Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Oscar Nominations
With so many presumptive winners already in place, thanks to industry scuttlebutt and numerous awards from critics and industry groups, it is the nomination announcements that offer modest surprises and merit discussion. And with one movie, Oppenheimer, so clearly superior to the rest of the field, the Oscar ceremony itself will tend to boring; so […]
Nyad – 6.5
Recommended mainly for the performance by Annette Bening (so much better than Emma Stone’s), who created a character that neatly meshed with the archival footage of the eponymous marathon swimmer. The story of inhuman endurance was catnip for directors Chin/Vasarhelyi, after Meru, Free Solo and Rescue. Their problem here is that swimming from Cuba to Key […]
Poor Things – 3
A sick movie. The fantasy sets of 19th century European cities were fun, especially Dickens’s London, but there was nothing to enjoy in the rest of the two hours and twenty minutes of ugliness. The story was beyond absurd and if that was to make a point, I surely missed it. Emma Stone’s Golden Globe […]
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 […]