Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
The Phantom of the Open – 8
I laughed, then I cried, then laughed then cried some more. With so many laugh-out-loud one-liners and tried-but-true heart tugs, it was easy to overlook the absurdities in the amazingly “based-on-a-true-story” plot (to begin with, that Maurice Flitcroft could shoot a 123 in his first round of golf). Mark Rylance is pitch-perfect in the role […]
Top Ten 2021
Without much effort, my Top Ten for 2021 could all be movies made outside the U.S.; only a personal affinity for Don’t Look Up, a movie more scorned by the critics, prevented a shutout. Whether this had anything to do with Covid restrictions on film production, I don’t know. I do know that it relates […]
The Worst Person in the World – 8
Fortunately, the “worst person in the world” is not Renate Reinsve, who is the most approachably beautiful movie heroine of the year, including Penelope Cruz and Caitriona Balfe. But more than her Julie, this is a film about relationships: how they start, how they develop, and how they end. Director Joachim Trier tells the story […]
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn – 7.5
A thrillingly different Eastern European film, this one from Romania with lots of blah shots of Bucharest and other social commentary. In Part 1 we meet the teacher, whose porn selfie with her husband has gotten loose on the Internet, as she wanders the streets, like Leopold Bloom in Ulysses. Part 2 I didn’t get, […]
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom – 6
A sweet, rather predictable tale of a cynical and lazy city teacher who is assigned to “the most remote school in the world” and discovers teaching, and himself. It was lovely to see the ghos and the landscapes of Bhutan, and it brought back memories of my year in Libya with the Peace Corps; but […]