Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Embrace of the Serpent – 3
Long, boring and if there was a point, I missed it. Heart of Darkness meets Ramar of the Jungle is not a winning recipe, especially when the white-man leads are unattractive and delusional. The natives were more noble but not noticeably attached to any universe I recognized. At least I learned that the Amazon, or at […]
Son of Saul – 7
Points for style and technique, as the whole film is shot in claustrophobic, hand-held close-focus, always looking at or through the eyes of the mesmeric, or mesmerized, Saul. When a truck is on the road and we see green trees pass by, the color takes us aback. What was missing, for me, was any empathy […]
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 […]