Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
The Blind Side – 7.5
For Hollywood cornpone, this was done well and was a lot of fun (cf. Whip It). Sandra Bullock ate up the screen, but I was just as enamored of Tim McGraw as her easygoing husband and Collins and S.J., their two age-appropriate kids. By making Michael silent and rather opaque (cf. Precious), we could focus […]
The Athlete – 5
A noble effort to tell the important story of a great African athlete, Abebe Bikila. The exciting parts, however, came from archival footage of his two Olympic victories. The movie’s focus, instead, seemed to be on his efforts to compete, after a car accident as a paraplegic, as an archer and dog-sled racer – neither […]
Aguas Verdes (Green Water) – 7
Nigel Gilchrist, noted travel writer in dialogue at the SB Museum on Thursday, pointed out how important travel was to the understanding of art: one should experience of the theatricality of everyday life in Rome to appreciate the works of Caravaggio, Bernini, et al. The same can be said for the cinema, and our recent […]
The Elephant in the Living Room – 1
A poor excuse of a documentary, it purported to focus on a national issue – the proliferation of dangerous exotics in the wild, let loose by pet owners – but it kept coming back to one public safety officer from Ohio and a very sad man who was deeply attached to his two lions, not […]
Learning from Light – 5
More a promotion piece for the Islamic Museum of Qatar, this “documentary” had no modulation, no drama, no perspective and raised more questions than it answered about this project. For starters, how was I.M. Pei selected? Were there any concerns about entrusting this to an architect who would be 91 years old before it was […]