Waterworld (1995) Review
Waterworld had one genuine asset going in: a production design concept that was visually striking and physically coherent. A world covered in water would look exactly like this.
Genre: Science Fiction (Page 13)
ActionBattlefield 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.
DramaThe Expanse Review
By the standards that matter, world building, political complexity, character depth, physical realism, sustained narrative tension, nothing else in the genre comes close. Then Amazon bought it, and the same show with largely the same cast and creative team produced…
AdventureDune Parts 1 & 2 Review
From inside the book, these are the right criticisms. The short version: Villeneuve made two visually extraordinary films that get many of the big things right and a handful of things badly wrong.
DetectiveBlade 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.
ActionThe 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 dystopia.
Body HorroreXistenZ (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 connecting directly to the spine, the game-meat assembled from…
Artificial IntelligenceWestworld (1973) Review
Westworld is great and deserves considerably better than its current reputation as merely the prototype for the HBO series. Michael Crichton's original concept is tighter, scarier, and structurally cleaner than anything the television adaptation produced in its first two seasons.
AdventureInterstellar (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 heavily scored that the emptiness at the…
ActionAvatar (2009) Review
Avatar is a white savior film wearing the costume of environmental progressivism, and the combination is more offensive than either element alone. The Na'vi, despite everything that makes them extraordinary, apparently needed Jake Sully.
DramaContact (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 is expected by the film to continue believing in…
Science FictionStar 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.