Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Sicario – 6.5
I look on this as a mood piece with a riveting score, maybe an homage to the Coens’ No Country for Old Men, with Benicio del Toro in the Javier Bardem role. Or it could be a domestic analogue to Zero Dark Thirty, with torture and extra-legal black ops producing the assassination of the Mexican drug kingpin. […]
The Martian – 7.8
How can you not root for Matt Damon – our generation’s Jimmy Stewart, as one critic said – as he struggles to survive for years all alone on Mars? And how can you not root for Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Mackenzie Davis back in Houston. (Jeff Daniels is the resident prig, but how bad […]
Mississippi Grind – 7.5
A delightful road trip down to New Orleans with Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn, portraying, respectively, a natural winner and a born loser. The ending was not exactly what the story set us up for, but I won’t complain about a little fantasy. For all the gritty shots of Iowa, St. Louis and Memphis, this […]
99 Homes – 7
Not a lot of “up” moments (any?) in this tale of unscrupulous real estate dealings in an overextended Florida housing market. Michael Shannon offered a deal with the devil and Andrew Garfield took it. The drama may have exaggerated the reality, but the knowledge that thousands of people lost their homes in the actual crisis […]
Pawn Sacrifice – 5
Maybe if I hadn’t seen the excellent documentary, Bobby Fischer Against the World, I would have found something of interest in this recounting of the Fischer-Spassky chess championship. As it is, I found the characters cliches, drama lacking and the whole thing rather pointless.