Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Captain Fantastic – 4.5
Second movie in a row about people living in the bush, although this one took itself more seriously, which was a mistake, because on a serious level this film was absurd. The children were engaging, and the movie moved briskly enough, as we never knew what was coming next, which was partly because nothing made […]
Hunt for the Wilderpeople – 6.5
Sort of a Revenant Lite, with a wild pig instead of a bear and a fat 13-year-old instead of Leo DiCaprio. How could you not be charmed, though, by chubby Ricky Baker, a budding juvenile delinquent who runs away cluelessly into the New Zealand outback, where the redoubtable Sam Neill grudgingly tolerates him, then grows fond. […]
Zero Days – 6.5
The story is better than the storytelling. How many people do we need to hear saying, “I can’t comment,” in order to grasp that a virus to destabilize Iran’s nuclear program is a state secret, an obvious fact to begin with. Then there is the problem of how to film computer code, which supplies the […]
Microbe and Gasoline – 5
A summer piffle – watchable mainly because it was French. Nothing was believable, or terribly charming, if that was the justification. Two young boys on an adventure, but it didn’t make us care about them or identify with any of their experiences. How much better was Mud, for example.
The Innocents – 6.8
For me, this was too much of the same thing. It was beautifully shot – one of those films you remember as black-and-white, even though it was in color, with every other shot framed like a painting, a Vermeer or Hammershoi or Tooker. The lead actress was easy on the eyes, but the nuns all […]