1990sFirst Contact is the best Star Trek film after Wrath of Khan, and that's a significant statement given how many entries the franchise has produced. What separates it from the rest is a structural decision that most franchise filmmaking refuses…
1960s2001 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.
1990sThe Fifth Element is a perfect film. Not a perfect science fiction film, not a perfect action film, a perfect film, period.
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…
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…
AdaptationFrom 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.
1980sThe theatrical cut of Blade Runner, with Deckard's voiceover narration intact, is the correct version of this film. That position is unfashionable.
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.
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.
1970sStar Trek: The Motion Picture is the most expensive screensaver in cinema history. Paramount gave Robert Wise a budget that dwarfed the entire television series.
2000sAvatar 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.
2010sInterstellar 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…
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