Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Minari – 5.5
Undoubtedly a worthy film deserving its accolades, but it just didn’t connect. I thought the child actors were lame, the burning barn a melodramatic plot device, and Mr. Yi’s ability to build a working farm almost singlehandedly while holding down another full-time job too unlikely. But what most bothered me was the way every scene […]
I Care A Lot – 4
This New York Times “Critics Pick” allegedly ” seesaws between comedy and horror,” but being neither funny nor scary, what is left? A cartoonish battle between an icy abuser of senior citizens and a Russian mafioso who exploits mules to traffic drugs. Do we care who wins or survives? Not really. There could be a […]
MLK/FBI – 6
There was nothing new here and the presentation got repetitive. On the other hand, it is always instructive to see archival footage of the civil rights movement and to recognize, however bad matters today may be, just how far our country has come. Another way to put it is, it’s shocking to see how bad […]
Judas and the Black Messiah – 7.5
This was a well-made dramatic reenactment of a little known chapter in the book of the FBI’s corrupt oppression of black leaders in the ’60s, a period we’ve visited in other recent films: Chicago 7, MLK/FBI, One Night in Miami. It didn’t, at least for me, go much below the surface. There was no ambiguity […]
Sound of Metal – 5
I spent the whole movie wondering where it was going, and at the end I still didn’t know. Were we supposed to be impressed by how Ruben, the heavy metal drummer, was handling his deafness, or depressed? Was he courageous or reckless? It seemed, by the last shot, that he had thrown everything away, but […]