Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
The Voice of Hind Rajab – 7
A one-note dramatization of a real call from besieged Gaza was short on modulation, and how one responds to the lead character’s conduct will depend on the viewer, but any film that humanizes Palestinians deserves celebration.
Secret Agent – 6.8
What a feel this movie gives for Brazil in 1977 – its people, its culture – in just its first 40 minutes! In the hands of a master filmmaker, I sat back, eager for the ride, with Wagner Moura as the easygoing lead. Then the plot happens and muddies the picture. People are enemies of […]
It Was Just An Accident – 7.8
Remarkably filmed sub rosa in Iran, Accident told a story of torture and revenge with compelling directness and lots of close-ups. Some of the set pieces went on too long, which drained some suspense, but that may have been Jafar Panahi’s intention. (Would the Golden Globes consider this a comedy?) A bit threadbare for Best Picture, […]
Sound of Falling – 7.6
A very arty, elegiac and cryptic, but not unpleasant, look at women’s lot in a poor East German farmhouse in three or four discreet early 20th-century years, intercut and largely unresolved. It helped that the director warned, this was not a film about plot or characters; it was an experience that we should float along. […]
Song Sung Blue – 8
Music can make you happy, and this film did, over and over. Good songs, sung with joy to enthusiastic audiences, were played to the end but smartly intercut with snippets of the characters’ daily lives, so they never outstayed their welcome. The characters were all people you rooted for (cf. Marty Supreme) and enjoyed being […]