Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Mustang – 6
As I watched, I couldn’t figure out where the film was going, and at the end I was convinced that the director didn’t know either. Maybe it was just a diary of what life is like for women in repressive, backwards Turkey – horrible to imagine in a NATO nation in this day and age. […]
Steve Jobs – 8.5
Instead of a biopic, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin tell the story of Apple’s founder in three parallel days of product launches. Instead of recreating reality, those days are representative, telescoped, dramatically heightened. Each involves a Jobs confrontation with 1) his daughter Lisa and her mother; 2) his cofounder Steve Wozniak; 3) his […]
Black Mass – 7.5
For all the reasons I usually dislike movies “based on true events,” I ate up the story of Boston crime boss “Whitey” Bulger. I knew the name and vague outlines of his story, but this film filled in the details. I have a particular, if distant, affection for the streets of Boston from The Departed and […]
Anomalisa – 7.5
One weird movie that either speaks to the universal human condition (in stop-action animation) or is a Rorschach blot to engage in how you will. Then there are those mask-faces with detachable parts. Or the voices that are all the same, except for Michael and Lisa. A movie doesn’t have to make sense to move […]
Alex and Eve – 5
Harmless piffle for the schmaltz-inclined. Originality: zero. Subtlety: zero. Believable characters: zero. Surprises: zero. But as I said, it won’t hurt you, unless you’re overly sensitive to caricatures and stereotypes, in this case Greeks and Lebanese. Others loved it; I found it silly.