Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Barney’s Version – 3
“Unpleasant,” “absurd,” “pointless” are the descriptors that come to mind when reacting to this purported comedy, with “insufferable” not far behind. A little Paul Giamatti can be interesting, although I’m tiring of even that, but a whole movie of him smoking cigars, drinking and behaving badly is hard to take. Then there is the question, […]
Another Year – 7.5
Sometimes, it seems, not much happens in a year: we grow tomatoes, have a barbecue party, lose a friend from work – oh, and our son gets engaged. Not much there for a movie, it would seem, but Mike Leigh’s ensemble actors make the mundane sufficiently dramatic without, for the most part, histrionics. The exception […]
Biutiful – 7
Most of the movie was Javier Bardem’s face, which expressed a range of emotions, almost all melancholy. The backdrop was the Europe of 2009’s Gomorrah, this time in Spain instead of Italy, with sweatshops of Chinese illegals, Senegali street merchants, and cops on the take or on the make. A fair amount of explanation was […]
Just Go With It – 8
Depth aside, everything you could want in a night at the movies: humor, romance, cleverness, cute kids, gorgeous women, Jennifer Aniston. This was only my second Adam Sandler movie, but both featured a gentle kindspiritedness, if such a word exists, that let me relax and enjoy the gags, many of which were quite original. Most […]
Oscar Preview
Having already given my pronouncements on the Best Picture race – for me, it should be Winter’s Bone over Black Swan, by a neck – it is time to look at the individual awards. The pundits are almost unanimous in predicting the actual winners, so I will instead give an analysis of whom I would […]