Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Locke – 6.5
A one-person drama that is daring in conception and clever in execution; but in the end you feel it might work better as a play or a short story. We get a pretty good read on Tom Hardy’s character halfway through, and with no more surprises you wait for his car to arrive, which, metaphorically […]
Lone Survivor – 5
It was interesting to compare this to Turn!, the AMC serial about the Revolutionary War, in which the occupying British forces are automatically the bad guys, to be slaughtered without compunction. Here, the occupiers were Americans – hence, the good guys – although it was not otherwise explained why they were in Afghanistan and we […]
Under the Skin – 3
This film made no sense. Absolutely none (unless, apparently, you had read the book it was based on). Much dialogue was unintelligible and the cinematography was dreary. It even managed to make an unclothed Scarlett Johansson unattractive. [Smoking -1, incidental crowd scenes]
Enemy – 6.5
Perhaps this was Canada’s version of Magic Realism, or perhaps it was cinema-by-collage. However it can be described, it certainly was bizarre. Start with the casting of Jake Gyllenhaal, who was convincing neither as a college history professor nor as his more financially successful doppelganger. Instead of an attempt at reality, I had the feeling […]
Grand Budapest Hotel – 7.8
The latest, and one of the best, from the modern movie Mannerist Wes Anderson – a totally stylized romp through pre-war Eastern Europe, if you can call a cross between the Marx Brothers and James Bond a style. Each shot begged you to look for little jokes in the background – like the Delta flight […]