Differences in reviewing styles in Magazines

Review in Sight and Sound-

Sight and Sound magazine is a magazine published by the BFI (British Film Institute). Its an incredibly successful and accredited magazine which is released in monthly bulletins. The content is written by very established film professionals and this is what helps the magazine's high following. If you're looking to read a review of something which has been written by someone who as an acute knowledge of film and the film industry then this is where someone should look. Reviews published in this magazine are extremely articulate and have all the 'right' conventions of the reviewing form; snappy witty introductions, amusing quips, articulately formed structures and so on. 

As you can see in the picture above often they are very wordy. These reviews aren't for the people that are going to the cinema on impulse and need a quick fix as to whether they should bother spending the ever growing small fortune it is to attend the cinema. These reviews get into the knitty-gritty of the directing world, the acting talent, the writing skills.Everything is under scrutiny in extreme depth. 

Mostly these reviews are aimed at people who have a fair amount of knowledge into the world of film as often technical language is used without any explanation. 

Review in Heat Magazine - 

Clearly 'Heat' magazine isnt a film specialist magazine like sight and sound. However its a widely read magazine by the general public. Just from looking at the pictures, the differences are obvious. First Sight and Sound is spread over to double pages, meaning far more content. Heath has chosen just half a page of text. This makes it far more snappy for the reader. It may make it a lot easier to digest for the average person. The use of subheadings gives the reader a little direction as to what the content of each paragraph is going to be. Generally speaking it will belayed out as an overview of the film (hopefully with no spoilers), good points, bad points, then overarching opinion. Finally one of the most effective ways of working out the quality of a film at just a glance, is the star system, 5 being the best and so on. Its a universally recognised system and actually works pretty well. If one is looking for a bit of detail concerning whether to watch a film or not, but not wanting to have a thesaurus out every sentence, short snappier reviews like the one pictured above maybe better. However it really depends on the type of person, when using the magazine 'Heat' as an example, the audience is late teens, to middle aged woman, so undoubtedly their  reviews are going to be more biased keeping their audience in mind. Magazines with a more broad audience such as the Radio Times, tend to keep their reviews less biased which is easier to ascertain the actual quality.