Rings of Power — Review
That’s the full viewing history. I’ve since watched clips, read extensive commentary, and confirmed what those twenty minutes told me: the writers don’t understand Tolkien’s characters, and the…
Movies
The Godfather — Review
The Godfather is the best film ever made from a craft perspective. Not the most entertaining, not the most beloved, not the most influential — though it is all three. The best constructed. The most…
Terminator 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…
Back to the Future Trilogy — Review
The Back to the Future trilogy earns its 9.5 by solving the hardest problem in serialized storytelling: making three films that each stand alone while building a cumulative argument none of them…
The 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…
Predator (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.…
The 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…
Edge of Tomorrow (2014) — Review
Edge of Tomorrow earns its 8.5 by doing the one thing time-loop narratives almost never manage: making the repetition feel earned rather than gimmicky. The mechanics are internally consistent, the…
Murderbot — 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…
The 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…