Masthead and Editorial Policy

Masthead

Mig Molina writes and edits The Desk. He is a brand and communications professional based in Manila with more than twenty years in consumer goods and retail, and he has been writing about film since 2018. He is not a working entertainment journalist, and this site does not pretend otherwise. Every review here is a viewer's argument, made in public, with the reasoning shown.

Anna watches most of these films alongside him. When she has a view, it runs in the review under her own score rather than being folded into his. Two people disagreeing about a film is more useful than one averaged number.

Mandu is the household cat. He attends every screening held at home, contributes nothing in writing, and remains the harshest critic in the room.

How a review gets made

• Every film is watched in full before it is reviewed. Nothing here is written from a trailer, a festival buzz cycle, a press kit, or a partial cut.
• The first draft is written from notes taken immediately after the film, before reading anyone else's review, so the reaction on the page is the actual reaction.
• Other critics are read afterwards, and are cited as context where they sharpen or contradict the argument. They never change the score. A consensus is a thing to argue with, not a thing to join.
• Facts that can be checked are checked: names, credits, runtimes, release and streaming details, box office. Where a number is contested, the review says so.
• Reviews are edited for clarity and length, never for a studio, a distributor, or anyone's comfort.

The rating scale

Films are scored out of five stars, in half-star steps. The score summarises the review; it does not replace it, and a film's stars should never be quoted without the sentence that explains them.

• ★★★★★ Rare. A film worth returning to for years, with nothing worth changing.
• ★★★★☆ Excellent. Go see it. Any reservations are small and named.
• ★★★☆☆ Good, and worth your time, with real flaws the review will spell out.
• ★★☆☆☆ Does not work, though something inside it does.
• ★☆☆☆☆ Nothing in it works.

Half stars carry their normal meaning, and a score is never adjusted after publication to match how a film was eventually received.

Spoilers

Every review is spoiler-free by default. Plot reveals ship physically covered on the page and are uncovered only when a reader presses Reveal spoilers. Nothing is remembered between visits, so a reader arriving at a review is never shown a reveal they did not ask for. Headlines, deks, newsletter excerpts and social cards never carry one at all. Craft, casting, box office and anything already in the marketing stay visible, since hiding those makes a review unreadable without making it any safer.

Disclosures

• Cinema tickets are paid for personally, at public screenings.
• Films watched at home are on streaming subscriptions paid for personally.
• There are no paid relationships with any studio, distributor, streaming service, cinema chain or publicist, and no one outside this masthead sees a review before it is published.
• No review carries affiliate links, sponsored placements, or paid inclusion of any kind.
• If any of the above ever stops being true for a particular film, the review will say so at the top, before the first line of criticism.

Corrections

Errors of fact are fixed as soon as they are confirmed, and the correction is noted at the foot of the review with the date and what changed. Corrections are never made silently. Typos and broken links are fixed without a note. A review's argument and its score are not revised after publication; if a view genuinely changes, that becomes a new piece rather than a quiet edit to an old one.

Where the reviews live

Every full review is published here first and stays here. The film section holds all of them, along with the monthly film diary and the best-of lists. The Letterboxd diary is a viewing log rather than a review archive, and short entries there are not reviews.

Contact

Corrections, review requests and screener enquiries go to hello@migmol.com. Everything else about the site is on the About page.