Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Funny Pages – 5
A celebration, I guess, of an oddball teenager who makes a series of bad decisions in service to his love of cartooning. Amusing, not funny. You don’t want to feel sorry for people, but overall the picture here is fairly sad.
Malik – 6.5
If I didn’t know “Malik” is Arabic for “king,” I would have thought it meant “Godfather,” so much does this two-hour, forty-minute Indian epic borrow from the Coppola classics, not only characters and plot, but several scenes that are direct lifts. (Then again, maybe in the Malayalam language that’s what it means.) Unfortunately, Fahadh Faasil, […]
Fire of Love – 5
90 minutes of home movies without any discernible plot or organizing principle. By the end I had no idea what a “volcanologist” is or whether this couple were actual scientists or merely storm-chasers. What they were “studying” was never disclosed. If their only contribution was to warn people that volcanoes are dangerous, that hardly seems […]
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris – 6
Call me stonehearted, but I wasn’t touched by Mrs. Harris or her story. The good guys were too sweet, the bad guys too ugly and nothing met the plausibility test. Individually, however, the characters were charming, especially Natasha, and the clothes were almost worth the price of admission.
Where the Crawdads Sing – 7
Much better than I expected. The action takes place from 1953 to 1969, and the film feels like it. When was the last time we saw a hero as decent, sincere, handsome and blond as Tate? The story is just as implausible as it was in the book, but the imperfect crime at its climax […]