What makes a movie not just a movie but a good movie?

I’m sure people are wondering what I base my reviews on, what criteria I used to idolize or criticize my film review so I decided to write a blog to give my opinion of what a movie must have to be categorized as a good movie. Ok here goes

To be truly great, a movie must:-

• Have a great plot. Not that by plot I don’t mean story because a movie can have a really silly story but have an amazing plot and vice versa. Does the plot attract or repel people? A movie with a bad plot will just bore people. Is t here any conflict that pulls the viewers in? A movie like Casablanca is perfect in terms of plot because it just pulled the readers in. we can see the twist of plot once Ilsa walks into that bar and we find out they had a history. Things like that make the movie as good as it is now. I am going to add dialogue under this because dialogue is part of the plot and stupid dialogue makes a stupid movie.

• It must have an effect that touches the audience in some way. Again I will use Casablanca. The concept of sacrifice in the movie touched a lot of the viewers and the emotion of the strength of love was another strong factor that caused the movie to be what it was.

• Good actors/characters- a good movie must obviously have good actors in order to make the characters good, thus doing a good job with the movie. The actors are a big part of the movie and a successful movie usually has good actors. There are some cases in which the characters of a good movie are hardly known so then other aspects same them from this, such as cinematography or plot but usually if the actors bring the characters to life and we can identify with that character, along with other aspects I talked about earlier and later, the movie will probably be good. Good examples of movies with good actors and characters are Casablanca and Apocalypse now and a good example of a movie with good characters is Do the right thing

• It must have some sense of realism. Do the right thing by Spike Lee was a good movie because its sense of everyday realism and Casablanca was good as well because though it was Hollywood realism, it still appealed to the realistic emotional strength that love has.

• Have continuity

o Be fresh enough to become a classic in years to come
o Be good enough that you wouldn’t mind watching it again and again
o Sequels of the movie that are viewed as crappy compared to the original show a good movie but this not the case for all movies because the Godfather series were all good.




• It must have good cinematography. I will use Ran as a good example for this. The Cinematography and mise en scene in this movie was amazing. The graphics, the color representation and other symbols such as the clouds made the movie the very expression of art. For example during the war, the transformation of the lord’s face was very good. Special effects can go into this category as well. There are a lot of good movies that owe it to the special effects used.

• The pace- the pacing of the movie can make the movie good or bad compared to what genre and the components I’ve mentioned above.


Few points to know

Remember that these traits have to be good because there are also negative forms of these core traits that may spoil a movie. For example, in daughters of the dust, the cinematography was amazing but for others the plot may have been to slow and deliberate and they might not have known the actors so the movie might have been a never-see-again movie.

I didn’t add mise en scene to this list because a lot of what I wrote above can be under mise en scene so obviously, great mise en scene makes a great movie.
I have added some extra spacing between the two bullet points and the rest for some important reasons. A lot of good movies have all these components but the first group of must-haves are a core concept that a good movie should have. The other two might not be so important and I am talking in context of culture. In Nigeria, cinematography and pacing are not that important as movies can take forever and have the worst cinematography but are still really loved. For these movies, the plot and how we relate to the characters are more important so from this I can deduce that different cultures have different expectations for a good movie

Globalization is playing a large role in movie viewing and I say this because the western culture is spreading and everyone wants to watch American movies now because of the special effects and other sort of things.

I just wanted to point that out that I think this whole topic of what makes a movie good is mostly subjective and not very objective as there is no specific criteria to how good a movie could be. What may be a good movie for me might be a crappy movie for another. Have you ever had an argument with your significant other because they want to watch a good movie and their choice is horrible to you and vice versa? That explains what I mean. This obviously brings up a critical question. Is a good movie one that is liked by the masses or can a movie be really good and hated by so many. I would say the answer is the former of the question because a great movie is one that most people have an agreement on the quality that’s why there are great movies and there are personal favorites and were talking about great movies. The movies I have reviewed are considered great movies because of the positive reviews and influence they have had on our society.