I like the movie L’iceberg (2005), so let’s start there.
One (non-stix) review of it begins like this:
“This debut feature by the filmmaking team of Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy earns two adjectives that rarely go together: breezy and bold. The film charts one woman’s journey from dronelike suburban mom and fast-food manager to would-be Arctic explorer. It starts when the heroine, Fiona (Ms. Gordon), is trapped in a restaurant freezer overnight and realizes she enjoyed the experience. She subjects herself to increasingly severe endurance tests and becomes obsessed with images of icebergs, even carving one in her freezer at home (like Richard Dreyfuss creating Devils Tower from mashed potatoes in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”).”
That snippet teaches us, as a movie review should. But it teaches too much too fast. The first sentence alone includes at least seven pieces of information (the movie (1) is feature-length; (2) is someone’s first; (3) was made by a team ((4) here are there names); (5) was breezy; (6) was bold; and (7) its combination is rare in movies). The rest of the paragraph is similarly swollen. Adjectives thicken nouns and an unrelated movie/actor/scene are referenced.
I don’t know about you, but after reading it I feel more tired and self-conscious than informed. So what’s this movie about? I ask myself. Something about a freezer-person, I answer, because I can’t remember most of the review. What I do remember I am probably confusing. This is why stixpicks exists.
Unlike the currently established conventional review style we see used everywhere else—the one that both overfeeds and desperately tries to condense a movie for us—a stixpicks review selectively shares information. It is written to concisely answer the fundamental question that all moviewatchers ask (and answer) before they watch: Will I like spending my time with this movie?
To visualize the difference, take a look at this stixpicks-style paraphrase of that first snippet:
“What do you do when you’re stuck in a freezer? Fall in love, of course!
Not with someone, but with the experience. Like Fiona in L’iceberg. Her travels through life were painfully dull until being locked in a freezer overnight. Confusingly, hilariously, the experience transformed her.
Mom has a new zest for life now, subjecting herself to increasingly outrageous feats of cold-endurance. What’ll she do next?! I don’t know, but I’d like to find out. Her family remaining oblivious somehow adds humor to the strangeness, and lets us have Fiona all to ourselves.”
OK, this time my interest in L’iceberg is piqued. I’ve learned the plot (freezer transforms bored mom into Arctic explorer) and the overall feeling of the movie (strange, funny, adventurey) without unnecessary detail. Already, I have a good sense of whether I’ll want to give this movie a try.
Let’s look at the second paragraph of the non-stix review, though. It’ll crystallize what makes a stixpick.
“The movie is structured as a series of brazenly metaphoric slapstick tableaus, with little music and less dialogue. Relying on static wide shots that pin the characters to their color-coded environments (a style choice that links the film to the work of Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, Jim Jarmusch and other deadpan fabulists), “L’Iceberg” treats Fiona’s journey as a mythic quest. Its simultaneously silly and grave tone finds humor in the characters’ delusions and obsessions while celebrating their uniqueness.”
We’re learning again. The snippet explains how certain of the moviemakers’ choices affect the movie’s vibe. Continuing the effort to connect this movie with others (or to establish the writer’s keen eye and knowledge of cinema?) it proposes links between L’iceberg and other (recognizable, respected) names of movie history. OK. Well, what if I’m not familiar with those names? What if I don’t know what a static tableau is or disagree with the assessment that the movie’s aesthetic is somehow linked to the work of those other moviemakers? To understand whether I’ll enjoy this movie, do I truly need to know where the reviewer thinks it fits into the eternal webbed chart of our dear cinema?
There is nothing wrong with that writer, that writing, or that style. In fact, it’s important that they and others exist because perspectives give perspective. My point is simply that stixpicks aims to provide a new perspective for us to consider, one that elucidates above all else whether we’ll like experiencing a movie. For all the rest of it—info about the production, the inspiration, the analogues, the business, the art, the moviemakers, and so on—we can consult so many other wonderful resources.
So that’s it! Brevity plus helping you is the stuff that makes a stixpicks review. Read a non-stix review from anywhere else and you’ll get the picture.