Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Youth – 7
Gorgeous shot after gorgeous shot, in what feels like a Technicolor remake of Last Year in Marienbad. The dialogue is wading-pool deep, which made me wonder if last year’s The Great Beauty only resonated because it was in Italian. Michael Caine was pleasant, if unconvincing, while Harvey Keitel seemed to have wandered in from a different movie […]
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – 7.7
As advertised, total escapist fun. The new droid is adorable, the sets are intriguing, the weird characters, humanoid and not, are engaging, and the story is ageless. The female lead is commendable: she’s strong, smart, has a British accent and is not required to show cleavage. Everyone else is adequate, but the movie comes alive […]
Hateful Eight – 3
“How bad can a Quentin Tarantino movie be?,” we asked ourselves. The answer, it turns out, is “worst movie of the year, and most pretentious movie of the century.” It starts with a boring “Overture” by Ennio Morricone, just to link Tarantino with the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone. It’s shot in Panavision 70 and […]
Carol – 8
A splendid period piece and a beautiful companion to Brooklyn, as the story of a young woman coming into her identity, here, her forbidden sexuality. Rooney Mara was wide-eyed and as captivating as she was captivated, her resemblance to Audrey Hepburn unmistakable in shot after shot. Cate Blanchett was elegant and austere, and if she seemed […]
The Big Short – 6
A financial primer on the 2008 mortgage meltdown dressed up as a movie, with outsized performances, frenetic cutting and comic asides apparently intended to spice up a subject the movie-going public either wouldn’t understand or would find too dull. The worst were the two goofballs from Colorado, but blustering Steve Carrell and how-weird-can-he-be Christian Bale […]