Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
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 […]
The Sapphires – 7
What’s not to like in a film about four young Aborigines overcoming racism, entertaining our troops in Vietnam, finding love and singing classic Motown tunes under the tutelage of the loveable Chris O’Dowd, reprising his character in Bridesmaids? Well, lack of originality for one thing. Every plot development screamed “formula,” and there was a sense […]
No – 7.8
An interestingly ambiguous movie about the power of a superficial ad campaign to bring down a dictator. You have to root for Gael Garcia Bernal – one of cinema’s more appealing actors – but are we sure that “Don-worry-be-happy” is the level of discourse we want in our political campaigns? And in another twist, the […]