Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Inside Out 2 – 6
Our 7-year-old granddaughter said she enjoyed it, although the jokes were coming faster than we could easily catch. I think I liked the first film better, but that may be because the early teenage years just aren’t fun for anyone.
Touch – 7
A lovely, gentle romance between a charming and gorgeous Icelandic man and a lovely and demure Japanese woman, told through flashbacks to 1969 London from a 2020 present. Besides whetting my appetite for Japanese cuisine, the film almost made me nostalgic for the days of Covid lockdown.
Last Summer – 7
If you’re going to have an affair, it’s probably better not to have it with your teenage stepson. That seemed to be the message of this very French film: lots of relatable characters, long takes, sex and bad decisions. It would have been easier to take if Theo, the 16-year-old bundle of animal magnetism, had […]
Taking Venice – 5
A disjointed melange of mostly still photos for a documentary that purported a big story–scandal at the Venice Biennale–that never showed up. What was Leo Castelli’s involvement? Who was Rauschenberg’s competition? Wasn’t he the “best painter” there? What did his later ventures–e.g., ROCI–have to do with anything? Why talking heads who arrived on the scene […]
Green Border – 8.5
A sober and sobering account of a Syrian refugee family’s attempt to reach Sweden via Belarus and Poland, two countries that kicked them around, and worse, like political footballs. Agnieszka Holland crafts her film, shot in black-and-white after an opening view of, presumably, the green border, in chapters told from the perspectives of 1. the […]