WandaVision
WandaVision is the best thing Marvel Studios has ever made, and also the clearest demonstration of why Marvel Studios cannot be trusted.…...
WOKE: 16.2
TRAD: 8.4
AUTH: 42%
Memento
Christopher Nolan's Memento is a film that should not work. A story told in reverse chronology about a man who cannot form new memories, hunting his wife's killer using tattoos and Polaroids -- on paper it sounds like a film school exercise.…...
WOKE: 5.88
TRAD: 18.48
AUTH: 76%
Vertigo (1958)
Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo is a masterpiece of psychological suspense that operates entirely outside modern ideological frameworks.…...
WOKE: 0.35
TRAD: 10.36
AUTH: High%
Cuckoo
Tilman Singer's Cuckoo arrives with the kind of premise that horror fans dream about: a remote Alpine resort, a mysterious half-sister who cannot speak, a father who is clearly hiding something, and a creature that mimics the young to replace them.…...
WOKE: 1.36
TRAD: 16.69
AUTH: 92%
Citizen Kane
Orson Welles's Citizen Kane has carried the 'greatest film ever made' mantle for so long that it has become something close to homework. That is a shame, because Kane is not an obligation. It is a fireworks display.…...
WOKE: 2.38
TRAD: 14.88
AUTH: 86%
Insidious: Out of the Further
The Insidious franchise has been running for sixteen years now, and what keeps it going is not worldbuilding or lore, it is the same thing that has always powered the best horror films: the primal fear of losing the people you love.…...
WOKE: 0.5
TRAD: 9.24
AUTH: 73%
Rear Window
Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window is not merely one of the greatest thrillers ever made.…...
WOKE: 0.35
TRAD: 18.06
AUTH: 10%
The Acolyte
The Acolyte is a Star Wars series set approximately 100 years before The Phantom Menace during the High Republic era.…...
WOKE: 62.16
TRAD: 1.4
AUTH: 0%
The Usual Suspects
The Usual Suspects endures nearly three decades after its release because it understands something that most twist-ending thrillers forget: the twist is not the point. The point is the story.…...
WOKE: 1
TRAD: 4.9
AUTH: 55%
Lost: Season 1
Lost Season 1 is the greatest pilot-to-finale first season in network television history, and it is also one of the most spiritually serious shows ever to command 20 million viewers a week. Created by J.J.…...
WOKE: 2.75
TRAD: 24.08
AUTH: 88%
The Prestige
Christopher Nolan's The Prestige is a magic trick in film form: a precisely engineered machine that rewards attention at every level.…...
WOKE: 0
TRAD: 21.56
AUTH: 100%
Enola Holmes 3
Enola Holmes 3 continues the franchise's pivot from charming Victorian detective romp into something heavier and more politically pointed. The film opens in Malta, where Enola and Tewkesbury have arrived for their wedding.…...
WOKE: 16.14
TRAD: 7.42
AUTH: 62%
The Sixth Sense
The Sixth Sense made $672 million in 1999 because it is, at its core, one of the most purely emotional movies ever made in Hollywood. The twist is the mechanism. The love story is the point....
WOKE: 3.4
TRAD: 19.32
AUTH: 85%
Knock at the Cabin
Let me tell you the most surprising thing about Knock at the Cabin: it is a film about gay people that arrives at a verdict more theologically conservative than anything Hollywood has produced in a decade....
WOKE: 10.64
TRAD: 14.22
AUTH: 57%
Gone Girl
Gone Girl came out in 2014 and it has not aged. If anything it has gotten more relevant....
WOKE: 6.18
TRAD: 12.18
AUTH: 66%
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Here's the thing about Rian Johnson: he's good at this....
WOKE: 6.28
TRAD: 5.95
AUTH: 49%
Se7en
Se7en is the movie that made darkness fashionable in Hollywood for a decade. It is also, under honest VVWS analysis, a traditional film that earns its TRADITIONAL LEAN verdict through genuine ambiguity rather than hidden ideology....
WOKE: 10.82
TRAD: 17.78
AUTH: 62%
Shutter Island
Shutter Island grossed $294 million worldwide, making it one of the most successful psychological thrillers ever made. It holds a 82% Rotten Tomatoes score and an 81 Metacritic.…...
WOKE: 2.98
TRAD: 23.04
AUTH: 82%
Blink Twice
Let's be direct about what Blink Twice is doing and whether it succeeds at it....
WOKE: 22.24
TRAD: 5.88
AUTH: 28%
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Here is what Rian Johnson is very good at: constructing mechanical puzzles. The Glass Onion mystery , Miles Bron's island, his orbit of enablers, the twist about who Janelle Monáe's character actually is , works as clockwork.…...
WOKE: 24.26
TRAD: 4.05
AUTH: 55%
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is a film about friendship, decency, and the courage it takes to defend democracy against people with money and no conscience. It is also, unfortunately, a mess....
WOKE: 10.49
TRAD: 9.24
AUTH: 61%
Smile 2
Parker Finn's Smile 2 is a bigger, louder, more technically ambitious horror film than its predecessor. It is also, paradoxically, a more traditionally structured morality tale.…...
WOKE: 8.1
TRAD: 10.92
AUTH: 80%
Black Bag
Black Bag is the kind of adult thriller Hollywood forgot how to make. Steven Soderbergh directs a 94-minute spy puzzle that treats its audience like grown-ups, trusts its actors to carry the material, and never once stops to explain itself for the ch…...
WOKE: 6.01
TRAD: 20.25
AUTH: 74%
