DystopiaBlade 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 of post-collapse Las Vegas, the grey protein farms extending to the…
1990sThe 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 philosophy and the action are the same thing. This review is…
1980sAliens 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 creature, confined space, systematic elimination of everything between…
1990sThe Fifth Element is a perfect film. Not a perfect science fiction film, not a perfect action film, a perfect film, period.
1970sExperiencing 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…
1960sPlanet 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 the genre's most…
2010sPrometheus wastes one of the most visually gifted directors in contemporary cinema on a script that requires its characters to be catastrophically stupid. These are supposedly the best scientists humanity could assemble for a trillion-dollar mission to find humanity's creators.
2000sThe 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 through arbitrarily defined mechanics, darkness deployed for shock instead…
1990sArmageddon is Michael Bay's most complete expression of Michael Bay: maximum volume, minimum coherence, emotional manipulation deployed at maximum intensi. The scientific inaccuracies in Armageddon are not the casual inaccuracies of a film that chose story over accuracy.
1990sWaterworld had one genuine asset going in: a production design concept that was visually striking and physically coherent. A world covered in water would.
2000sBattlefield Earth is the most comprehensively failed film in science fiction history. This isn't hyperbole or enthusiasm for the negative, it's an honest.
Class AllegoryBy 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…
Professional ghostwriting for executives, founders, coaches, and authors who want to get the book done right. 113+ books authored. 54+ ghostwritten for clients.
Ready to discuss your book?
BOOK YOUR PRIVATE CONSULTATIONNo pitch. No pressure.
© 2026 Richard Lowe. The Writing King. All rights reserved.
