Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Doctor Strange – 6
The sci-fi stuff was not that interesting, and the fights of fancy were absurd excesses of computer cinematography, but Benedict Cumberbatch was superb in a role he was born to play: arrogant but funny.
Aquarius – 4.5
If I’m going to sit through a long, boring movie I want it to at least have a central character I like, or at least enjoy looking at. Here, by contrast, the focal figure, Dona Clara (played by Sonia Braga), was the least attractive person on view: stubborn, haughty, insensitive, selfish, living lazily on her […]
The Unknown Girl – 8
A thoughtful, very real examination of guilt, confession and community responsibility from the Belgian masters, the Dardennes brothers. Star Adele Haenel was onscreen the entire time, and I never tired of watching her. The plot toyed with that of a policier, which the directors said they wanted to avoid, but that’s what drove the action and […]
Bright Lights – 5
An overlong, pointless documentary about two aged former film stars – Grey Gardens, anyone? – that is ultimately dispiriting, especially as one of the former film stars, Carrie Fisher, is the daughter of the other. Debbie Reynolds, America’s Sweetheart in the ’50s, is still performing, sort of, on the geriatric circuit; whereas Carrie, famous as […]
Niagara – 8
It won’t do to compare this 1953 thriller to current movies, but, much as Elevator to the Gallows showed us, it can be tremendously fun to watch well-crafted old movies on the big screen. Director Henry Hathaway showed more than a touch of Hitchcock with his visual clues, but what set him apart was his use […]