Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
The Mastermind – 5
Kelly Reichardt’s latest addition to the slow cinema genre starts off well in a small Massachusetts city, circa 1970, with the totally pleasant Josh O’Connor’s museum heist, but then he and the film have nowhere to go and Reichardt goes there.
Blue Moon – 7.8
Aided by a comb-over, Ethan Hawke transforms to a lost-soul, lost-cause Lorenz Hart lounging in Sardi’s bar on the night that Oklahoma! opens (without him). Bobby Cannavale, Patrick Kennedy, Margaret Qualley and the uniquitous Andrew Scott are excellent foils for essentially a monologue by Hawke/Hart that never goes away. At first it is a bit […]
One Battle After Another – 7.7
A propulsive story of domestic revolution that is eerily prescient in Trump’s America. Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti (as the young Willa) are beyond superb and the action scenes and cast of thousands are directed seamlessly. The hole in the middle, though, is Leonardo DiCaprio, never my favorite actor. We […]
Fall Theater ’25
Let’s Love Three hilarious playlets by Ethan Coen (of the Coen brothers) that are so wonderfully raunchy the evening would more appropriately have been called “Let’s Have Sex.” Aubrey Plaza is merely the best of a fine crew of actors, while a delicious off-Broadway troubadour serenades between sets. The humor comes from each character’s own hangups, […]
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale – 6
Like looking at a favorite old scrapbook. No problems were introduced without quickly apparent solutions that enabled one and all to live happily ever after (at least until further collapse of the British Empire).