Film genres, explained and collected
A genre is a promise made to an audience, and every hub below starts by asking what that promise is worth. Each one explains what the genre is for, what we look for when we review inside it, and collects every relevant review in our collection with scores and context.
Our library covers 31 films across 12 genres. The hubs are the most useful way to read around a subject, because they link films to each other rather than listing them in isolation.
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Action
Action is the genre most often dismissed and most difficult to do well. A great action film is a problem in spatial geometry: the audience must always know where everyone…
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Adventure
Adventure is the genre of movement — journeys, quests, and the accumulation of distance between a character and home. It is structurally generous, which is why it so ofte…
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Animation
Animation is not a genre; it is a medium, and the best films in it are proof that the distinction matters. What unites the films here is that they use the freedom of draw…
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Biography
The biographical film has a structural problem that most genres do not: the audience already knows the ending. The best examples solve it by finding a specific argument a…
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Comedy
Comedy is the hardest genre to write about, because explaining a joke is the surest way to kill it, and the hardest to sustain, because a film must be funny across ninety…
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Crime
The crime film is American cinema's most reliable vehicle for talking about class, work, and the machinery of power. Its central subject is rarely the crime itself but th…
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Drama
Drama is the broadest category and the one most often used as a default, which means the term does a lot of work and explains very little. What unites the films collected…
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Fantasy
Fantasy is the genre that requires the most world-building and offers the greatest risk of losing the audience in it. The films that work are the ones where the invented …
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Horror
Horror is the genre most willing to engage with what a society would rather not discuss. Its monsters are almost always standing in for something — a social fear, an inst…
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Romance
Romance is built on a promise — that two people will find each other — and the films that last are the ones that complicate it. Whether the couple ends up together is rar…
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Science Fiction
Science fiction is the genre of extrapolation — take one premise, follow it rigorously, and see what it reveals about the present. The best examples treat their central i…
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Thriller
The thriller is a promise about information — that something is being withheld, that the audience will learn it, and that the learning will cost something. Its craft is e…
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Why we organise reviews by genre
Sorting films by score tells you what we think is good. Sorting them by genre tells you what we think a category is capable of, which is more useful if you are trying to understand a tradition rather than find something to watch tonight.
A genre hub also lets us be specific about criteria. What counts as a good horror film is not the same as what counts as a good romance, and flattening those differences into a single number would be dishonest. Every hub states its own criteria before it lists anything.
Looking for something specific?
The complete review index lists all films with year, director, runtime and score.