Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Troubadours – 1
This was such an annoying film I’d give it a negative score if I could. Different rock eras were conflated and confused, and no legitimate story line emerged. The filmmaker took his access to the James Taylor/Carole King Reunion Tour and purported to base the story of the Troubadour nightclub in L.A. on it, but […]
Nostalgia for Light – 3
If there was a connection between Chilean astronomers searching out celestial bodies and Chilean widows digging nearby in the Atacama Desert for bones of the “disappeared,” I slept through it, one story being told as slowly and undramatically as the other. The widows’ quest struck me as particularly pointless, but that may just be me.
The Still Moment – 5.5
This is the kiond of film a film festival is for: totally uncommercial, produced on a used shoestring, aimed at a mini-market – but made with such singleness of purpose that its message comes through pure and clear (unlike Nostalgia, Zambezi and Troubadours, below). The message: surfing is about oneness with nature, with commitment and […]
Face to Face – 7.5
A dream cast of diverse individuals, who came alive in turn with each rationalizing monologue. Although se in an alternate resolution proceeding, rather than a jury room, the program’s description of “an Australian 12 Angry Men” rang true. Our perception of the characters developed and changed as we learned more about them, and the act […]
Just Between Us – 7.8
A five-person roundelay of marital infidelity, Zagreb-style. The plainness, and in one case plumpness, of the actors augmented the realism, even if the lead’s pickup line – “I’d like to cum on your tits” – didn’t. I’m not sure if the story had a moral – eyes will rove but with compromise and understanding, marriage […]