re: The Cabin in the Woods. TulaneLSU's 2011-12 movie review thread

Here's why that was a completely inadequate review:

1) 47% of your write-up is the introductory paragraph. The percentage is fine, I guess, but the problem is its substance. The introduction is the most crucial piece of writing, yet you don't even mention The Adventures of Tintin in it at all. To paraphrase the great John McPhee, who says of intros: your thesis should shine like a flashlight down a dark tunnel. In other words it should be 100% relevant to the body of your text. Yet your Anglophobia barely scrapes the surface of relevance to the film outside of character accent, the slightest of veneers that comprise its substance.

2) "a rather predictable blood lineage story that's a little bit Pirates of the Carbs, part Goonies, part Sherlock Holmes"

You realize the comic series was written before 2 out of those 3? And Sir Author Conan Doyle certainly has no copyright on detective mysteries. Because it appears to you a cobbling together of 3 previous works is just a lazy dismissal on your part, because you project your own experience over dissecting what is possibly "predictable" about it.

3) "and dress it up with some fancy CGI"

CGI is not the same as motion capture technology

4) "not to mention the centrality of alcohol"

Which is ultimately portrayed in a negative light. Captain Haddock's secondary arc is his defeat of alcoholism. Nonetheless, thats your puritanical perception clouding what was mostly a sight gag-cum-Alcoholism PSA

5) The numerous violent scenes and the gruesome nature of one scene

gruesome? there's very little blood portrayed, possibly none. there's gunfire and explosions, but their effects are for sensory shock, not meant to key in on physical trauma. again that probably just relates to your religious guilt and dogmatic imprisonment.

grammatical problems:
- "despotic hegemony" - unnecessary adjective. hegemony is a good enough description. adjectives and adverbs should be used sparingly. nouns and verbs are the real meat of good writing.
- The English pillaging - awk phrasing
- corporal colonialism - I'm sure you meant corporate colinialism, but either way you need to self-edit better.

Misc. disagreements:
- "invest, do no work, take advantage of those who have no power, and profit" - you're talking like a college freshman that just read about Marxism. To say that all corporations are unethical is dishonest. not to mention: what in the hell does this have to do with Tintin?
- modus operandi - why not just say "intent," or "purpose"
- "And what makes England so great? Nothing in my opinion." Well, that's just laughable hyperbole. Given your track record for being humorless it's hard to see you being ironic about this.

Conclusion:
You have a massive problem with writing up big walls of introduction that no one cares about. You drift off into soliloquies that are inspired but unengaging, substantial but feckless.

Equally as troubling is your lack of illustration for any of your points. You make declarations but provide no support. That's lazy.

Finally, moral judgments such as the rating of a movie should be secondary to its quality. Rating, or mis-rating should not dictate your evaluation of a movie's effectiveness.