John's Reviews

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Looking forward to reading them.



My advice is that you always work on improving your level of patience. When I began writing reviews, I would get tired or bored part way through it, and then rush the ending. Because of that, some of my reviews were short and left some things unsaid. Now that I've been doing it awhile, I have learned that when I get tired, I need to stop for awhile, then come back to it later and do some more. I don't always go through that, but sometimes I do. For example, I've been working on a review for 2001: A Space Odyssey for the better part of this evening. There have been three different times where I was getting anxious and wanted to be done. If I had written it 6 months ago, I would have just accepted anything that came to mind in order to complete it. Yet today, I walked away for awhile and came back to it. I'm actually doing this right now by coming to the forum and replying to your post; I needed a break.

Another thing I would suggest, is to re-read what you've written over and over again as you write it. read it to yourself as if you were speaking it. Note your tone of voice, if it doesn't 'sound right' when you read it like that, then it is written incorrectly. It should flow. I re-read my reviews 50 times as I write them, not the entire thing, but the paragraph that I’m currently writing. I’ll often change wordings or add/subtract commas in the middle of what I’m doing, things like that. Don’t quit doing that until you have nothing more you feel the need to change. A paragraph should have a definite beginning and a satisfying conclusion. Without both of those things, it is a failed attempt. Even though I do all these things, I still find errors and things I think later are rather redundant. It can’t be helped, we’re amateurs.

Watch your sentence lengths, because sometimes two or three sentences could be written a bit differently and actually comprise one better sentence. For example, writing, "Homer’s brother plays football, gets the girls and scholarship to college. Homer has the mine. He doesn’t want it so his new pursuit is rockets." could be re-written as, "Homer's popular brother receives a football scholarship guaranteeing him an escape from the mine that Homer's life seems destined for, but Homer has other idea's; he wants to be a scientist specializing in rocketry." I know that that may seem like a bitch to do, but it really only takes some practice and desire. If you want to write, you need to work at it. Always strive to make your next review better, longer, or easier to read.

But above all, enjoy what you do and don’t let anybody knock the wind out of your sails because they need to put you down in order to make themselves feel better.
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thx buddy i really needed to hear that i think thats what happened here although October Sky is a short movie have u seen it? the reason i'm doing this is to improve my english writing skills because i'm failing the classes



Yes, I've seen it, but it's been ages. Hell, I was still happily married at the time, that's how long ago it was. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Good story, well written, and a great cast.

If you want to do better in English, force yourself to quit with all the internet short-cut words. Write everything out instead of saying, "o i c". Use capitals where you're supposed to, it'll be easier making it all second nature if you stay dedicated.

Ah, well, I'm acting like a know it all now, but it just seems that if you want to improve your writing skills, you should be working on it regardless of whether you're at work or play.

Good luck and all that.



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I will be posting the review agian and it will be longer. I've got some great ideas for my description of the movie. Hope you visit back to see my new review. It might take me the rest of the day so exspect it tonight.



Registered User
Yeah if you take Lord Slayton's advice you can write some really good reviews. The main thing I would say is that because you write in really short sentences, you're review doesn't flow as well as it could if you link a number of sentences in an interesting way like Lord Slayton suggested.



John, how long are you going to keep us waiting
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More advice:

Proofread everything. Spelling and word usage = credibility. When someone writes "your" instead of "you're," "were" instead of "where," or "to" instead of "too," readers make judgements about your intelligence.

Now all we need is a review to discuss!
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October Sky


Movie: October Sky

Rating: Rated pg

Rank:


This movie is based on the true story of four boys. The four boys are Quentin, Roy Lee, O’Dell and Homer Hickam Jr. they were called the “Rocket Boys”. They lived in a West Virginia town called Coalwood. The movie starts out on October 5, 1957 and Russia has just successfully launched the first man made satellite, Sputnik. The town of Coalwood didn’t care about this milestone, but one boy sees this as an opportunity for a chance at college.

Homer is one of the many unlucky coal miners’ sons whose future is already set for them. Their future is the mine, but Homer wants more, so he tries out for the school’s football team. His failure makes him realize the ever closing truth of his future. Then his popular brother, Jim, receives a football scholarship to the University of West Virginia. This news just makes the truth set in even more; he won’t be one of the lucky few to escape the death grip, the mine has on the town.

When Homer saw Sputnik his hopes were set in a new direction, the field of rocketry. His first attempt at launching a homemade rocket ended up in destroying his mother’s white picket fence. After this unsuccessful attempt at his own rocket, he tries to find out more on rocketry. He starts to look around for information, but his town is interested more in what’s beneath the Earth then what’s above it. This resulted in their goals becoming harder to accomplish and, for the moment, arriving at a dead end.

Homer then has the idea to ask Quentin, the school’s biggest nerd, for help. When Quentin joins the group their hopes ignited. Then they went to Homer’s basement and started building another rocket, following the examples in a book. A problem arises while building the rocket, welding is required. Homer doesn’t know how to weld, but he doesn’t give up. This causes him to ask one of the metal shop workers to teach him. After welding the rocket they, went to fire it off, and it went out of control towards the mine. His dad was the one to find the rocket.

John Hickam, Homer’s dad, was a very arguably man during the movie. Directly following the out of control rocket scene, John came out of his office and picked up the rocket. He then called his son a thief, and a damn menace in front of all the workers. Then he told Homer “Don't you ever let me catch you with these fool things on company property again.” Still Homer persists by walking eight miles to get off company property, but his friends disagree with his idea. Homer then went off in his own direction, but his friends caught up with him again. The mine owned all of the towns land, but it didn’t own a place called Snake Ruth this is where the “rocket boys” went.

Miss Riley, their teacher, helped them by supporting them though all their failed attempts. One of the steel workers had the idea of making the rocket longer. Quentin then said, in an intelligent way, that it was a great idea. After making the bigger rocket they decided to launch it off. When they arrive at Snake Ruth they found out that Jim had told the whole town about the test. This upset the boys because of the fact if it didn’t fly they would be the town’s laughing stock.

Homer set everything up, lit the rocket, and ran back to their block house. They all waited for the fuse to finish and then, Whoosh!! They finally had a success. The whole town cheered, including his brother.

The high school principal had the boys arrested after they had fired off their third rocket. It was believed that they started a fire that brought down a lot of forest. After this the boy’s hopes were broken down to rubble.

Homer told his dad earlier in the movie that he would never go down into the mine. The ironic part is that Homer’s dad is involved in an accident, and he must apply at the mine to keep the house. The rest of the movie is composed of a science fair, more rocket launches, and a bunch of comic relief.

When I first saw the trailer for this movie I thought to myself, what a waste of money. Then when I saw it for the first time I loved it. In the movie the “rocket boys” are going though high school. When I saw this I saw how the boys studied and everything. Then I look at the newer high school based movies and only see guys wanting to get laid. This is a great thing to show to a class of high school students. It would help them to understand that if they want to get to college, work is required.

Personally I thought it was great, except for the fact that some things were altered from the book. When ever I see a movie based on a true story, I like to see a little bit of comedy. This movie has just the right amount of comedy and it has lots of fun for people of any age. It’s also a great reason for the family to get together for the night, and set down for a good old movie. Through out the entire movie, I didn’t feel any boredom at all, like I do with some other true based movies.

Near the end, the movie gets sad, but its ending is one of the happiest I’ve every seen. Another great factor in the music it fits in nicely with the scenes. I would recommend this to families and any one who likes true stories.

This movie is primly composed of comedy and fun for the whole family. You can watch it over and over again, and not get bored, because of the comedy. I would also recommend this to be bought on DVD or VHS. If you every get the chance to watch it, you will remember it forever. It gives you inspiration not to give up in life, when it gets tough.



Thanks for the review, I think it a great first effort, you say your English isn't good, there were a few mistakes but I do think it is a good effort, I think the more experienced boys will give you some great advice, it has made me put this movie on to see list, keep it up.