Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Mud – 7.9
A Huck Finn boy’s adventure story, in which the messy adult world is viewed, but not quite understood, by 14-year-old Ellis and his best friend Neckbone. The plot hangs together neatly – too neatly for some, satisfyingly for me – and the setting is as real as Beasts of the Southern Wild was fanciful. My […]
42 – 7
Remember the Landmark Series of books – great events in history written (well) at a 6th-grade level? This could have been a movie version of one of those books, describing breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball. It did make me wonder about the reality of the events depicted, in a more nuanced world […]
Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present – 8
Very cool. I don’t know if what she does is “art” or “theater,” or maybe “performance art” is something in between, but what matters for this film is how well we get to know Marina Abramovic, how open she is to the filmmakers and how she works her way into our hearts. I was skeptical […]
The Place Beyond the Pines – 7.9
The most notable aspect of this film was its structure, which Siri didn’t like but which I admired for its originality: the movie’s first half was about the Ryan Gosling character; the movie’s second half was about the Bradley Cooper character; and the third half, a separate coda 15 years later, was about their respective […]
Spring Breakers – 3
It was hard to find a socially redeeming quality in this film about sex, drugs and violence on spring break in Florida, and despite thinking long and hard I failed. Nothing was realistic, so okay, maybe this is some kind of American magic realism. Except there was no magic. Just a lot of posing. James […]