Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Milk 7.5
It’s hard to tell how much of the film’s power comes from its production and how much from the underlying historical events it portrays. Not in question, however, is the virtuosity of Sean Penn’s performance: the distance of Harvey Milk from the world of Mystic River adds to Penn’s credentials as the greatest actor of […]
Happy Go Lucky 7.5
A character study – no more, no less – of a high-energy, happy-go-lucky 30-year-old who is putting off adulthood for no bad reason. Her goofy intensity, or intense goofiness, can rub people the wrong way or be endearing: characters in the film showed both reactions and I shared them. At the end, however, I was convinced I […]
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 5
This movie was supposedly about how we learn and aging. I learned nothing, but was 140 minutes older when it ended. Or maybe it was about love – but I found Cate Blanchett cold, Brad Pitt bloodless, chemistry lacking and their relationship an unconvincing Hollywood cliché. So what I was left with was a Forrest […]
A Christmas Tale 8
Quel plaisir to spend 152 minutes with a French family, even one as dysfunctional as this. It took a while to figure out who was who, let alone why, and then part of the fun was deciding whom you liked the most and why. The men were either reprobates or ciphers, except for the short […]
Frost/Nixon 7
A nicely done theatrical piece, more than a movie – and I’m not sure how well it relates to actual history. Frank Langella’s portrayal of Tricky Dick was superb, but even with all the layers he conveyed, one felt it didn’t come close to plumbing the actual depths of Nixon’s character. What really drove the […]