Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Anselm – 8
An artwork by master director Wim Wenders about the unique and overwhelming art of Anselm Kiefer, for my money the greatest living artist. The 3-D projection floats us into the world of Kiefer’s sculpture, architecture and deeply perspective paintings. We see hints of his artmaking technique: slabbing on paint (or tar?), pouring lead, blowtorching vegetal […]
The Boy and the Heron – 6.5
This hand-drawn animated feature by the 83-year-old Hayao Miyazaki, purportedly the “most expensive film” ever made in Japan, is visually breathtaking. The movie’s first half, when young Mahito is taken to the country estate of his new mother, captures everything I saw and felt in my high-school summer in Japan, with a landscape from Yoshida […]
American Fiction – 7
An engaging cast of caricatures tickles some serious subjects in the first (or at least best) Black-Lives-Matters-Culture-Page-backlash film of the year. I’m generally uneasy watching someone pretending to be someone he isn’t and experienced that discomfort here, but it all worked out in the clever end, which added an additional meta layer on Cord Jefferson’s […]
Monster – 5
“Bizarre,” was my constant thought as I watched this story unfold three times, a la Norman Conquests or, more fittingly I suppose, Rashomon. What was it about, and why should I care? A boyhood crush? An obsessed mother? A poorly run elementary school? The difficulties of being a school teacher in modern society? Director Kore-eda purposely withheld […]
Ferrari – 3.5
This is Napoleon for the racing-car world. Adam Driver gives a joyless impersonation of Enzo Ferrari that is the lugubrious equal of Joaquin Phoenix’s leaden Corsican. Penelope Cruz provides the only glimmer of life, as did Vanessa Kirby, playing the feisty but disgruntled and left-behind wife. The car-racing scenes recall the violence and senseless deaths […]