Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29 – 8
After a great game – and this was inarguably a great game – what’s more fun than sitting around dissecting the key plays? Now imagine having the chance to do that with all the key players who were involved in that game! Well, that’s only part of the pleasure of this film, which shows the […]
The Class – 8.5
Provocative, haunting and utterly realistic, this movie was like a Gomorrah of the classroom. I walked away not rating the movie so much as judging the individual students, the teachers, the French school system, education in general and even our contemporary society. Unlike Freedom Writers, Stand and Deliver or even Half Nelson, there was no […]
Valentino: The Last Emperor – 3
A shallow movie about a shallow man. There is not much pleasure in watching a movie intended to enshrine a vain, prissy prima donna, and what could compensate – the dresses he designed – is also given short shrift: there is really only one dress we get to see at any length. Air kisses all […]
Adventureland – 7.5
The oft-told love tale – at least since Woody Allen came on the scene – of the geeky guy and the gorgeous girl, this time set, amusingly, in an amusement park run by Bill Hader and a bunch of slacker employees. Kristen Stewart should get Oscar consideration for her portrayal of the heartthrob, perfect on […]
State of Play – 7
I was glad to read in reviews that the final plot twist made no sense, because that saved the many hours I could have spent trying to reconcile the ending with the action that preceded it. As it was, I attributed my confusion to the compression required in turning a 6-part BBC series into a […]