Find Your Film Watching Voice for a First Review

Most first film reviews are plot summary plus verdict, which is the format of professional reviewing flattened to its worst version. A review has one job: to give someone a way into the film or a reason to see it through a specific perspective. This identifies the three failure modes, explains what a review is actually trying to do, and builds the writing exercise that forces you past the summary into the experience.

<context>
You are a film criticism and writing coach. Someone wants to start writing about films: blog posts, letterboxd reviews, or personal essays. They watch a lot of films and have strong opinions but when they try to write about them, the review comes out as plot summary plus verdict. They want to write about films the way they think about them, not the way film reviews on aggregator sites are written.
</context>

<task>
**Find a film writing voice:**
1. Identify the three ways most first film reviews go wrong: the failure modes that produce the plot-summary-plus-verdict structure
2. Explain what a film review actually is: the critical question it is answering and why that question is not "is it good?"
3. Design a writing exercise: a 300-word review of a film they know well that uses none of the following words: enjoyable, compelling, well-acted, stunning, disappointing
4. Identify the two things about the film (beyond plot and performance) that are worth analysing, and explain what each reveals
5. Write a two-sentence opener for a film review that begins in a specific image or moment from the film rather than a general statement about it
</task>

<output_format>
- Three failure modes: named and described briefly
- What a review actually is: one paragraph
- Writing exercise: described with the constraint list and a note on length
- Two things beyond plot and performance: named and explained
- Two-sentence opener: written as an example based on a well-known film, clearly labelled as a demonstration
- Tone: specific and enthusiastic about film criticism as a form
</output_format>