Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
The one where they save the whales. The Voyage Home is the lightest, warmest, and funniest Star Trek film, a fish out of water comedy where the fish are a starship crew and the water is 1986 San Francisco. Nimoy…
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Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
The middle film of the Genesis trilogy is the most emotional and least discussed of the classic three. Picking up days after Spock’s funeral, The Search for Spock asks what friendship costs: Kirk discovers his friend’s katra, his living essence,…
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
The best Star Trek movie is really a great submarine movie that happens to be in space. Nicholas Meyer, a director who admitted he barely knew the series, cut the budget, the pomposity, and the velocity, and made a film…
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
After ten years of syndication, Paramount brought Star Trek back as the biggest, slowest, most expensive episode of television ever filmed. The Motion Picture is Star Trek with the fun surgically removed: a mysterious cloud is heading for Earth, Admiral…
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Nobody asked for a young Han Solo movie, and the film that arrived is better than its reputation and worse than its lead deserved. Alden Ehrenreich steps into the most charisma dependent role in cinema history and does not embarrass…
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
The first standalone Star Wars story is the best film Disney’s era produced, and nobody at the studio seems to have understood why. Gareth Edwards built a war movie inside the galaxy far far away: no Jedi destiny, no Skywalker…
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
This is what a film looks like when it is written by an algorithm of fan complaints. The Rise of Skywalker spends its first twenty minutes apologizing for The Last Jedi: Palpatine is back via a radio announcement, Rey’s parents…
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
The most controversial Star Wars film ever made is also one of the best constructed. Rian Johnson looked at the mystery boxes J.J. Abrams left, picked up every single one, and threw them off a cliff. Rey’s parents are nobody.…
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Ten years after Revenge of the Sith, Disney and J.J. Abrams brought the saga back with a film whose job was impossible: make Star Wars feel alive again without offending the memory of the originals. Their solution was to remake…
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
The best of the prequels by a wide margin, and the only one that functions as an actual tragedy. Revenge of the Sith opens in the middle of a space battle above Coruscant and rarely stops to breathe, and for…