Developing Personal Movie Values

What do you value in a film?

• story

• acting

• direction?

• production values?

• message?

Aristotle (Poetics)

ranked in order of importance by Aristotle

1. plot

2. character

3. thought (theme)

4. diction (dialogue)

5. song

6. spectacle

Dwight Macdonald’s Guidelines

• are the character’s consistent?

• is the film true to life?

• is the photography cliche or adapted to the particular film and thus original?

• do the parts go together/add up to something?

• is there a mind behind the film?

• did the film change the way you look at things?

• did you find more (or less) in the second, third, Nth time?

Roger Ebert’s Key Element → Empathy

Possible Approaches

• formulate a series of questions to ask about each movie you see

  or

• list the qualities you think are essential for any good film