Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
The White Tiger – 8
A very brave movie, in that it confirmed, indeed celebrated, all my negative stereotypes about India and Indians: corrupt, servile, class-bigoted and dirty, for starters. Politics and religion don’t come off much better. Nor does the movie sugarcoat anything with a happy ending. Our star, “the white tiger,” rises to the top by murdering his […]
The Dig – 5
It must be hard to make a dramatically interesting movie about archaeology, based on the evidence of The Dig. To keep things moving, the writers threw in an unrelated plane crash, a love affair between the mousy bride of a gay archaeologist and the proprietor’s dashing cousin, a buffoonish museum curator and the rapidly approaching death […]
Red, White and Blue – 7
The third installment of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series continued the story of systemic racism in, now, 1980s London, as (real-life) Leroy Logan, portrayed by the excellent John Boyega, tries to integrate, and humanize, the local police force. By now, whenever we see a white cop we assume the worst. More interesting is the exploration […]
Get On Up – 7.8
How did I miss this in 2014? I’m a sucker for any rock star biopic and James Brown is…well, James Brown. Forget Ma Rainey, Chadwick Boseman’s performance as the “hardest-working man in show business” is over-the-top Oscar-worthy. Somehow executive music producer Mick Jagger synced great performances of Brown’s best hits with Boseman’s electric acting. Throw in […]
One Night in Miami – 4
The idea of four iconic Black men from disparate fields meeting in a hotel room the night of the Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston fight in 1964 is an intriguing conceit for a stage play, which this was, but it hasn’t been translated to the screen. This was one of the slower movies I’ve watched; it seemed […]