Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
The Man Who Loved Yngve -9
The unfortunate title aside – there was no “man” in the movie and it was about so much more than loving Yngve – there was nothing I would change in this Norwegian coming-of-age story, a study, much like Juno, of that age when teenage rebellion and angst run up against real-world consequences. There was the […]
Eye of the Leopard 3
Amazing film of a leopard in the wild does not, of itself, make a great movie. In fact, this was a pretty bad movie: anthropomorphism abounded and Jeremy Irons’s melodramatic narration didn’t help. But worst was the convoluted story – not very interesting to begin with, then told in flashbacks so long one forgot the […]
The Kabuli Kid 4
I was less than enthralled throughout, partially because I was never comfortable with the premise: a troubled mother abandons her infant in the backseat of a taxi and the genial driver spends two days trying to return or find a home for the baby. Not that this couldn’t happen – although finding such a saintly […]
Gomorrah – 8.5
At first I dismissed this as a Sicilian version of the Sopranos without plot, humor, recognizable characters or professional camerawork. By the end, though, I knew the people and their stories had coalesced into a bleak, violent and scary world of an Italian crime “family” that read more like a nature documentary in its realism […]
Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times
It was rather shocking to me to learn that the L.A. Times didn’t seriously undertake to impartially cover the news until 1960, when 4th-generation Otis Chandler became publisher. Until then, it openly touted the Chandlers’ business and political interests, “inventing L.A.” in the process. This documentary was highly polished but lacking in focus: the first […]