Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
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 […]
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 […]