Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Philomena – 5
Dull. A tear-jerker that failed to jerk any tears. Why was this movie of an Irish mother’s search for her lost son in America so unaffecting? Maybe because there was so little drama: finding the son turned out to be easy; so the search became a search for details about his life, which wasn’t very […]
The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza) – 8.3
I could be wrong, but I found this Proustian: a famous writer who never produces a second book until, at last, he sees his aimless life as the subject. His madeleine? the naked breasts he is shown by a great beauty when he is 18. Maybe this is a stretch, but it fits the course […]
Inside Llewyn Davis – 6.5
It’s hard to be excited about a movie, however well-made, about such a loser. He looks depressing to begin with, his songs are depressing, and he constantly makes bad decisions – starting with taking his host’s escaped cat downtown on the subway instead of negotiating with the building’s super to keep the cat or let […]
American Hustle – 7.9
A very fun caper movie, with an all-star David Russell-led cast: Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence. The plot alternated moments of excruciating tension and hilarity, the latter mostly coming from Lawrence. Bale was unrecognizable as the guy from Out of the Furnace, and Adams conveyed a vivid intelligence and a spectrum […]
Out of the Furnace – 7.5
Another exercise in style from producer Ridley Scott – not as extreme as The Counselor, but in the same vein. Our hero, played by Christian Bale, was the personification of Good: we didn’t see him reading to blind children in his spare time only because, between working two shifts in the steel mill, tending his […]