The Good, the Bad and the Godawful: 21st-Century Movie Reviews

Overview

Kurt Loder gathers a lively, opinionated run of movie reviews from the early decades of the 21st century. The collection spans mainstream tentpoles and smaller, risk-taking films, offering snapshots of cinematic trends as they unfolded: franchise saturation, the rise of prestige television's influence on storytelling, and the steady flourishing of independent and international voices. Loder's prose moves quickly, mixing authority with a conversational, often wry sensibility.
Rather than a dry critical ledger, the collection reads like a series of conversations with a knowledgeable friend who knows the industry's mechanics as well as its pleasures. Reviews are compact and pointed, frequently balancing admiration for craft with a frank account of where a film succeeds or falters for typical viewers.

Scope and Selection

The selection emphasizes the diversity of 21st-century cinema, from big-budget spectacles that dominated box office discourse to lower-profile gems that circulated through festivals and niche audiences. Familiar mainstream titles share space with indie discoveries, foreign-language works, and occasional guilty pleasures, which highlights how popular taste and auteur experimentation coexisted and collided in the same cultural moment.
The reviews trace developments in filmmaking technology and marketing as much as they do changes in narrative and performance. Recurring themes include adaptation culture, the persistence of star power, and how commercial pressure reshaped storytelling choices across genres.

Critical Voice and Style

Loder's critical voice is direct, personable, and sometimes sharply humorous. He writes with an insider's ease, comfortable calling out trends, praising craft, and admitting when a movie's pleasures are purely escapist. Sentences are rarely dense; instead, they aim to convey judgment quickly, supported by concrete observations about acting, direction, cinematography, or tone.
There is a clear appetite for entertaining readers rather than confounding them with theoretical jargon. That accessibility does not equate to superficiality; close readings of performances and technical choices are frequent, but they are always framed to illuminate how a film will likely land with an ordinary audience.

Highlights and Notable Threads

Several recurring threads run through the collection: the tension between spectacle and substance, the vitality of independent filmmaking, and the evolving role of special effects and digital tools. Loder often celebrates filmmakers who balance showmanship with genuine craft and is just as willing to skewer highly hyped releases that fail to deliver emotional or narrative coherence.
A number of reviews stand out for blending historical perspective with immediate reaction, placing a film within ongoing industry debates or comparing it to earlier work by the same director. The result is a reader who not only learns whether a film is worth watching but also why it matters within a larger cinematic landscape.

Value to Readers

The collection serves both casual moviegoers seeking clear guidance and cinephiles interested in a candid chronicle of recent film culture. It functions as a time capsule of early 21st-century tastes, capturing how critics and audiences responded to shifting production models and storytelling ambitions. Readers come away with a sense of which films endured, which were momentary sensations, and why certain choices resonated or missed their mark.
Beyond verdicts, the reviews offer an example of criticism that prizes clarity, personality, and a love of movies. For those curious about how popular film discourse evolved during a transitional era, the essays provide an entertaining and informative companion.