Magazine Film Review Research- Purpose

The purpose of a magazine film review is to give the audience more knowledge about a film before the go to see it or prior to its release; it gives the audience an overall balanced picture whether they would like the genre or style of the film, comments on the performance of actors are given, the synopsis (which sometimes vary on different magazines of how in depth they go).  

A film review is different to a poster, the obvious reason being that a poster is visual whereas a review is mainly a written response. Posters normally tend to give a positive impression which the audience is aware of which is created by the production crew, whereas a review is not biased as it can contain both positive and negative opinions and the film is reviewed by different professional film critics and some the members of the public also express their views.

The way audiences interact and understand each one is they are able to decide for themselves whether it is worth watching at the cinema or not.

Film reviews are important part of a film's marketing campaign because it is free publicity for the film, however they contain an element of risk because if there was a negative review for the film then it could fail at the box office immediately on the other hand if there was a positive review from the critics then this would increase the gross of the box office because more people would be likely to watch it especially if they are well known.


Different film magazines have different target audiences, for example, Sight and Sound is aimed people who view films as an art therefore it would be for older people. Therefore their reviews are in depth and there are many references to other forms of media and normally the person reading the review would have to have background knowledge of other films.


However, film magazines such as prevue would have a complete different target audience of people who watch films for pure entertainment as they don't write a complete analysis of the film.