Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Fallen Leaves – 8.5
Spare. Simple. Sweet. Director Aki Kaurismaki’s visual vocabulary sets the mood: images are planar, geometric, frill-less, close-up, held still. There is no recession into space until the final shot. The world is bleak: colors are drab, jobs are mundane, the outside world, via radio, is death in Ukraine. The supporting cast are notably unattractive–overweight, dour, […]
May December – 8
Suspense builds nicely as a TV star played by Natalie Portman, doing research for an upcoming film, visits the home of a former school teacher, played by Julianne Moore, who after an affair with a 13-year-old student followed by childbirth, incarceration and marriage is living unhappily ever after in their Savannah home. As the teacher-student […]
Immediate Family – 7
A pleasant, if somewhat self-congratulatory, profile of the four studio musicians who seemingly played on every memorable singer-songwriter album of the ’70s. It also served, incidentally or not, as a promotional piece for their later-in-life tour, appearing at the Lobero on February 14. I don’t know enough to judge the musical chops the film showed, […]
The Stones & Brian Jones – 6
It’s surprising that it takes a documentary to introduce the founder of the Rolling Stones and lead/rhythm guitarist until he was fired and died shortly thereafter in 1969, well after the Stones were world phenomena. Similarly surprising is that after watching the documentary he is still pretty much a cipher in my consciousness. Bill Wyman […]
Priscilla – 7.5
A sad and bizarre story, told with exquisite delicacy and enough pink to tempt Barbie. I don’t know how accurate the portrayal of Priscilla was (was she really that short?), but since Sofia Coppola’s script was based on Priscilla Presley’s book and Priscilla was an executive producer of the film, I’ll accept it, with some […]