Reviews

I love reading online about the movies and books I've gone through, but have found something that leaves me really unsatisfied a lot of the time. I've found that sometimes the reviews I've read seem to stop short of giving me everything I wanted to hear about. While I certainly respect the ability of those writing online to do such a good job of providing eloquent commentary without spoiling the movie, it's left me with absolutely in the dark at times when it comes to exploring some of the deeper themes of the movies and other media I've seen, simply because these themes happen to coincide with the surprises in the plot. Oftentimes the endings in particular of any given film are the most maddening part, because they leave us with so much confusion, so many questions, so much desire to discuss what we've seen, to delve deeper into it and make sense of it all. If we're fortunate enough to have a friend who's seen the film in question, this isn't such a bad thing, we can always turn to them, but in the other cases... It can be a disappointing. Many of the best films leaves us with more questions than answers, full of thoughts we want explained or even just acknowledged. Sometimes I find myself having an original thought, and wanting to explore it further, scour the net looking to see if anyone out there has thought the same thing, or at least has bothered to write it down if ever they had, only to come up empty handed.

I want to write more reviews, but have come to the conclusion that avoiding plot spoilers is just not for me. I hate spoilers more than anyone I know, and yet the irony of all is that because of this, I generally avoid reading any reviews or opinions on a film or book I've yet to experience. I like going in to it all not knowing what to expect, fresh and free of preconceptions, not sure what to look for. Like most everyone else I like the surprises to be surprises, but where I differ, I suspect is that while I avoid information like the sickness before checking out something new, when it's all done, I can't seem to stop looking for it. I read reviews for opinion, for perspective, for added meaning, not to whet my appetite. Maybe I'm just reading it all backwards, but so what? There's something to be said about doing it this way too, where at least I know some of the conclusions I've come to are my own and not the critic whose review I read beforehand as so many others do. It is so difficult to find commentary by people willing to write in a way that reveals plot points about the movie for the sake of further examination, and yet, I find that's what I truly crave sometimes. Sometimes I want read more between the lines, between the lines of the lines between which I'm already reading. I want to examine the hypotheticals no matter how unlikely, bizarre, and out there they are.

Well, I think it's time to stop griping and do something about it all, damn it. Why I am whining about no one writing about this when I could do it myself? I've occasionally encountered some excellent reviews written by non-professionals on works that don't always get the serious attention that others do (things like well written, full bodied reviews on manga can be very difficult to find, especially if the following for it is small). It gets me sometimes that a user review from Amazon.com or IMDB can finally give a work the credit it's due. This is what the internet is here for. When we have an original thought, we have the option of putting it out there for others to see so they don't have to dwell in the darkness the way that is driving me so crazy right now.

The reviews I write are gonna be done with the idea that the reader has already experienced the work in question and wants more answers or reflection. I'm gonna drink the language of film in with eyes and bleed my thoughts straight onto the page in word form. Who knows? Maybe what I believed were original thoughts have been had by others but no one just bothered to put it out there until now.