Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Society of the Snow – NR
I couldn’t get past the horrible dubbing of the Netflix version to give this a serious viewing. The subject did not appeal to me, hence I avoided it in the theater, and the hokey, inauthentic English-language dialogue left me, so to speak, cold.
The Teachers’ Lounge – 8
A sweetly intense performance by Leonie Benesch as a new sixth-grade teacher having a bad week at school. I couldn’t figure out how the various conflicts would get resolved, and felt better when the director couldn’t either. In the meantime, though, there were memorable characters and dilemmas that made you think in this worthy Oscar […]
Oscar Nominations
With so many presumptive winners already in place, thanks to industry scuttlebutt and numerous awards from critics and industry groups, it is the nomination announcements that offer modest surprises and merit discussion. And with one movie, Oppenheimer, so clearly superior to the rest of the field, the Oscar ceremony itself will tend to boring; so […]
Nyad – 6.5
Recommended mainly for the performance by Annette Bening (so much better than Emma Stone’s), who created a character that neatly meshed with the archival footage of the eponymous marathon swimmer. The story of inhuman endurance was catnip for directors Chin/Vasarhelyi, after Meru, Free Solo and Rescue. Their problem here is that swimming from Cuba to Key […]
Poor Things – 3
A sick movie. The fantasy sets of 19th century European cities were fun, especially Dickens’s London, but there was nothing to enjoy in the rest of the two hours and twenty minutes of ugliness. The story was beyond absurd and if that was to make a point, I surely missed it. Emma Stone’s Golden Globe […]