About the magazine

Ian on Film is a film-criticism publication with one rule: take the movies as seriously as they take themselves, and take the reader more seriously than that. No content calendar, no press-junket stenography, no half-star hedging. Just criticism with a pulse — argued, specific, and willing to be wrong out loud.

It is organized like a magazine because it is one. The Cover carries the piece that mattered most this issue. Reviews is the front of book — new releases, ranked and wrestled with. Features is where a single film gets the long look it deserves. And The Vault is the repertory house: the canon, revisited without reverence.

Why there are no stars

Stars flatten. A film is not four-fifths of anything. Instead, every review carries the liquid score — a single number from zero to ten, filled like a vessel, because a verdict should feel like a level, not a sticker. It is a provocation and an invitation: argue with the number, then read why.

Take the movies as seriously as they take themselves — and the reader more seriously than that.

About Ian

Ian has been watching films in the dark and arguing about them in the light for longer than is strictly healthy. He believes the best criticism is a love letter and a knife in the same envelope, that the ending of In the Mood for Love is perfect and the discourse is usually wrong, and that you can tell everything about a movie from how it handles silence.

If you want the new pieces as they land — and the occasional broadside when something deserves it — the dispatch is below.