The four essential elements of a [Romantic] novel, according to Ayn Rand, are: Theme, Plot, Characterization, and Style. These are also the elements of films and TV shows, though the shorter the film the more of one or another element must be discarded. An hour and a half film is not going to be able to convey a grand theme as well as a thousand page novel. At series length the elements can be combined as forcefully as in a novel - Game of Thrones, for example.
We can pick apart the worst of modern cinema along such lines: a tendency to push nihilist/marxist themes, aversion to plot (free will), over-reliance on stylistic gimmickry. Netflix’ Roma, for example, drowns its characters in a theme of proletarian struggle, pitting them against a few random events, attempting to redeem itself by stylistic gimmicks such as an apparently one-shot stillbirth sequence.
We might not approve of the similarly Marxist themed Titanic (the class struggle), yet we respect James Cameron’s ability to integrate his theme into every shot of a compelling plot with archetypal characters. Why does Cameron embrace the tenets of Romantic fiction, when his intellectual betters have moved on to a more pure nihilism? Such inquiries inform our understanding not only of Titanic, but of the wider culture which produced and lauded it.
Theme, plot, characterization, style. More reviewers should make these simple distinctions. Read Ayn Rand’s The Romantic Manifesto (or have it read to you, free).
But there are other worthy distinctions we should make.
3-act structure. The worst of modern cinema attempts to do away with this formidable edifice, resulting in an unwatchable mess (Roma). Mostly, though, Hollywood is resigned to money-grubbing by this ‘colonialist’ formula. Plot, character, and even free will are implied in a 3-act structure, which requires a hero who willfully executes a course of action and faces the consequences.
The Snyder Beat Sheet further lays out specifics of film plotting. In the end, these are just technical specifics of Rand’s four essential elements as commonly applied to film. Hard to find a compelling film/show that strays far from the common 3-act “beats”, but they do exist, I’m sure.
Longer-form series can add side stories but ultimately must combine them into a sort of meta 3-act, to be effective. Sopranos season 1, for example, is a 3-act piece with B, C, and D plots masterfully interwoven.
Despite being a screenwriter, Rand didn’t opine much on standards specific to filmmaking (other than to berate Hollywood for its communist messaging). Other trusted sources have made clear the necessity of montage - a juxtaposition of images - to convey plot. A novel is all words, and so dialogue is not necessarily worse than description in a given scene. But words in a film are less powerful than images (our eyes take in more than our ears), so the best films are conveyed visually, and must be judged on how well they do it.
This idea was first expounded in the early 1900’s by filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein and Fritz Lang, ultimately cemented into a craftsman’s philosophy by Alfred Hitchcock. But it’s not easy to think visually, to painstakingly construct sequences of hundreds of shots, constrained by budget limits and such, when you could just make your character explain himself in too-clever monologue. So we have modernists like Quentin Tarantino.
Hitchcock’s philosophy is best defined in the short book On Directing Film by David Mamet, which has harsher words than me for the likes of Tarantino. It’s a seminal book by a seminal man.
Some final words on ideology. As mentioned above, Hollywood has regressed ideologically from marxism to nihilism (in a marxist framework). Communist propaganda of the 1940’s consisted of odes to the glorious Soviet Union. But the intellectuals have given that up, in the face of communism’s abject failure, in favor of a general hatred of the totality of Western culture (even as that culture defines the very structure of their product). Our intellectual class sees no alternative for humanity but extinction. No film better sums the modern attitude up than Dr. Strangelove. A great film, but it must be understood as a particularly vicious example (groundbreaking, I guess) of Hollywood nihilism.
Evil ideology is to be called out and rejected, no matter how well it’s packaged. But we are sorely lacking in good ideology to counter it. Many critics of Hollywood proudly deride ideology itself, as a politician tells us his bill is not about politics. We are ideological beings. Our ideologies inform our creative work consciously or subconsciously. Evading this leaves us poorly equipped to understand the subleties of Hollywood’s depredations. For example, right-wing critics cling to the show 1883 as some sort of cure for wokeness, when really it is another in a long line of revisionist American history, which thematically shoves our countries’ face in the mud of moral relativity. Behind every show like 1883 are some clever Hollywood writers who have found another way to get one over on us ideologically and further erode our culture. A dearth of good content is not reason to embrace the least bad message we can find today.
It's not authoritative but a start.