Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Get Low – 4
For all appearances, a vanity project for Robert Duvall, who played a character we’ve seen him play many times before, interesting as a sideshow but not the main feature. Bill Murray’s character was the only one with any hint of complexity, but the highly superficial story hardly let him develop it. The story itself made […]
Cell 211 – 8.5
Are foreign films more “realistic” because a) they stick to more realistic plots – e.g., no gratuitous car-chase scenes; or b) because they use actors I’ve never seen before? If Matt Damon had played the young prison guard and Bruce Willis the tough-guy prisoner, would I have reacted as I did to Julianne Moore and Annette […]
The Kids Are All Right – 5
The kids may be all right, but this movie was about their parents, and the relationship between Julianne Moore and Annette Bening left me cold. Maybe my unfamiliarity with lesbian couples, in person or onscreen, influenced my lack of understanding; but the director’s obsession with showing us a lesbian couple bothered me, especially when these […]
Inception – 4
An attempt at mind-bending with convoluted plot and visual pyrotechnics, Inception winds up a silly movie that makes no sense on any of its purported four levels. While that is not unusual in Holllywood films today and could be somewhat forgiven if the acting were enjoyable, Christopher Nolan’s movie also suffers from horrid miscasting and […]
Winter’s Bone – 8
The milieu is the costar of this story of a heroic 17-year-old girl’s fight to save her family’s home from the bail bondsman. It’s remarkable that director Debra Granik could find so many scrungy-looking hillbillies who could act so naturally. The people live by their own moral code, but they also raise livestock, cook, sing […]