Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
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 […]
The Changeling 5
I can’t think of a single scene that failed to tax my credulity, either due to the extremity of the characterization, the absurdity of the plot, or the inconsistency of the direction. So often did I hear myself thinking, this would never happen like this, that I could only conclude that this was another of […]
Slumdog Millionaire 7.5
I admit to a personal aversion to Indian poverty and I favor realism to highly improbable stories, but this movie plugged into the energy of Mumbai and swept me along until, best of all, a curtain call in which the cast sang and danced and all the sordidness, violence, corruption and depressing poverty was temporarily […]