A Year of Tumblr Movie Reviews

One year ago today, I finally decided to accept my own challenge.  After having finished film history course that required me to write movie reviews, I was looking for a good outlet for my thoughts on movies, and for a good place on social media to rate them.  I was bothered by the lack of freedom offered by Facebook in terms of movie ratings, and I have never been entirely satisfied with the Rotten Tomatoes website, but Tumblr seemed like a nice platform.  So, I challenged myself to review every movie I watched from then on, at least for a year, and now I don’t think I want to stop.

I think I’ve learned a good bit from doing this, and my writing is better for it.  Since my review of Play It Again, Sam, I’ve gotten a better sense for how to really put my finger on what exactly a movie did right or wrong, and why I responded the way I did.  I find it fascinating to look at how my writings grew to be more lengthy, particular, and expressive over time.  I discovered what my least-favorite movie was, and I could explain exactly why in depth.  I’ve been getting better and better at finding my style, and writing something worth reading.  I changed style during this adventure, trying different looks for the images I chose, and going through a long phase of strictly limiting which movies received the illustrious Star #4.5.  I reviewed over 60 films.

So, what phase comes next?  Well, from now on, I’m doing the reviews on JDHansel.com.  I think this keeps things more professional, and gives me all the freedoms of WordPress, plus a higher chance of getting shared around the web.  I also wish to separate my movie-reviewing from the promotion of my Muppet Hub content.  I want to treat Tumblr as a way to share my work, rather than a place to officially present it.  It makes more sense to me.  (Hopefully I’ll get the Tumblr reviews moved over to this website as posts soon.)

I also want to start a new series of reviews called “Upon Further Consideration,” or at least that’s the working title, which would essentially be my way of reviewing movies I’ve already seen before.  No, I would not review every movie I’ve ever seen.  Rather, when I feel like talking about a movie I watched before I started doing Tumblr movie reviews, or even re-evaluating a movie I’ve already reviewed, this would be the form my thoughts take.  It would be much like my regular movie reviews, but nothing about them would be mandatory – even a star rating.  This is the new direction I plan to take soon, and hopefully there will be more great movie reviews to come in the future.