Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Drive My Car – 8.5
The three hours address, in turn, three separate relationships: Kafuku and his wife; Kafuku and Takatsuki, the reckless young actor; Kafuku and his 23-year-old driver. None is resolved. Hidetoshi Nishijima as Kafuku experiences one intense emotion after another with hardly a tremor’s difference in his expression. A Buddhist upbringing, perhaps? In any case, his face […]
King Richard – 6.5
This is all about Will Smith, which is good and bad: his performance is incredible, but there’s a lot of it and it doesn’t change. Except for his wife (Aunjanue Ellis), who has one searing scene, the other characters are caricatures. Ever see five young sisters all playing happily together all the time? And the […]
C’mon C’mon – 4
Maybe if you don’t find 9-year-old Jesse a spoiled brat; or Uncle Johnny’s “job” interviewing children rather silly; or the scene changes from Detroit to Los Angeles to New York to New Orleans rather pointless; or the history of brother-sister conflict between Johnny and Viv less than interesting, then maybe you will be charmed by […]
The Power of the Dog: P.S.
Given Jane Campion’s track record as a director and the movie’s source in a novel, I have to assume that every twist in the relatively slow-paced drama had a purpose, but the film left me scratching my head with the following questions: What turned Phil from the meanest, nastiest character in recent film into a […]
The Power of the Dog – 8
A haunting film, with Kodi Smit-McPhee as the spectral Peter, Benedict Cumberbatch as the half-crazy Phil and Kirsten Dunst as the drunken and lost Rose. Jesse Plemons plays Phil’s appropriately bovine brother George, wandering aimlessly outside the action. The superb cinematography, featuring beautifully empty New Zealand landscapes, made me wish, as with Nomadland last year, that […]