Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Caesar Must Die – 8
The power and brilliance of Shakespeare has never, for me, shone more brightly than in this semi-documentary of a prison production of Julias Caesar. Italian criminals brought a peculiar resonance to the depiction of Roman senators, and the fact that they looked like people I know (Richard Blake as Cassius?) made the message even more […]
Upstream Color – 4
I learned more from hearing director/actor/producer Shane Carruth comment after the movie than I did from watching it. As I watched larva being implanted, I felt I was in a Matthew Barney art-house special. Nor could I make much sense of what followed, although the characters were compelling in a way, if you like lost […]
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 […]