Movie Reviews
Film and television reviewed the way I’d want to read them — with a rating that means something, an honest accounting of what works and what doesn’t, and craft notes for writers who want to understand how the machinery operates.
Each review includes a craft notes section for writers — specific observations about structure, character, world-building, and what the film does that you can actually use. Not theory. Technique you can steal.
Science Fiction (106)
Mar 20, 20262001: A Space Odyssey (1968) — Review
2001 was a genuine achievement when it was released in 1968 and it remains technically remarkable today. Kubrick built a visual language for space that influenced every serious science fiction film…
May 17, 2026A Trip to the Moon (1902)
Méliès's 1902 14-minute fantasy short. The first proper science fiction film. The shot with the rocket in the moon's eye is the most reproduced image in early cinema.
Mar 20, 2026A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) — Review
A.I. Artificial Intelligence is a film with a powerful first act and an ending so tonally miscalibrated it damages everything that preceded it. Stanley Kubrick developed the project for years before…
Mar 20, 2026Alien (1979) — Review
Alien was terrifying when it came out. I saw it in theaters in 1979, before the culture had absorbed it, before the xenomorph was a franchise product, before the chest-burster scene had been parodied…
Mar 20, 2026Aliens (1986) — Review
Aliens earns its 8 by doing the one thing sequel filmmaking almost never manages: it doesn't compete with the original. Ridley Scott's Alien is a horror film about isolation and violation — one…
Mar 20, 2026Armageddon (1998) — Review
Armageddon is Michael Bay's most complete expression of Michael Bay: maximum volume, minimum coherence, emotional manipulation deployed at maximum intensity for minimum justification. It is also…
Mar 20, 2026Avatar (2009) — Review
Avatar is a white savior film wearing the costume of environmental progressivism, and the combination is more offensive than either element alone. James Cameron spent a quarter billion dollars to…
May 16, 2026Barbarella (1968)
Barbarella is the late-1960s French-Italian science fiction sex comedy that became a cult artifact more for its visual identity than for its plot. Roger...
Mar 20, 2026Battlefield Earth (2000) — Review
Battlefield Earth is the most comprehensively failed film in science fiction history. This isn't hyperbole or enthusiasm for the negative — it's an honest accounting of a film where every element…
Mar 20, 2026Blade Runner (1982) — Review
The theatrical cut of Blade Runner — with Deckard's voiceover narration intact — is the correct version of this film. That position is unfashionable. The later cuts, particularly the Final Cut,…
Mar 20, 2026Blade Runner 2049 (2017) — Review
Blade Runner 2049 is visually extraordinary and narratively inert. Denis Villeneuve and Roger Deakins built some of the most stunning images in recent science fiction cinema — the orange desolation…
Mar 20, 2026Contact (1997) — Review
Contact is a film about a scientist so committed to empirical evidence that she rejects faith — who then has a transcendent personal experience, returns with no physical evidence it occurred, and…
May 16, 2026Dark City (1998)
Dark City is the best science fiction film of the late 1990s and one of the most influential. Alex Proyas directed. Lem Dobbs, David S. Goyer, and Proyas...
Mar 20, 2026Dark City (1998) — Review
Dark City is the most underrated film in the history of science fiction cinema. It arrived in 1998, one year before The Matrix, explored several of the same fundamental questions about manufactured…
May 15, 2026Dark Star (1974) — Review
Dark Star is John Carpenter's directorial debut and one of the most influential low-budget science fiction films ever made. The film was developed as a USC student short by Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon. They expanded the production into a feature with additional financing from Jack H. Harris. The...
Jun 6, 2026Daybreakers (2009)
The Spierig brothers imagine a world where vampires won and the blood is running out. A smart, uneven 7/10 dystopian vampire film reviewed at Master of Worlds.
May 19, 2026Deep Impact (1998)
Mimi Leder's 1998 comet impact drama. Released alongside Armageddon. The serious one. Tea Leoni, Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman.
May 16, 2026Demolition Man (1993)
Demolition Man is one of the funniest action films of the early 1990s and one of the most accidentally prescient. Marco Brambilla directed in his feature...
May 16, 2026Dredd (2012)
Dredd is the rare comic book adaptation that fully understood its source material. Pete Travis directed. Alex Garland wrote, between his collaborations...
May 16, 2026Dune (1984)
David Lynch's 1984 Dune. The maligned one. Seen four times, dated but good for its time. Visuals are still strange in ways no modern adaptation has matched.
May 15, 2026Dune (2000)
Frank Herbert's Dune is the most faithful screen adaptation of Herbert's novel ever produced. Seen it three times across decades. The 10 rating is honest evaluation. John Harrison writing and directing. William Hurt as Duke Leto Atreides. Alec Newman as Paul Atreides. Saskia Reeves as Lady Jessica....
Mar 20, 2026Dune Parts 1 & 2 — Review
I've read Dune dozens of times. That context matters for this review because it means I'm not evaluating Villeneuve's films as films alone. I'm evaluating them as interpretations of a text I know at…
May 19, 2026E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Spielberg's 1982 alien-and-boy fable. Bicycle moon, glowing finger, phone home. Highest-grossing film for over a decade.
May 16, 2026Escape from New York (1981)
Escape from New York is John Carpenter's dystopian action film and one of the foundational works of 1980s post-apocalyptic cinema. Carpenter directed and...
May 19, 2026Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Michel Gondry's 2004 memory erasure romance. Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet. Charlie Kaufman screenplay. Practical effects, beach erosion.
Mar 20, 2026Ex Machina (2014) — Review
Ex Machina is a technically accomplished film that left me cold. That's an honest review rather than a dismissal — cold can be the correct response to a film that is doing exactly what it intends…
Mar 20, 2026eXistenZ (1999) — Review
eXistenZ is Cronenberg doing what Cronenberg does: making the body the site of horror and the technology that interfaces with it the vector of corruption. The bio-ports, the organic game consoles…
May 16, 2026Fantastic Voyage (1966)
Fantastic Voyage is the mid-1960s science fiction film about a submarine and crew miniaturized to microscopic size and injected into the bloodstream of a...
May 12, 2026Forbidden Planet (1956) — Review
First electronic film score, first sympathetic robot, the Krell template, and the monster from Morbius's id. Foundation of modern sci-fi cinema. 10+/10.
May 17, 2026Fortress (1992)
Gordon's 1992 SF prison action film. Christopher Lambert in an underground prison run by a corporate AI. B-movie premise, A-movie commitment from Gordon.
Mar 21, 2026Futureworld (1976) – Review
Futureworld (1976) earns its 7 as a lean 1970s paranoid thriller. Cheesy, dated, and genuinely unsettling. The janitor in the basement knows what Delos is hiding.
May 16, 2026Galaxy Quest (1999)
Galaxy Quest is the best Star Trek film ever made and the best science fiction comedy of the 1990s. Dean Parisot directed. David Howard and Robert Gordon...
Mar 20, 2026Gattaca (1997) — Review
Gattaca has one of the best premises in 1990s science fiction — a world where genetic discrimination is so normalized it's bureaucratic, where your DNA determines your ceiling before you've drawn a…
May 18, 2026Geostorm (2017)
2017 Dean Devlin disaster film with Gerard Butler battling weather-controlling satellites that go rogue. Plot from a fortune cookie.
May 16, 2026Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Ghost in the Shell is the live-action adaptation of Masamune Shirow's manga and the subsequent animated films and television series. Rupert Sanders...
May 16, 2026Heavy Metal (1981)
Heavy Metal is the Canadian adult-animation anthology that adapted the Heavy Metal magazine's specific aesthetic into feature form. Gerald Potterton...
May 16, 2026Her (2013)
Spike Jonze's 2013 near-future drama. Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson as voice. Won Best Original Screenplay. One of the strongest American films of 2010s.
May 19, 2026Idiocracy (2006)
Mike Judge's 2006 dystopian satire. Average man wakes in 500-years-dumber future. Cult standing built through home video.
May 16, 2026Independence Day (1996)
Independence Day is the alien invasion film that defined what summer blockbusters could be in the late 1990s. Roland Emmerich directed. Dean Devlin...
Mar 20, 2026Interstellar (2014) — Review
Interstellar is a bad film that has convinced a large number of people it's a profound one. The misdirection is accomplished through scale: everything is so large, so loud, so visually ambitious, so…
May 16, 2026Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, 1978, 1993, 2007)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers exists in four major film versions across fifty-one years, each of which reflects the political anxieties of its era while...
Mar 20, 2026Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) — Review
The 1978 Body Snatchers remake improves on the 1956 original in one crucial respect: it doesn't flinch at its own ending. Philip Kaufman follows the premise to its logical conclusion — the pods…
May 15, 2026John Carter (2012) — Review
John Carter is one of the most unfairly maligned films of the past fifteen years and one of the most expensive commercial failures in Disney history. The film was released in March 2012. It grossed approximately two hundred eighty-four million dollars worldwide on a production budget of...
May 16, 2026Jurassic Park (1993)
Jurassic Park is the film that redefined what visual effects could do and one of the foundational science fiction productions of the 1990s. Steven...
May 19, 2026Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Robert Aldrich's 1955 apocalyptic noir. Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. The great whatsit. Foundation for Pulp Fiction's briefcase.
May 16, 2026Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is the film that turned Angelina Jolie into a global action star and one of the more commercially successful video game...
Mar 20, 2026Logan’s Run (1976) — Review
Logan's Run earns its place in the science fiction canon through its premise rather than through the film that executes it. A society where everyone is killed at thirty — where death is coded as…
May 16, 2026Men in Black (1997)
Men in Black is one of the most commercially successful and structurally efficient science fiction comedies of the 1990s. Barry Sonnenfeld directed. Ed...
May 17, 2026Metropolis (1927)
Fritz Lang's 1927 German silent SF epic. The film every dystopian city movie has copied. Restored 2010 cut is the version to watch.
Mar 20, 2026Minority Report (2002) — Review
Minority Report is a Spielberg film arguing against surveillance and predictive control while being too Spielberg to commit fully to the darkness its premise requires. The concept is disturbing — a…
May 15, 2026Morgan (2016) — Review
Morgan is the film Luke Scott made instead of inheriting his father's career on better terms. Ridley Scott's son directed his first feature in 2016. The film flopped. It deserved better than the box office gave it. It also deserved less than the marketing implied. The 6.5 is honest. Morgan is a...
Mar 20, 2026Murderbot — Review
That's the only metric that matters for long-form storytelling. Not the first impression, not the ratings aggregator score, not whether it hooks you in the opening scene. Whether it rewards the…
May 18, 2026New Rose Hotel (1998)
1998 Abel Ferrara sci-fi with Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe as corporate spies. Adapts William Gibson cyberpunk story.
May 18, 2026Oblivion (2013)
2013 Joseph Kosinski sci-fi with Tom Cruise as a post-war drone repair tech on devastated Earth who discovers the war isn't over.
Mar 20, 2026Planet of the Apes (1968) — Review
Planet of the Apes has one of the great endings in science fiction cinema and earns its place in the conversation entirely on the basis of that ending. The Statue of Liberty rising from the sand is…
Mar 20, 2026Predator (1987) — Review
Predator works on both levels simultaneously — as visceral action filmmaking and as something more considered about what happens when the apex predator encounters something that outranks it.…
Mar 20, 2026Predestination (2014) — Review
Predestination is a clever puzzle in search of a reason to exist. The temporal loop at its center — a person who is their own parent, their own child, and their own nemesis — is logically…
Mar 20, 2026Prometheus (2012) — Review
Prometheus wastes one of the most visually gifted directors in contemporary cinema on a script that requires its characters to be catastrophically stupid for the plot to function. These are…
May 16, 2026RoboCop (1987, 1990, 1993, 2014)
RoboCop is the satirical action franchise that established the cybernetic-cop subgenre and one of the most accomplished critiques of late-1980s corporate...
Mar 20, 2026RoboCop (1987) — Review
RoboCop is a better film than its premise suggests and a more subversive one than its marketing implied. Paul Verhoeven made a corporate satire inside a violent action film, and the two registers…
May 16, 2026Serenity (2005)
Serenity is the rare feature film made to give a canceled television series a proper conclusion. Joss Whedon wrote and directed. The film is the...
May 16, 2026Snowpiercer (2013)
Snowpiercer is Bong Joon-ho's English-language directorial debut and one of the foundational dystopian films of the 2010s. Bong directed and co-wrote with...
May 17, 2026Stalker (1979)
Tarkovsky's 1979 Soviet SF film. A guide leads two men into the Zone. Two and a half slow hours that justify every minute. One of the great philosophical films.
May 16, 2026Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is the best Star Trek film and one of the foundational science fiction films of the 1980s. Nicholas Meyer directed. Jack...
May 16, 2026Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is the Star Trek film that exists primarily to undo the consequences of the previous Star Trek film. Leonard Nimoy...
Mar 20, 2026Star Trek: First Contact (1996) — Review
First Contact is the best Star Trek film after Wrath of Khan, and that's a significant statement given how many entries the franchise has produced. What separates it from the rest is a structural…
Mar 20, 2026Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) — Review
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is the most expensive screensaver in cinema history. Paramount gave Robert Wise a budget that dwarfed the entire television series and Wise spent most of it on shots of…
Mar 20, 2026Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) — Review
A New Hope is the film that created modern blockbuster cinema, and it did so by being something very specific: a myth engine. Lucas wasn't writing characters in the conventional sense. He was…
May 16, 2026Starship Troopers (1997)
Starship Troopers is one of the most misunderstood films of the 1990s and one of the most accomplished political satires in mainstream science fiction...
May 16, 2026Sunshine (2007)
Sunshine is Danny Boyle's science fiction film about a crew of astronauts trying to reignite a dying sun. Boyle directed. Alex Garland wrote, having...
Mar 20, 2026Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) — Review
James Cameron's most audacious decision in Terminator 2 isn't the liquid metal effects or the freeway chase or the nuclear dream sequence. It's taking his own iconic villain and making him the film's…
Mar 20, 2026The Abyss (1989) — Review
I don't particularly like underwater films. That context belongs in this review because it affects the experience of watching The Abyss in ways that are honest to acknowledge. The specific qualities…
Mar 20, 2026The Adjustment Bureau (2011) — Review
The Adjustment Bureau earns its 9 by doing something most high-concept films fail at completely: it makes the concept personal without letting the concept swallow the story. The idea — that a…
May 16, 2026The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)
Buckaroo Banzai is one of the strangest films Twentieth Century Fox released in the 1980s and one of the most beloved cult artifacts of that decade. W. D...
May 11, 2026The Andromeda Strain (1971) — Review
Crichton's first major bestseller, Robert Wise's procedural patience, and Kate Reid's underrated Dr. Leavitt. The Andromeda Strain reviewed at 6.5/10.
May 16, 2026The Blob (1958 and 1988)
The Blob exists in two memorable versions. Irvin Yeaworth directed the 1958 original. Chuck Russell directed the 1988 remake. Both films involve a...
Mar 20, 2026The Butterfly Effect (2004) — Review
The Butterfly Effect has a disturbing premise — childhood trauma so embedded in a group of people that any attempt to fix one person's damage creates worse damage elsewhere — and squanders it…
May 16, 2026The Day of the Triffids (1962)
The Day of the Triffids is the British apocalypse film about ambulatory carnivorous plants invading a world that has been blinded by a comet. Steve Sekely...
May 16, 2026The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 and 2008)
The Day the Earth Stood Still has been adapted twice as a major studio film, in 1951 and in 2008. Robert Wise directed the 1951 original. Scott Derrickson...
Mar 20, 2026The Empire Strikes Back (1980) — Review
Empire earns its 8 by doing what no Star Wars film before or since has managed: it takes the universe seriously. Lucas's original Star Wars is a myth engine — archetypes, simple morality, the…
Mar 20, 2026The Expanse — Review
The first three seasons of The Expanse are the best science fiction television ever made. That's not hyperbole and it doesn't require qualification. By the standards that matter — world building,…
Mar 20, 2026The Fifth Element (1997) — Review
The Fifth Element is a perfect film. Not a perfect science fiction film, not a perfect action film — a perfect film, period. Every element serves the same vision with complete commitment, and that…
May 19, 2026The Fly (1986)
David Cronenberg's body horror about a scientist whose teleportation experiment merges his DNA with a housefly.
May 11, 2026The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (BBC TV Series, 1981) — Review
Peter Jones as the Book, Douglas Adams's voice intact, and the Vogon poetry torture. Dated, charming, better than the movie. The 1981 BBC Hitchhiker's at 8/10.
May 16, 2026The Martian (2015)
The Martian is the rare mainstream science fiction film that treats its science as the point rather than as decoration. Ridley Scott directed. Drew...
Mar 20, 2026The Matrix (1999) — Review
The Wachowskis accomplished something that almost never happens in blockbuster cinema: they made a philosophy lecture into one of the most viscerally entertaining action films ever made, and the…
May 12, 2026The One (2001) — Review
Jet Li's dual role multiverse action film. James Wong direction. 124 parallel universes and accumulated cosmic power redistribution. Underrated. 9/10.
Mar 20, 2026The Running Man (1987) — Review
The Running Man is a better idea than film. The concept — a death sport television show operating as the primary mechanism of social control in a dystopian future, with professional killers branded…
Mar 20, 2026The Terminator (1984) — Review
The original Terminator is a good film that time has treated unevenly. The effects that were groundbreaking in 1984 show their age in ways that occasionally pull you out of the story — the…
Mar 20, 2026The Thing (1982) — Review
The Thing earns its 9.5 primarily through Rob Bottin's practical effects work, which remains the gold standard for creature design in horror cinema more than forty years later. That's not a narrow…
May 16, 2026The War of the Worlds (1953 and 2005)
The War of the Worlds has been adapted to film twice as a major studio production. Byron Haskin directed the 1953 version. Steven Spielberg directed the...
May 16, 2026The World’s End (2013)
The World's End is the final film in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy. Wright directed. Pegg and Wright co-wrote. Pegg plays...
May 16, 2026Them! (1954)
Them! is the foundational atomic-age giant-insect film and one of the best science fiction films of the 1950s. Gordon Douglas directed. Ted Sherdeman...
May 19, 2026They Live (1988)
A drifter discovers sunglasses that reveal the wealthy elite are alien creatures controlling humanity through subliminal messaging.
Mar 20, 2026Total Recall (1990) — Review
Total Recall is one of the great entertainments in science fiction cinema, and its pleasures are specific rather than generic. Arnold Schwarzenegger is perfectly cast as a man who may or may not be…
May 10, 2026Total Recall (2012) — Review
Critics judged Wiseman's 2012 Total Recall against the wrong reference film. Read alongside the 1990 version, the remake's world-building earns its 8.
May 16, 2026Tron (1982)
Tron is the foundational computer graphics film and one of the earliest mainstream features to use computer-generated imagery as a significant production...
May 16, 2026Under the Skin (2013)
Under the Skin is one of the most uncompromising science fiction films of the 2010s and one of the most divisive. Jonathan Glazer directed. Walter...
May 16, 2026Upgrade (2018)
Upgrade is the rare science fiction film that does substantial work on a small budget and delivers a complete vision without studio compromise. Leigh...
May 19, 2026WALL-E (2008)
Andrew Stanton's 2008 Pixar masterpiece. Garbage robot finds love on dead Earth. First forty minutes near-silent. Environmental fable.