Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Take Me Out – A
Three tremendous acting performances anchor this study of friendship, homophobia, team chemistry and baseball. Surprisingly, the baseball references didn’t bother a purist like me. As for the homophobia, it’s sad that there are no more openly gay Major Leaguers now than when the play was first performed twenty years ago. But most intriguing was the […]
Topdog/Underdog – B
My heart sank a bit when I realized I was to spend the next two hours with just these two men–losers, really–on one set where very little was going to happen. Their rapid-fire dialogue and three-card monte dexterity, the theatrical equivalent to the break dancers who had just entertained us in Times Square, made the […]
Downstate – A
Everything we hope to find in the theater, as most commonly found Off-Broadway: thought-provoking subject, great ensemble acting, honest dialogue, gripping story and tragic, but not sad, ending. The subject was how the American justice system treats convicted sex offenders: it presented the raw deal they get, while acknowledging the pain they cause. But regardless […]
Call Jane – 8
An effective and moving dramatization of the women’s collective in Chicago, 1968, that provided compassionate but illegal abortions pre-Roe v. Wade. Sigourney Weaver is Oscar-worthy as the group’s leader and Elizabeth Banks does almost as good a job filling the screen as the Betty Crocker housewife turned activist. In its setting, its politics and its […]
Descendant – 6.5
There is little in the way of dramatic arc or suspense in this documentary about the discovery of the last slave ship in Mobile Bay in 2020. Rather, the film should be seen as a portrait of the community of descendants from that ship’s cargo still living in the Africatown district of Mobile. The film […]