Frankly, I have decided to review websites that review movies since I had an thought in mind to start my own! I wanted to see what top-ranked movie review sites offer visitors since movie reviews are really just opinions. What I found did not discourage me from still wanting to create a website that honestly and carefully reviews a movie.
The truth is, since the cost of a movie is so prohibitively high, no movie “sucks.” Somewhere, someone thought the movie was a good idea. Opinions about movies typically fail to shed light on aspects of the movie that were appealing to someone who had money enough to toss at the production in question. A quick and dirty search of, “movie review blog” turned up a nice variety of top five results. I will nastily opine about the user experience to be had at each and harshly remove stars for lackluster and utterly subjective opinions that fail to review but rather, strictly and meaninglessly opine.
itsvery Movie Reviews looks more or less at independent films. Or so it claims. Its appearance in the Number ONE spot is the direct result of the website’s URL, MovieReviewBlog, which is, word for word, what I searched for. The author is a movie lover and hungry for some selling. Even mainstream movies offer the visitor a chance to purchase something from Amazon which provides similarly worded reviews of the same movies. This site lacks a web designer’s touch but provides synopsis, a few small images here and there, a smart human digesting a multitude of reviews for you but nothing beyond the dry, black and white look of the site. It’s kind of a failed money-making machine that isn’t doing its writing justice (and the author knows he’s good, try copy/pasting).
Of 10, itsvery close to seven, but we’re dropping it to 6 Tighten the design to some GRIDS and give us bigger pictures.
FILMSY is funny for being just the oposite of itsvery. The META of Filmsy, Movie Reviews Blog, brought it to Number TWO ground. As it loads, you lick your lips thinking you found here what was missing in itsvery. Then, you find out you’re wrong! A great design based on GRIDS is actually totally blank thanks to gross webmaster oversights that include novice follies like CSS margin control. In just 48 hours, all 110 pages of short, mostly uninspired reviews could be formatted correctly and made far less irritating to visit. What is going for the site, Filmsy, is that Hollywood news and gossip plays a role along side Movie Reviews. Still, it can’t be just our browser that makes this near-slick blog template look horrible. Fix it and write more engaging material.
Of 10, Filmsy’s flimsy template management cannot be undone by the author’s love of Hollywood stars: 4.5
It’s just CSS! For the love of layout, fix it!
Bill’s Movie Reviews are actually pretty well received despite the initial dread of another black and white, primarily TEXT ONLY movie review site. The PageRank beats the first two sites with a 4/10 (over 3/10 and 3/10) and SiteMeter honestly touts about 90 daily visits (3X more than Dinarius’s current rate). The average length of stay is just over a minute which lead us to read on… William Lazar is a member of the Jewish High Tech Community and that seems to do him well for his site, “BillSaysThis.com” He seems to say a lot of things about a lot of things. His movie reviews are plot diagrams with levels of recommendation rather than stars and it’s rare to find any pictures anywhere on the site other than those of his kids. Interesting.
Of 10, Bill, the JHTC might not agree just on principle, but when you review movies we have to politely give you a 5
It’s clean, it’s mild-mannered, it’s devoid of pictures; at least put actors names in bold or something! Don’t fear being dynamic.
Tassoula’s Movie Reviews might make you blind. She seems to be a mouse who can read (and type) microfiche. Her BLOG is a BLOGGER template with white on black equating to rapid headaches. Her reviews run both thick and thin but, honestly, her good observations and prolific screening schedule make her content the best, thusfar to read. Her top 2008 picks include The Diving Bell And The Butterfly which inspired my thoughts to begin a movie opinion site myself and, surprisingly, she also includes, at number TEN, Knocked Up. This honest writing is evidenced by such an ecclectic, mood-driven and open-minded viewing choice as her 2008 top TEN. And just like itsvery, Tassoula also has tons of purchasing options for the visitor via Amazon ad blocks.
Of 10 highly contrasted possible points, Tassoula, you’ll be getting our highest score so far, 8
OMG, Please, please make your text bigger so you get some Google PageRank!
The Movie Blog has got the GRID system of design down pat and sure does have a lot of “good friends” at MTV, Twitch, Variety, etc. I think that just means that, like the rest of us, they read a story in the RSS reader from somewhere else, and then write their own take on it. All fine and well. Actually, providing link-backs and calling everyone your “good friend” is quite catchy. The Movie Blog also uses Hollywood star gossip as fodder. They provide oodles of content on video games, movies, crossovers and podcasts. Their PageRank is a hefty 6/10 but unless you visit everyday, searching through their site to get at the reviews you want is ungainly. Since they thank their “good friends” at GridFocus for the smart layout, it is a little surprising that they don’t do some extra work making the site’s sated background more graphic and grabby to match the good, friendly writing.
Of 10 possible points, my good friends, your depth in reporting and use of GRIDS will keep your score up to a 7
Dummy-proof the searching. Make more suggestions and get a little graphic.
Congrats to Tassoula’s Movie Reviews
