If you to were ask the question what makes a film “good” to a group of people, you would most probably get a handful of different answers, as there are many ways to critique and view films. For example, one way someone may critique a film is through a realist approach. A realist would favour a film such as ‘Blair Witch Project’, with its shaky camera, “homemade” shots and characters which feel more like real people and not actors. Another way of viewing a film would be through the lens of mise-en-scene. Mise-en-scene critiques would focus more on the environment and the features that contribute to the scene, such as the lightning and sets, and would therefore favour a film such as ‘Blade runner’ and the futuristic, urban environment that Ridley Scott creates with her picturesque shots. Alternatively, critiques may choose to criticize a film with the ‘auteur’(author) mindset, coming from the French film studies journal ‘Cahiers du cinema’ in 1951, which is where the critique will analyse a handful of the director’s films and try to pick out any stylistic repetitions that the director may display in their films, such as favouring a certain type of score in their films. A critique may also take a formalist approach when viewing a film. A formalist critique will look at how the composition of shots comes together, and how they juxtapose and compliment one another. They would enjoy a film such as ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, with its sequences of incoherent and surreal imagery-apes and embryos, during its ending. A popular way of critiquing forms of art, not just film, would be with a feminist viewpoint. In a film, a feminist critic would look at the amount of screen time that the female actors have been given, the way in which the women in the film are presented and common stereotypes depicted in the film, which means they would favour a film such as 2023’s ‘Barbie’, with its deep, underlying message that women can be whatever they want to be, independent from their relationship with a man. Finally, in my personal opinion I think that the view and way of critiquing a film which I most agree with is that of mise-en-scene, as I think that the features of a film that do make special and “good” are the atmosphere and the environment that the director creates within the world of the film.