gung-ho drama queen who lead a nation to freedom.Most scenes such as the attack on Aqaba were heavily fictionalized from the writings of Lawrence.You can easily question how much he is reliable.Lawrence mentions in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom that he was raped by the Turkish Bey which was called into question by the historians.(Check out the article : Lawrence of Arabia ‘made up’ sex attack by Turk troops By Elizabeth Day) Not only most scenes are heavily fictionalized but some characters are a bunch of fiction too like Sheriff Ali,Mr. Dryden and Colonel Brighton. The movie neither tells you anything from the Turkish point point of view nor does it tell anything about the real Arab points. Yes it’s a well-know truth that the Arabs were tricked into fighting against the Turks by the British and they have been paying the price by being belittled by the westerners for centuries.But the movie shows us only a bunch of Bedouin tribes which are desert dwelling nomadic people. Not every Arab is (and was)a Bedouin. The historians say that the real Lawrence actually shunned the limelight, as evidenced by his attempts after the war to hide under various assumed names but the British officers certainly did not the find the attack outrageous since the Great(!) British Empire can finally be positioned at a table with the French to take care of the rest of the Turkish empire.And according to Wikipedia the film’s portrayal of General Allenby as a cynical, manipulative superior to Lawrence is not entirely accurate either. Allenby and Lawrence respected and liked each other, and Lawrence once said of Allenby that he was “an admiration of mine”… There are people who claim that such fictionalization was necessary to dramatize the great Lawrence character but I say “watch out! The devil lurks in the little details” – shutterbug_iconium, IMDB

“The Searchers” “The Searchers” is somewhat disappointing. There is a feeling that it could have been so much more. Overlong and repetitious at 119 minutes, there are subtleties in the basically simple story that are not adequately explained… Wayne is a bitter, taciturn individual throughout and the reasons for his attitude are left to the imagination of the viewer… The John Ford directorial stamp is unmistakable. It concentrates on the characters and establishes a definite mood. It’s not sufficient, however, to overcome many of the weaknesses of the story.” – Ronald Holloway, Variety

I was bored, it’s Sunday and sat down really looking forward to this supposedly great western to fill the evening void. Maybe I’m not qualified to comment fully as I didn’t make it past half an hour. I figure if a film hasn’t grabbed me by then it probably won’t get any better. Usually a rubbish film will grab you then go downhill but this………. well, first off I’m English and even I know that those funny things sticking out the earth don’t come from Texas they’re somewhere in Utah. That’s the first insult. It may be great scenery but great scenery a great film it doth not make. And there’s nothing glorious about glorious Technicolor either. It’s like being hit on the head with a sledgehammer. Then, oh I dunno just that dumb acting from that time, those stupid children full of beans and cockadoodle dandy acting just irritate the hell out of me as if lots of energy will make up for real acting. Embarrassing. The story just plods along and doesn’t build any tension whatsoever with a lot of hammy acting by our stars more fit for a TV show. Then it’s just cliché after cliché and the end result is wishing the maker of this film would stop insulting my intelligence and pi** off. I disliked John Wayne as a small boy because I thought he was boring. I think he’s boring now. If you wanna watch a good Western with interest and real characters, story development, tension and drama that sucks you in watch Unforgiven. I’ll never forgive this pile of dross. – jackbenimble, IMDB

“2001: A Space Odyssey” “A major achievement in cinematography and special effects, “2001” lacks dramatic appeal to a large degree and only conveys suspense after the halfway mark…. The plot, so-called, uses up almost two hours in exposition of scientific advances in space travel and communications, before anything happens, [including] the surprisingly dull prolog… Film ends on a confused note, never really tackling the ‘other life’ situation and evidently leaving interpretation up to the individual viewer. To many this will smack of indecision or hasty scripting.” — Robert B. Frederick, Variety

“This is certainly one of the most boring and meaningless films I have ever seen in my life. I love science and science fiction both. They are in fact 2 of my main interests in life. This movie still bored me beyond description! The accolades being heaped upon this hunk of garbage is hilarious. The most amusing tendency among the fans of this movie is ridiculing those who think it is boring and meaningless as stupid, ignorant or both. I am a professional in the computer design and engineering business. I am not stupid. And guess what? This movie is still boring and meaningless… It’s a collection of very long, very boring scenes that never seem to end… For those who will attempt to dismiss my comment along with the other people they have dismissed let me be perfectly clear. I understood everything in the film. It is simply a terrible film. This pseudo-intellectual drivel is a director who thinks he’s quite brilliant in his high school level presentation and vision of the journey of man. Of course he is very wrong indeed!… It’s disjointed. It lacks cohesiveness. It adds elements of science fiction, horror, fantasy, and pre-teen created entertainment. It also fails to deliver in any of these categories. Stop attacking those who do not like this film. They aren’t nearly as stupid as is implied here… There is nothing brilliant about meaningless film that must be “interpreted” by the few viewers who claim they have the answer. Thats just incompetent lazy film making.” – tom_jones, IMDB

“Chinatown” “The most acclaimed private-eye saga since ‘The Big Sleep’ has the torpor of a wake… Evans and Polankski are masters of Hollywood ‘dramatic organization.’ They ram home what they see as major points… ‘Chinatown’ brings to question not only their lack of subtlety, but their hypocrisy… Polanski never favors compassion over carnage. He has none of Towne’s emotional stakes in the film… Polanski smothers Towne’s script. He never lets in any air… Polanski revels in artifice. Every shot in ‘Chinatown’ locks into a larger puzzle, and each character’s smirk hides a secret.” – Michael Sragow, New York Magazine

“Got two hours of your life to waste? Want to wonder watch the same actor who scared you in the Shining bore you to death? Want to wish you had not already cleaned out the cat’s litter? I have the film for you. Two hours of the most excruciating boredom watching male chauvinistic pigs who think there is nothing wrong in raping, beating or in general any other form of abusing women, sprinkle in some under-age sex with your own daughter (how ironic that three years later the film’s director will be charged with such an offence – was he planning his own future? Oh, sorry I forget 15 is too old for him) and add a cherry on top for being absolutely pointless and you have Chinatown. If anyone can tell me what Chinatown has to do with the film’s plot I will give you the cherry myself. And before you all start jumping on me I do understand the ‘rape’ refers to the water supply controversies of the early 1910’s. However, please, seriously, do not tell me that you enjoyed this film. I am only saying what everyone else is too scared to say – it really is not that good a film.” – b-jhoree, IMDB

“Die Hard” “On a technical level, there’s a lot to be said for ‘Die Hard.’ It’s when we get to some of the unnecessary adornments of the script that the movie shoots itself in the foot… the filmmakers introduce a gratuitous and unnecessary additional character: the deputy police chief (Paul Gleason), who doubts that the guy on the other end of the radio is really a New York cop at all. As nearly as I can tell, the deputy chief is in the movie for only one purpose: to be consistently wrong at every step of the way and to provide a phony counterpoint to Willis’ progress. The character is so willfully useless, so dumb, so much a product of the Idiot Plot Syndrome, that all by himself he successfully undermines the last half of the movie. Thrillers like this need to be well-oiled machines, with not a single wasted moment. Inappropriate and wrongheaded interruptions reveal the fragile nature of the plot and prevent it from working. Without the deputy chief and all that he represents, “Die Hard” would have been a more than passable thriller. With him, it’s a mess… you can’t go wrong if all of the characters in your movie are at least as intelligent as most of the characters in your audience.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

This film has almost everything that I despise. I do like the action, explosions, and Alan Rickman since he stars as Severus Snape in the seven Harry Potter flicks. Rickman is excellent at playing the bad guy. Bruce Willis thinks he is so cool; however, but nothing but a fool. So the two stars are for Rickman and the action. The subtraction of eight stars is for the ballooning votes that this movie has been given, the violence, the nudity, the vulgarity, Bruce Willis, the mindless acting by the majority, the length of the film, and finally not giving Rickman more lines. Yes, it’s a slight obsession with Rickman as it seems, but I had to think of eight reasons and ran out of ideas. So if you like or love this imbecilic claptrap, you will most likely disagree with me and jump to conclusions while forming stereotypes. I don’t blame you. I only wish Hollywood wouldn’t contribute to the degenerating of our civilization where people don’t care about humans they don’t know – jamesolio, IMDB

“Raiders Of The Lost Ark” “But “Raiders” is a machine-tooled adventure in the pulp-esoterica spirit of Edgar Rice Burroughs; it appears that Lucas and Spielberg think just like the marketing division… But Spielberg’s technique may be too much for the genre: the opening sequence, set in South America, with Indy Jones entering a forbidden temple and fending off traps, snares, poisoned darts, tarantulas, stone doors with metal teeth, and the biggest damn boulder you’ve ever seen, is so thrill-packed you don’t have time to breathe—or to enjoy yourself much, either… you know that Spielberg, having gone sky-high at the start, must have at least seventeen other climaxes to come, and that the movie isn’t going to be an adventure but a competition… there’s no exhilaration in this dumb, motor excitement… Yet, with the manicured wide-screen images and the scale of this production, klunkiness sticks out in a way that it didn’t in the serials, which were usually all of a piece… It’s a shocker when the big-time directors provide a rationale for the marketing division—when they say, as Spielberg does, that “the real movie-lovers are still children.” And there’s no doubt he means that in a congratulatory sense. The whole collapsing industry is being inspired by old Saturday-afternoon serials, and the three biggest American moviemakers are hooked on technological playthings and techniques.” Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

I’ve been avoiding Indiana Jones like the plague until tonight when I decided to see what it’s all about. And boy was I in for a treat! I was laughing so hard at every action scene! The music was so laughable, Harrison Ford played worse than Paris Hilton sings and every cliché imaginable was there. The plot is virtually non-existent during the first half of the movie and when the real action finally kicks in, you see Dr. Jones escaping from difficult situations with unbelievable ease, the ridiculous music score serving as another way of applauding his actions. Those were the best bits. Because then you have the totally random ending that turns your laughter into a WTF expression. The characters are paper-thin – not to mention Spielberg’s obsession with the Germans (or anyone non-American or non-Jewish) who have to be depicted as either superevil or superstupid. Unintentionally funny, totally predictable and a waste of money and film. How anyone with an average IQ can enjoy this is beyond me. – grybop, IMDB  

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How to Write a Useful Negative Review

We all know badly written online reviews benefit no one besides the people who angrily type them out. But every now and then, you may find yourself in a situation that calls for some constructive criticism. Whether you’re reviewing an Amazon purchase, a restaurant, or a former employer, your basic review-writing strategy should remain the same: Make it readable, and make it useful. Here’s how to do it.

Describe what happened—and what should have happened

If you’re considering writing a bad review, you’re probably motivated by at least one specific experience. That should be your focus. First, clearly and objectively describe the bad thing that happened, and stick to the facts—in other words, don’t make shit up. If you’re still feeling worked up about your experience, keep it under wraps. Next, describe what should have happened in the moment—not what you want to happen in response, or what you think you’re owed. This is an important distinction, because it’s basically a test to see if your complaint holds up. For legitimate complaints, it’ll be super easy to say what should have happened: Your former boss should have kept his gross comments to himself, Amazon should have charged you once and not twice for a single item, the server and cook should have left the peanut sauce off your plate after learning you’re allergic, and so on. But for petty beefs that boil down to you feeling insufficiently catered to, the “right” way of doing things will either straight-up not exist or be so outrageous you might as well have opened your review with “Please do not take anything I say seriously! I am working through some personal issues in an unhealthy and ultimately unproductive way!”

Get to the point

Wordy, overly long reviews are as unhelpful as it gets, so keep yours short and to the point. This will make it possible for a human being to read and absorb what you are saying, which is the entire point of writing any review. As a bonus, sticking to short, declarative sentences will also make it impossible for you to go off on a tirade, so you won’t come off like a scorned narcissist trying to get your way at all costs. (Even in situations where emotional outbursts are totally reasonable reactions, they can undermine your point.)

The bottom line: If you really want your review to make a difference, it needs to be as pointed and easy to read as possible. Tell the truth, make your case, and wrap it up; whoever ends up reading it will appreciate the effort.

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noun as in examination, study

Strongest matches

Strong matches

• reassessment
• recapitulation
• reconsideration

Weak matches

• another look
• second look
• second thought

noun as in critique; summary

• investigation
• dissertation
• book review

verb as in go over again

• recapitulate
• call to mind
• check thoroughly
• look at again
• look back on
• run through
• run up flagpole
• take another look

verb as in criticize, scrutinize

• give one's opinion
• read through
• write a critique

Example Sentences

When in doubt, scour budget blanket reviews to make sure the one you’re eyeing will satisfy your dreams.

The task force was meant to conclude its review and give advice in time for administrators to update the 2021-2022 academic calendar.

Marshall wrote in an email to VOSD that the Housing Commission staff have done an expansive review of research and methods other jurisdictions have used.

If your business has a great review rating and flattering reviews, you’re very likely to earn a spot in the Google 3-Pack.

After earning rave reviews early in the pandemic, Newsom is now under heavy fire, even from allies, for his handling of the coronavirus.

In an email exchange a friend said many had repeated this same succinct review but they could never elaborate.

“[I]ndeed, the Civil War was more or less administered from there,” an Esquire review asserts.

The tweets linking to the National Review, that bastion of LGBT equality.

In any case, I welcome the conversation as part of the review of the upcoming slate that we're doing tomorrow.

John L. Smith is a columnist with the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

And now I am going on to a review of the broad facts of the educational organization of our present world.

We haven't even seen a review of the piece; the footlights go up with a jump, and now the curtain rises.

Nothing will be easier then to throw the Poles into the shade of the picture, or to occupy the foreground with a brilliant review.

She did not perceive that she was talking like her father as the sleek geldings ambled in review before them.

It would have been a sort of review—in the face of the city of Dublin, in open defiance of all order and government.

Related Words

Words related to review are not direct synonyms, but are associated with the word review . Browse related words to learn more about word associations.

verb as in prepare short document from longer one

noun as in idea that occurs after it is timely

verb as in judge, estimate

• guesstimate
• have one's number
• take account of

Viewing 5 / 130 related words

From Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.

Synonyms of review

• as in retrospect
• as in inspection
• as in critique
• as in alteration
• as in to revisit
• as in to examine
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Thesaurus Definition of review

 (Entry 1 of 2)

Synonyms & Similar Words

• retrospection
• reconsideration
• reexamination
• reappraisal
• recapitulation

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

• examination
• investigation
• going - over
• exploration
• deconstruction
• observation
• inquisition
• interrogation
• reinspection
• surveillance
• test - drive
• once - over
• little magazine
• semimonthly
• newsmagazine
• modification
• transformation
• refashioning
• rectification
• replacement
• fluctuation
• metamorphosis
• deformation
• substitution
• oscillation
• displacement
• transfiguration
• stabilization

Thesaurus Definition of review  (Entry 2 of 2)

• think better of
• change one's mind (about)
• reconceptualize
• reinvestigate
• check (out)
• investigate
• pore (over)
• delve (into)
• glance (at or over)

Examples of review in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'review.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Thesaurus Entries Near review

Cite this entry.

“Review.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/review. Accessed 26 Aug. 2024.

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Nglish: Translation of review for Spanish Speakers

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Negative movie review

Today's crossword puzzle clue is a quick one: Negative movie review . We will try to find the right answer to this particular crossword clue. Here are the possible solutions for "Negative movie review" clue. It was last seen in American quick crossword. We have 1 possible answer in our database.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, the killer (2024).

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John Woo ’s “ The Killer ” was a true gamechanger, at least for this critic. The one-two punch of Woo’s 1989 action masterpiece with his equally magnificent “Hard Boiled” changed the way I looked at the genre in my teens, and truly inspired hundreds of imitators. For anyone in my age range who can remember watching “The Killer” (likely on VHS) decades ago, the thought of remaking a flawless film feels cinematically heretical. And yet Hollywood has been circling such a project for decades with Richard Gere and Nicolas Cage once attached in the ‘90s. After years of false starts, a remake finally emerges, limping onto Peacock with almost no fanfare or promotion. Directed by Woo himself, the 2024 version of “The Killer” is obviously competently made–the Hong Kong director still knows how to stage an action sequence, well into his seventies—but the truth is that this version of the film does absolutely nothing better than the original. It’s a movie that’s generally watchable but almost instantly forgettable, which the best of Woo never is.

Nathalie Emmanuel (Ramsey from the later “Fast and the Furious” movies) plays the mysterious Zee, a stealthy assassin for a powerful organization run by the vicious Finn ( Sam Worthington ). The “ Avatar ” actor nails a certain kind of slimy power figure, the one who will pretend to have your best interests in mind but only as far as it suits him personally. When Zee gets a job that requires an assassination via samurai sword in a Parisian nightclub, the assignment goes sideways with the blinding of a singer named Jenn ( Diana Silvers ). Despite the fact that she can’t exactly point the finger at the killer, Finn insists that Zee take out the witness, leading to moral crisis for the murderer for hire. While Zee tries to keep Jenn alive, a Paris cop named Sey ( Omar Sy of “Lupin”) gets this incredible case and crosses paths with Zee, giving “The Killer” most of its narrative thrust in that it’s a story of a criminal and a cop who may not be as different as they first believe.

Clearly, a lot of the narrative beats of the original remain, although the gender swap naturally makes a pretty big difference both in the Zee/Jenn relationship and the dynamic between Zee & Sey. The sort of dance between a killer and a cop, which many over the years even read as homoerotic in the original, has been shifted by the change but hardly anything has been done with that shift. Changing race, gender, and location should give “The Killer” a different flavor, but the truth is that there’s just no seasoning. It’s as if the writers ( Brian Helgeland , Josh Campbell & Martin Stuecken) figured the swaps alone would be interesting enough that they didn’t have to do anything more. It also just reeks of a script that has been in development for so long that all of the passion has been drained from it with rewrites, producer’s notes, and focus groups. The original hums with energy in not just its ace filmmaking but its narrative structure, and there’s just nothing to care about here in terms of plotting, while additions, like a few flashbacks to Zee’s origin story, feel half-hearted and cheap.

Part of the problem here is that Emmanuel just isn’t an interesting enough performer to sell the strong, silent cipher that Zee needs to be. I’m not usually a critic who likes to judge the movie that isn’t there but knowing that Lupita Nyong’o was once attached to this before COVID shut down production reveals even more flaws in Emmanuel’s work. Nyong’o can do so much with body language and her amazing eyes that it feels “The Killer” needed to work, and Emmanuel simply doesn’t have the same skill set. Sy makes out much better, reminding viewers how charming he can be, but Silvers is a non-character, used almost entirely as a device.

Of course, most people aren’t here for performance, and they just want to know about the Woo of it all. He once again leans into his clichés—there will be churches, candles, birds, and slo-mo—but there are some undeniably nifty stunt sequences in the film, especially in the final act’s graveyard shootout. It’s nice to see real stuntpeople showing off what they do best under the direction of a genre master, even if it does feel like he’s lost a beat in terms of pacing, both in action scenes and overall. There’s huge mid-film sag in this too-long movie in which people banter about how to finish jobs during which it will be hard for Peacock viewers at home to put down their phones.

And that makes me a little sad. John Woo movies used to strap you into your seat, making the rest of the world fall away as you appreciated their action artistry. That’s just not the case here. And my biggest concern comes in the overall sunsetting of physical media and lack of curation on streaming. Want to watch the original “The Killer”? It’s not streaming for rental anywhere and costs about $50 on Blu-ray. And that means that this faded copy is now easily the most accessible, and there will certainly be people who don’t even know about the first film when they watch it. In that sense, it’s not just a remake but a replacement. And that kills me.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Nathalie Emmanuel as Zee

Omar Sy as Sey

Sam Worthington as Finn

Diana Silvers as Jenn

Éric Cantona as Jules Gobert

Saïd Taghmaoui as Prince Majeb Bin Faheem

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