2001: 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 that followed.
Movie Reviews (Page 100)
Dark 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 reality and the nature of consciousness, and was…
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 instead of gimmicky. Cage doesn't loop because the script needed a device.
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. Carpenter built something rare: a film where the monster is original, the…
Predator (1987) Review
The film is thrilling on its surface and interesting underneath, which is rarer in the action genre than the genre's reputation suggests. This is not a film that accidentally achieved something.
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 pleasure of a world with clear rules.
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 could make individually. Zemeckis and Gale understood something…
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 emotional center.
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.
Rings of Power Review
The landscapes occasionally earn a 7 in isolation. In Tolkien's legendarium, Galadriel is one of the most powerful beings in Middle-earth.
The Lord of the Rings Review
Peter Jackson's three films, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, are the best fantasy adaptation ever made and among the best films ever made in the genre. The extended editions are the…
Alien (1979) Review
Experiencing it blind, in a dark theater, with an audience that had no idea what was coming, that was specific and unrepeatable. The 8 reflects both what the film achieved and what watching it now is like, which are different…
Want Your Book to Read This Well?
The craft notes in these reviews come from the same eye Richard Lowe brings to books. He has authored 113+ books and ghostwritten 54+ more across fiction, memoir, and nonfiction. If you want a book that respects the reader the way the best films do, start with a conversation.