');
The Unz Review •�An Alternative Media Selection$
A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media
RSS
Show by ⇅�
Email This Page to Someone

�Remember My Information



=>
�
BlogAnatoly Karlin Archive
/
Review
�BlogAnatoly Karlin Archive
/
Review

◄►Bookmark◄❌►▲ ▼Toggle AllToC▲▼Add to LibraryRemove from Library •�B
Show CommentNext New CommentNext New ReplyRead More
ReplyAgree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
AgreeDisagreeThanksLOLTroll
These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period.
Ignore Commenter Follow Commenter
Book Review: Michel Houellebecq - Submission
•�February 22, 2021
•�2,400 Words •�163 Comments
Michel Houellebecq - SUBMISSION (2015) Rating: 4/5 You can access all of my latest book, film, and video game reviews at this link, as well as an ordered, categorized list of all my book reviews and ratings here: Finally read Houellebecq's Submission a few weeks ago, filling in a major and hitherto embarrassing lacuna. He... Read More
Film Review: Leviathan (2014)
•�January 10, 2021
•�600 Words •�291 Comments
LEVIATHAN (2014) Rating: 2/5 � Finally watched this major Cannes hit, and understood why it was so popular with the "professional" critics, if not quite as much with normies (Metacritic: 92% vs. 73%; Rotten Tomatoes: 98% vs. 80%). No redeeming characters. Main "hero" is a boorish, highly unlikable, impulsive, and violent alcoholic. His wife is... Read More
Film Review: Cuties (2020)
•�September 19, 2020
•�1,200 Words •�270 Comments
CUTIES (2020) Rating: 3/5 You can access all of my latest book, film, and video game reviews at this link, as well as an ordered, categorized list of all my film reviews and ratings here: � The latest conservative triggering is over a French film called Cuties (Mignonnes). Having premiered this January without incident, it... Read More
Film Review: Contagion (2011)
•�May 20, 2020
•�400 Words •�17 Comments
CONTAGION (2011) Rating: 4/5 You can access all of my latest book, film, and video game reviews at this link, as well as an ordered, categorized list of all my book reviews and ratings here: Contagion (2011), which I watched in February - my only film so far this year - chronicles the spread of... Read More
Movies from Boxes of Scraps Built in a Cave
•�April 22, 2020
•�200 Words •�41 Comments
This five part movie about the adventures of an Astartes spec-ops squad in the Warhammer 40k universe is my favorite cinematic product of 2020. It's hard to know where to even start - the atmospherics, animation, pacing, special effects, the sounds and music - they are all perfect. Perhaps my single favorite thing is how... Read More
Book Review: Richard Lynn - Race Differences in Psychopathic Personality
•�January 20, 2020
•�800 Words •�66 Comments
Richard Lynn - RACE DIFFERENCES IN PSYCHOPATHIC PERSONALITY (2019) Rating: 5/5 TLDR: Global survey of racial differences in psychopathic personality confirms the standard Rushtonian pattern of Negroids < Caucasoids < Mongoloids on the r/K life history scale. You can access all of my latest book, film, and video game reviews at this link, as well... Read More
The Witcher Goes Into Multicultural Mode
•�January 12, 2020
•�700 Words •�310 Comments
The Witcher (Wiedźmin) is a fantasy series by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski that was mostly written in the 1990s. It is set in a European-inspired continent riven between constantly feuding kingdoms, ruled behind the scenes by a cabal of mages, while monsters from Indo-European folklore reive on the hapless, mudfooted peasants. A class of specially-trained... Read More
Film Review: the Joker
•�October 11, 2019
•�1,300 Words •�88 Comments
THE JOKER (2019) Rating: 5/5 You can access all of my latest book, film, and video game reviews at this link, as well as an ordered, categorized list of all my film reviews and ratings here: The Joker seems to be all things to all people. Tyler Cowen believes it is "the most anti-Leftist movie... Read More
Game Review: UnderRail
•�September 16, 2019
•�8,500 Words •�28 Comments
UNDERRAIL (2015) Rating: 5/5 You can access all of my latest book, film, and video game reviews at this link, as well as an ordered, categorized list of all my video game reviews and ratings here: WARNING: SPOILERS. UnderRail is an isometric turn-based RPG set in the deep future, long after an unspecified disaster has... Read More
Book Review: Arthur K. Kroeber - China's Economy
•�September 8, 2019
•�8,500 Words •�216 Comments
Arthur K. Kroeber - CHINA'S ECONOMY (2016) Rating: 4/5 TLDR: Comprehensive and very readable overview of Chinese economy from a China expert, with especially useful discussions on Chinese SOE's, financial system, and the validity of Chinese economic statistics (spoiler: They're fine). Learned some interesting new things from it, despite having already read a considerable amount... Read More
Film Review: the Wandering Earth
•�June 7, 2019
•�1,800 Words •�86 Comments
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD RATING: 3/5. You can access all of my latest book, film, and video game reviews at this link, as well as an ordered, categorized list of all my book reviews and ratings here: *** I am interested in China. I am not so much interested in films. But I am very interested... Read More
Game Review: Game of Thrones S08
•�May 22, 2019
•�500 Words •�32 Comments
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD RATING: 5/5. So all you losers whining about the Battle of Winterfell, or: The Charge of the Dothraki Brigade. You're approaching this as you would a real medieval battle, criticizing show writers D&D for giving Winterfell such an absurd order of battle (cavalry go first; trebuchets out in front; palisades right behind... Read More
Film Review: Game of Thrones S07
•�April 28, 2019
•�1,300 Words •�216 Comments
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD RATING: 3/5. I largely lost interest in Game of Thrones by the end of Season 5 (the only TV series I follow through the excellent cable alternative qBittorrent). So much so that it was not until just a week ago that I realized Season 8 had already started. As I explained in... Read More
Book Review: Andrew Yang - the War on Normal People
~7% Chance This Guy Will Be President Come 2020. Let's Review His Book.
•�April 26, 2019
•�5,500 Words •�346 Comments
Andrew Yang - THE WAR ON NORMAL PEOPLE (2018) Rating: 5/5 You can access all of my latest book, film, and video game reviews at this link, as well as an ordered, categorized list of all my book reviews and ratings here: I don't normally read the vapid hagiographies that characterize most political manifestoes. The... Read More
Book Review: Best Books on WW1
•�November 10, 2018
•�600 Words •�294 Comments
While I have read quite a few books on WW1, only a couple really "stand out": Niall Ferguson (1998) - The Pity of War: Explaining World War I [download] does justice to its subtitle, boldly reinterpreting most of the standard narrative through vivid statistical argumentation. For instance, the claims that there was widespread enthusiasm for... Read More
Book Review: Vladimir Voinovich - Moscow 2042
•�July 29, 2018
•�1,300 Words •�13 Comments
Vladimir Voinovich (1986) - Moscow 2042 Rating: 2/5 TLDR: Good perspective on sovok-liberal Russophobia. Vladimir Voinovich died the other day. In the Anglosphere, this only seems to have been noticed by RFERL, where this Serb/Jewish literary dissident worked during his exile from the USSR in the 1980s. Like Solzhenitsyn, Voinovich opposed the Soviet regime -... Read More
Book Antireview: Karl Marx - Capital
•�May 1, 2018
•�300 Words •�77 Comments
Karl Marx - Capital. Rating: 2/10 I did earnestly try to read Capital on about three separate occasions in my early twenties, before I wised up and stopped wasting my time on a pointless historical relic. At a basic level, Marx is just a very poor writer, and I say this as someone who read... Read More
Book Review: Steven Pinker - Enlightenment Now
•�March 8, 2018
•�400 Words •�72 Comments
Steven Pinker - Enlightenment Now [buy; don't]. Rating: 1/10. My impression on getting through a third of Enlightenment Now is that it was essentially a summary of Better Angels, followed by running commentary on the graphs from Our World in Data and Gapminder. But I don't begrudge him for that, since I agree with him... Read More
Film Review: the Legend of Kolovrat
•�December 25, 2017
•�2,400 Words •�53 Comments
RATING: 9/10 NOTES: "Russia's 300." Also reminiscent of Ironclad, and perhaps Valhalla Rising. See my other reviews here: The Legend of Kolovrat (English: Furious) is a reasonably faithful retelling of the Tale of the Destruction of Ryazan [in Russian; not aware of an English translation], a medieval chronicle describing the Mongol invasion of Rus in... Read More
Game Review: DOOM (2016)
•�October 12, 2017
•�800 Words •�23 Comments
Gameplay: 9/10 Aesthetics: 8/10 Story: 3/10 (but who cares?) TOTAL: 8/10 It is the 22nd century, resources are running low, and the world is almost exclusively powered from a Mars base owned by the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC), a ruthless Mega Corp that has hit upon the idea of creating an interdimensional rift on the... Read More
Review: Game of Thrones Season 6
•�July 17, 2017
•�1,400 Words •�65 Comments
SPOILERS UP TO END OF SEASON 6 Review: 6/10 I am no longer a big fan of the series (the only TV series I follow through the excellent cable alternative qBittorrent). It's not even that I'm a stickler for book accuracy, or a "bookfag"; as I have pointed out, I believe that some things the... Read More
My American Decade
•�November 8, 2016
•�4,200 Words •�29 Comments
The SF Bay Area. As I am leaving the United States for an indeterminate period of time, now would likely not be a bad time to share some of my impressions of what is still, when all is said and done, an extraordinarily effective, dynamic, and successful nation. It would be redundant to compare to... Read More
Film Review: the Martian
•�November 28, 2015
•�800 Words •�47 Comments
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD RATING: 8/10. (Please note my ratings system is harsh and virtually no films get a 10). In 2011, American sci-fi giant Neal Stephenson bewailed the pessimism prevalent in the genre and called for writers to start thinking more positively about the possibilities of technology in order to inspire new generations to "get... Read More
Books I Will be (Re-)Reading While Writing My Own
•�September 8, 2012
•�200 Words •�11 Comments
It's already a pretty big list, so I won't be taking nominations for more. I hope to write reviews of all of them as they're (re)read. The Return (Daniel Treisman) - the best Russian politics books out there. 5/5 Armageddon Averted (Stephen Kotkin) - TBR (to be read) Putin (Chris Hutchins, Alexander Korobko) - TBR,... Read More
"Review" Items Across Entire Archive
Anatoly Karlin
About Anatoly Karlin

I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.

One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.

Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.