Review Of The Year 2010: My Favourite Dozen Movie Pitches (What I Wrote)
The core of my blog this year has been the reviews. Every review on the site is a movie I’ve seen in the cinema, and apart from re-releases I do (eventually) review everything I’ve seen. I came up with a review structure fairly quickly, and it seems to have worked so I’ve stuck to it. It consists of a score out of 10 (for everything needs to be judged, pigeon-holed and ranked to it to be understood), a four paragraph review, a recommendation for why you should see it at the cinema rather than waiting for a home option, and, so you can understand what the movie’s about, a one line pitch.
One of the key aspects of writing a blog is to have a sense of humour – in getting your blog to stand out, it actually needs to be worth reading, of course, and the odd joke along the way might actually convince people to come back. This was always going to be an obstacle for me, as I have a sense of humour which could most closely be described as sitting in the waiting room of a German dentist for four hours, reading encyclopaedias. But I’ve made an effort with my pitches, not only to try to be funny (and surely, in over 100, I must have been funny once? Even by accident?), but to sum up in as few words as possible what the movie was about.
So in order to review the quality of my own work this year, I’ve picked out a dozen that I believe represent my best work. Some accurate, some vaguely chucklesome, some serious. At least the wonders of the internet mean I can’t hear you groaning.
The Social Network – A Few Good Rasho-men.
Made In Dagenham – Ford Fiasco.
A Town Called Panic – How The West Was… Moved To A Small Belgian Village And Then Invaded By Undersea Fish Monsters Called Gérard?
Mr. Nice – Howard The Skunk.
Dinner For Schmucks – Of Mice And Anchormen.
Pirahna 3D – You had me at “Kelly Brook naked…”
The Secret In Their Eyes – “The past is never dead, it is never even past.” — William Faulkner
Cats And Dogs: The Revenge Of Kitty Galore – On Her Majesty’s Secret Purr-vice.
City Island – No Sex Please, We’re Italian-American.
Greenberg – Roger The Crabbin’ Boy.
Hot Tub Time Machine – Two lovers are caught across a divide in eighteenth century feudal Japan, and… NO! IT’S A HOT! TUB! TIME! MACHINE! Seriously, what are you not getting from that title?
And my personal favourite…
Lebanon – Tanks for the memories.
The Movie Evangelist 