Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Lion – 5
Hokey and manipulative, plus cursed by that bane of bad plots, “based on a true story.” Why did Saroo have an adopted brother? Why did Nicole Kidman have such an awful hairdo? Neither helped the movie, but both were based on the true story. Dev Patel’s matinee-idol looks, of course, weren’t based on the truth; they […]
Neruda – 7
A poem of a film, with a fat Communist in the lead and a wispy Gael Bernal Garcia as foil and narrator. By constantly using backlighting, director Pablo Larrain conveys the mood and spirit of the 1940s and half the fun is experiencing the people, politics and costumes of that era in Chile (when the […]
Elle – 8
A twisted story with neat directorial touches in every nook and cranny. Every character was driven by sex – and that means “every,” major or minor, old or young. While that may not have seemed totally realistic, it did seem, well, French. Whereas many thrillers fall apart when viewed in retrospect, the more I thought […]
Fences – 7.7
A powerful drama, lifted almost intact from the stage. This seemed a problem at first – the staginess of all the action transpiring on the backyard lot, the declamations in place of conversation – but the sheer humanity of the characters, and their problems, won us over. When Denzel Washington defended his affair by saying, […]
La La Land – 6.7
A cotton candy confection of a film: pretty, sweet, airy, but not much there. Rather than playing real people, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling seemed to be playing Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly, or Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. The film embraced its derivative core in such meta moments as the characters’ dream dance sequence […]