Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Sister (L’Enfant d’en Haut) – 4
Perfectly well made movie, and Lea Seydoux was luscious, but I spent the whole film hoping, waiting for the little thief to get caught, and the last half-hour waiting for the film to end. I don’t know if we were supposed to feel sympathy for the poor 12-year-old Simon, “forced” to steal in order to […]
Disconnect – 8
The problems are well-worn: a journalist’s too-close relationship with a source; a couple’s inability to communicate after a child is lost; teens hazing a classmate who is ‘different’; parents and teens navigating the shoals of adolescence. What is new is the setting, the world of the web and social media, where communication is typed and […]
Rust and Bone – 7.9
A physical cripple bonds with an emotional cripple in a movie so gritty and realistic that we overlook the implausibilities of plot. TK is a feral animal with no apparent sense of responsibility, living on instinct and the occasional stolen sandwich, locking up the worst-father-of-the-year award in his spare time. Anna is beautiful but somewhat […]
Life of Pi – 6.5
Call me stupid, but I didn’t understand the book and I didn’t understand the movie. What was the absurdly unbelievable tale of coexisting on the Pacific for 225 days with a Bengal tiger about? I gather it is meant as a parable, or allegory, but of what? On top of that, my anti-Indian prejudice based […]
Zero Dark Thirty – 6.5
What one thinks of this movie will depend on the views one brings into the theater. For me, I think the “war on terror” is the gravest policy mistake our country has made since the Vietnam War. Of course, any and all who perpetrated the horrors of 9/11 should have been pursued and brought to […]