Reviews and Exam prep

• Read these two examples. Decide which is a Review and which is an Article. Explain your answer with three examples from the text. 
• Look at the similarities in style, control and voice in the two pieces. How have the writers used ;-) to achieve specific effects - how have the writers opened and closed their pieces?
• Highlight your texts and annotate any devices you spot or phrases that you could utilise. Use WordReference for the vocabulary you are unsure of.

Example 1

A Most Violent Year: plucky Oscars outsider draws blood

Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain star in the latest film from Margin Call and All is Lost director JC Chandor – a rigorous crime drama which paints a knotty, nuanced portrait of the man who fuelled the 1980

In the winter of 1981, with snow swirling and the crime-rate soaring, New York needs someone to help keep out the chill. Cometh the crisis, cometh Abel Morales and his heating oil business. Morales is an immigrant upstart with his eye on the prize; a sharp-suited salesman chasing the American dream. His future’s so bright it’s about to burst into flames.

A Most Violent Year, fittingly enough, comes billed as the plucky outsider in the pending Oscar race, a film on a mission to unseat the big favourites. Like Morales, the odds are stacked against it. And yet, like Morales, JC Chandor’s period crime drama is rigorous, resourceful and as smart as a whip. It surely can’t win; it’s too nuanced and sombre. But its canny tactical struggle remains a joy to behold.

Oscar Isaac (last seen in the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis) gives a commanding performance as the embattled entrepreneur. His Morales is a callow rookie disguised as a pristine player, determined to secure “a polluted piece of earth” by the river and drilling his staff in the art of closing the deal. If the playing field was level, he would surely romp to victory. Instead, the DA is on his case and his competitors conspire against him. Morales’s salesmen are assaulted; his supply trucks are robbed. Driving off in pursuit of the hijackers, he veers across the train tracks and into the mouth of a tunnel that may just lead to hell.

Previously praised for his stark, no-frills approach to films like Margin Call and All is Lost, Chandor sets about his broader canvas with relish. He paints a rotten Big Apple in jaundiced yellows and creams, sliding past the graffiti and the slush on his way to the docks. The script, too, does well in spotlighting an overlap of capitalism and criminality that’s not so much a Venn diagram as a perfect, seamless match.

Beset by disaster, Morales turns to his steely wife (Jessica Chastain, a shade underused) and Albert Brooks’s world-weary old mentor, who sags like a cloth cat with the stuffing come out. But the man is being outnumbered, outmanoeuvered. Around the table at the local restaurant, the other power suppliers sit in comfortable clover. Any one of these bosses could be stealing his oil; they all stand to benefit. “Just stop,” Morales implores them. “Have some pride in what you do.” He’d dearly like to take the high road, but he’s being dragged right through the slime.

Just who is Abel Morales and what function does he serve? Many may view him as a noble crusader, others as some silver-tongued chancer who blundered out of his depth. But the truth, perhaps, is more thorny and troublesome than that. Implicitly, Chandor’s film invites us to regard the oil supplier as the perfect hero for New York’s imperfect 1980s; the ambitious pioneer from a time when the place was in freefall. The following years will see the rise of Wall Street, the deregulation of the banks and the resurgence of Manhattan as a millionaire’s playground. But the first order of business is to get the power back on. So Morales holds his nose, cuts some corners and sends his trucks across the bridge. He provides the fuel for Reagan’s shining city on the hill.

Example 2

How to settle your restaurant bill without delay

Apart from that first, cold, dry Martini of the evening, it's probably the only thing you ever ask for in a restaurant that you expect and require immediately. And yet ordering your bill can be the start of a long, drawn out process and involve no end of technological headaches. Restaurant industry expert Adam Hyman suggests some alternatives - including the ultimate in insider dining-room dealing...

It's the end of an enjoyable meal. It might be a business lunch with a client at your favourite brasserie for a Nicoise and glass of rosé or counterside by yourself for sushi and a cold Sapporo. The food, drink and service has all been exceptional. Yet, there's one problem. You can't get the bill. You've tried to get the waiter's attention a couple of times but with no luck. You think about adopting the Michael Winner white napkin wave but, despite a few too many glasses of Barolo, you decide against it.

The bill finally arrives and you're ready to pay but the waiter has disappeared to go and find a wifi card machine that has a signal. Entering those four digits into the machine seems a lifetime away. We've all experienced this situation at one time or another. So is there anything you can do as a customer to stop it happening?

One option, although not practical, is to move to the States. I noticed on my recent visit to the US that in a number of restaurants they would bring the bill at the end of your meal without asking. It was always presented with a, "No rush but whenever you're ready". Being British, this split our group in opinion. Two of us, myself included, thought this was a great touch. It takes the hassle out of trying to get the bill at a later stage of the meal. Others found it presumptive and, well, a bit hassle-y.

Alternatively, there's the technology option. A number of apps on the market allow you to pay on your phone - a sort of Uberapproach to settling up, some even letting you split the bill item by item (although I'd never be friends with someone who insisted on this).

Apps such as Cover, in New York, Spleat in London and PayPal mean you can pay for your restaurant bill while taking your seats in the stalls at the theatre. And when the Apple Watch launches it will reportedly allow you to pay for your restaurant bills without having to speak to your waiter.

But do we really live in a world where it's no longer preferable to speak to your server and thank them instead? Personally, I always preferred it when the bill and your card was returned to the table at the same time. It was more civilised and I liked signing my autograph. But now that cheques are practically defunct and one of the private members' clubs I belong to no longer requires you to sign in when I arrive, I can't remember the last time I got to use my stainless steel Kaweco ballpoint.

However, the educated man about town who dines out frequently knows there's still one civilsed way to settle up. And it doesn't even involve taking your card out of your Comme Des Garçons wallet. It's all about the monthly tab. Just don't fall off your dining chair when you see the total you've managed to rack up at the end of each month.…