How to talk about a movie

Think of a time when you wanted to talk about a movie. How did you describe it?
in today everyday grammar, we’ll use a reader’s post to find out how to talk about a movie. We will examine three questions: What is the film about? What is the main character think or do? How did the film mark you?
What is the film about?
In a recent report, we asked our listeners and readers to send us a message describing a movie.
Esra, in Turkey, wrote about the film In Time. Here’s some of what Esra wrote about the movie.
His subject was uneven income distributionthey used their time to buy things, for example if you want to get on the bus you had to give a certain amount of your life for that.
Our first suggestion is to consider another structure to describe the subject of the film. Esra wrote,
The topic was the unequal distribution of income…*
Although the structure “his subject was…” is correct, there is another structure that English speakers often use: is about + noun or noun phrase.
For instance:
What is this movie about?
The film is about ….
The past is good too, as in “The movie was about…”
Thus, Esra could have written on In Time:
The film was about inequality.
Note that we used “inequality” instead of “unequal distribution of income”. Although the meaning of inequality is somewhat broader, English speakers often use it in the sense of economic or financial inequality.
We could change the rest of Esra’s description to something like this:
People used the time to buy things. For example, if a person wanted to get on the bus, he had to pay with a certain amount of his life.
In this case, we use the pronouns “they/their” because it is a very general description that refers to a person whose gender is not known.
What did the main character think or do?
Esra then explored another important question: the thinking of people in the film.
Its main star believed that everyone should be equal and that the wealthy should divide the time among everyone.
We suggest replacing “star” with “character”. A character is a person who appears in a film, book or play. The most important character is known as the main character.
We also suggest replacing ‘thought’, a verb form known as the past continuous, with ‘thought’, the past simple.
This is because we often use the past continuous to set up another action, like in “The main character was thinking about how to escape when his phone rang”.
We could change Esra’s sentence to something like this:
The main character believed that everyone should be equal.
A few more details could be added, as in:
The main character believed that everyone should be equal in terms of time allocation.
How did the film mark you?
Esra did not describe the film in terms of special effects or cinematography.
Rather, Esra described the film in terms of the film’s ideas that explored human life, economics, and society:
What attracts me to the film is that it was very similar to our world… Don’t we give our time to earn money.
We suggest using a consistent verb form, present or past. The form of the past could be:
What attracted me to the film was that it was very similar to our world.
Esra’s question might involve the helping verb “to do” instead of “to be”, as in:
Don’t we give our time to earn money?
This question suggests that the effect of the movie was that it forced Esra to think about time, money, and how people spend their lives.
Please note that there are different ways to describe the effects of a film. You can tell how a movie made you think by using “The movie made me…” or “It struck me that…”, as in:
The film made me think of our world.
The movie made me reconsider my life and how I spend my time.
Or:
It struck me that the film was similar to our world.
Final Thoughts
The next time you describe a film, try to do so by answering the following questions:
What is the film about?
What did the main character think or do?
How did the film mark you?
It’s not the only way to describe a movie, but it’s a useful way to start a discussion or get other people interested in the movie.
Let’s end this report with homework. Take a movie and answer the three questions about it using some of the structures and words you learned today. Write to us in the comments section of our website, learningenglish.voanews.com, or email us at [email protected]
I am John Russell.
John Russell wrote this lesson for VOA Learning English.
*In this case, the apostrophe is not necessary. “It is” is the abbreviation of “It is”. What is required here is the possessive form, sound, which has no apostrophe. We know that the possessive form is necessary because it is followed by a noun – subject.
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words in this story
character – nm a person who appears in a story, book, play, movie, or television show
Income – nm money earned through work, investments, business, etc.
distribute – v. to divide (something) between members of a group – usually + between or among – often used as (to be / to get) distributed
cinematography – nm the art, process or work of filming motion pictures: motion picture photography
consistent – adj. always act or behave the same way
strike – v. to cause (someone) to think of someone or something in a particular way; to be thought of by (someone) suddenly