Purpose of a magazine review

A film magazine review is an article used to inform, sometimes advertise the magazines audience about a film. There may be several versions for one film, depending on the purpose and audience of the magazine.

An example of this is film magazine Empire's review of avatar:

Empire is a very commercial film magazne and although does review art house and non-mainstream films, it's primary focuse is mainstream films. This can clearly be seen through Avatar dominating the front cover of the magazine as its primary audience is the mainstream cinema going public in Britain.

Thus although the magazine gave Avatar a 5 Star rating, this is what we would expect as although it is an independent magazine part of its purpose is to advertise films and is why film companies allow Empire (as well as other magazines) to have advance screenings. The magazine also offers a sumary of the plot allowing the audience to guage whetehr or not they find this intresting and wish to see the film for themselves.

The BFI magazine Sight and sound is yet to review Avatar and is a possibility that it will not. This is because this magazine has a much greater focus on art house and other non-mainstream cinema, although does still review mainstream cinema films. The purpose of these film reviews are much less to advertise a film (although is a major form of advertisement for many of the non-mainstream films that could very easily be totally missed by the vast majority of the audience) but to inform the reader about the film and discuss its place in its genre and the context of the film.

Finally some film magazine especially those found in cinema's such as the film magazine "PREVUE" (Given away in VUE cinema's) are solely for advertising purposes as these reviews are intended to attract the cinema going audience to come and see another film soon. This is evident asno films are given a rating but are described briefly in a positive tone, and often makes negative elements of the film seem positive in order to entice the reader.

Also it is worth noting that film magazine reviews are seen by the public as being a "third party" endorsement/opinion of a film. These endorsements are usually seen as being more valid than film posters and trailers by the audience as they know these are simply advertisements for the film. However the audience assumes that magazine film reviews offer a balanced viewpoint as the magazines are independent of the film studios.

However this has many implications as most film magazine's are not entirely independent and many have a bias that the audience do not know is there, and so place more faith in these reviews than perhaps they should. A good example of this are in-house cinema magazines such as "PREVUE" which reviews every-film currently showing or soon to be released realise at VUE cinemas. These reviews are very biased and place a positive spin on every film as the sole purpose of this magazine is to encourage the mainstream cinema going audience to visit the cinema again soon. However other magazines contain some bias that are less obvious, "Empire" for example relies heavily on film companies purchasing advertisements in their magazine, thus if Empire consistently award's negative reviews for a film companies product, that company may in turn remove their advertisements from "Empire"  which could cause financial problems for the magazine. Thus "Empire" may feel under pressure to give positive reviews to certain films in order to keep the film companies (whose advertising revenue they rely on) happy.