Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2025
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
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 […]
Dune – 4
Eight thousand years from now, with all the technological advances, they still fight like the Norman Conquest, or maybe the siege of Troy? Absurdity piles on absurdity, so much that we might as well be watching a comic book. If the .0001 per cent of the population that hasn’t been reduced to drone ant level […]
House of Gucci – 7.5
An unabashedly over-the-top depiction of the Gucci family saga, with megawatt performances by Lady Gaga, Jared Leto, Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons–the whole family except Adam Driver, a hole in the middle, who acted mainly by changing his hairstyle. There’s no point in quibbling over the plot, because it was a true story. If you […]
The Velvet Underground – 8
Directorially brilliant, Todd Haynes’s portrait of the seminal punk rock group packs the wallop of the Velvets’ best music. He mixes archival footage from the era with wonderful modern interviews, all the while explaining how their songs came to be and, best of all, how they sounded. Like many, I knew three or four of […]
Parallel Mothers – 7.8
Not a major Almodovar, but any story he chooses to tell is worth watching, and every minute spent with Penelope Cruz is a pleasure. The story of the two mothers and their babies is gripping, seemingly enough in itself for a film. The story of Franco’s victims is also moving, but what does one story […]