Ambition is the engine under most character arcs and the flaw in most tragedies. This tag collects reviews of films and fiction driven by ambition, and what the pursuit costs the character holding it.
1950sSeptember 11, 2026
Giant (1956) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Three hours and twenty-one minutes of Texas across roughly twenty-five years, James Dean's last completed performance, and a film that starts as a marriage drama and ends as an…
2010sSeptember 11, 2026
The King's Speech (2010) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A well-made two-hander about a man with a stammer and the unqualified Australian who treated him, which beat The Social Network for Best Picture and Best Director…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
Ordinary People (1980) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Robert Redford's first film as director is a carefully observed drama about a family that cannot discuss a death, and it won Best Picture and Director over Raging…
2000sSeptember 10, 2026
Little Miss Sunshine (2006) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Six people in a failing Volkswagen driving from Albuquerque to a children's beauty pageant in California. Every one of them has a private humiliation, and the film's…
1960sSeptember 10, 2026
Cleopatra (1963) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. It was budgeted at around two million dollars and cost forty-four, was the highest grossing film of its year and still did not break even, and Fox sold off…
2000sSeptember 10, 2026
Alexander (2004) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Oliver Stone spent a hundred and fifty-five million dollars on a life that has no shape, released it, and then recut it three separate times across ten years trying…
2010sSeptember 10, 2026
Gods of Egypt (2016) rates 4 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A hundred and forty million dollars of genuine visual ambition attached to a script nobody appears to have argued with. Gerard Butler is the only person on…
AmbitionSeptember 10, 2026
All About Eve (1950) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The best script ever written about ambition, in a film where everybody is intelligent and nobody has to be dim for the schemer to win. Fourteen nominations,…
2020sJune 6, 2026
Ryan Coogler's Jim Crow-era vampire film uses the genre to explore Black art and cultural memory. It establishes the stakes of everything that follows.
1990sMay 18, 2026
1999 Michael Apted Bond film with Brosnan. Denise Richards as nuclear physic.
2010sMay 18, 2026
2012 Christopher Nolan finale to his Batman trilogy. Christian Bale, Tom Hardy as Bane, Anne Hathaway as Catwoman.
1970sMay 18, 2026
The Swarm is Irwin Allen's 1978 American disaster film. Allen's disaster filmography had included The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974) that operated at substantially higher register.
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