Film Magazine: Conventions of Review Pages

From the variety of examples I have looked at, I have noticed that the conventions tend to be most apparent in the features of the page, rather than the structure of the page. The layout varies significantly and due to this it is hard to find recurring trends across the arrangement of the pages. It should be noted that I am only going to outline the conventions that I have found on the pages with multiple reviews. I think that producing a magazine review page with just my film is unrealistic and unambitious and so I want to experiment more with a variety of films and structures. 

• Month and Year of Publication/Logo along the bottom: On both of the successful magazines I analysed, the white space along the bottom of the page was used to print the month of the issue and the year of the issue, along with the magazine's title next to it. This helps to establish an exclusive impression of the publication because this particular edition will be the only one to be released in that month of that year. So as well as helping to document how contemporary the magazine is, it also adds continuity to the publication and a sense of progression for loyal readers. 
• Page Number: Quite commonly, and rather essentially, magazines always need page numbers as a structural system operating across the magazine. It corresponds with the contents page and allows readers to skip past sections to find exactly the part that they want to look at. Furthermore, I also want to identify that the review sections of film magazines are never found towards the beginning of the publication and so when constructing my own page, I should remember to select a page number that realistically reflects its position in the overall magazine. 
• Website Link: To promote the magazine across other mediums and demonstrate cohesion between the institution across different platforms, the blank space at the top of the page tends to be used to print the web address of the digital site. It is usually introduced with the phrase 'Subscribe at...' or 'To find out more visit...' which encourages the audience to be more proactive in their involvement.
• Section Heading: Empire used 'In Cinemas' and Total Film used 'Big screen' as the subheadings for the review sections of the magazine. So when I make my page, I will need to come up with a name for the review section to outline that my page falls into a larger subdivision within the context of the magazine. 
• Film Shots/Photos: The reviews are always reinforced with a visualisation of the film being reviewed. This is essential and enables the magazine to look less like a newspaper by providing stills of the film that engage the audience. Readers of film magazines will be fans of film and so they need to be engaged visually as well as just textually. This is why the stills I choose from my films need to be representative of the film as a whole but also aesthetically engaging. In addition, a humorous caption is written in small print to comment something about the image, usually false but still entertaining. 
• Information about Film: The title, release date, certification, running time, cast and director are all included, plus a brief plot summary. This gives an overview of the film in terms of who made it, what it is about and whether it will be suitable to see at the cinema. This information is normally identified before the review itself to provide some background knowledge. 
• Tagline: Although it is not necessarily a convention, it is a feature used by Total Film that I am keen to adopt on my own page. Under the title, an entertaining subheading is written in a way that is intended to be humorous and light-hearted. It makes the tone of the magazine much less like a broadsheet and more informal, creating a more comfortable bond between reader and writer. 
• Verdict: The verdict of the film is a brief summary of the critical evaluation of the film, condensing the overall feelings about the film's success into a short passage. It comes at the end of the review and is usually printed in bold as a way of being a shorter version of the review if a reader didn't have the time to read the entire article. 
• Star Rating: Much like the verdict of a film, the star rating is an overall summary of the film, but a visual way of presenting the accolade rather than a textual way. This is printed at the start of the review near the title almost like a label, showing that the film has been allocated a certain rating so that readers associate the two synonymously. I intend to use a distinct colour for my star rating to add a bit more variety to the colour of the text on the page. 

I didn't want to add structural conventions to my list, because in terms of the layout I think that my creative decisions should be informed not by limitations but by what I think looks best.