Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Gran Torino – 3
Without question, the worst-acted movie of the year, and the plot warn’t much better. Other than Eastwood, the actors seemed to be reading their lines, after checking the teleprompter. Eastwood’s softening to the Hmong family next door belied his characterization, and Sue’s bold approach to him made little sense, either. On top of The Changeling, I […]
The Necessities of Life 3
The first hour was relentlessly depressing: Tiivii is told he has TB, is sent from his Arctic home to a big-city sanatorium, where no one speaks his language – and he makes no effort to learn French. Things perk up a bit when they locate an Inuit boy with TB who can translate, but the […]
The Country Teacher 7
Billed as Festival Director Roger Durling’s favorite, this Czech movie was beautifully and sensitively acted, but the simple story of a gay teacher’s coming to grips with his sexual preference undoubtedly appealed to the Durls more than me. (Why he didn’t rave about the somewhat similar Yngve surprised me.) Other than reflecting on how different […]
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 […]