Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Black Bear – 7
Part 1 is a sharp interpersonal psychodrama as a flirty screenwriter arrives at a lakeside retreat and disrupts the shaky marriage of the couple living there. Part 2 shows the same story, with the female leads reversed, being made as a movie, with a messy but funny cast of a dozen. Is Part 1, then, […]
The Forty-Year-Old Version – 7.5
A consistently clever, lighthearted and authentic trip to the art world of lower-middle-class Blacks in New York City, as Rhada Blank, a/k/a “Miss B” and “RhadaMUSPrime,” bounces between playwriting and rapping while teaching a high school theater class hung up on genitalia. Filmed in black-and-white – why? to point out its racial aspects? – the […]
Herself – 7
If you like depressing Irish movies about spousal abuse and a mother with two kids, no money, no home and no prospects, this is your cup o’ tea. Fortunately, through a series of improbable good breaks, our heroine ends up about where she started, but quit of the abusive husband. Clare Dunn, who co-wrote and […]
Soul –
If theater requires the suspension of disbelief, cartoon features must require the suspension of rational thought. After about 20 minutes of watching this, I asked my wife, “Wouldn’t you rather watch the Bee Gees?” and was greeted with a sigh of welcome relief.
Yes, God, Yes – 8
The abstinence-only strictures of the Catholic Church take on the rising hormones of a 16-year-old naif in this indie charmer of a movie, and guess who wins? Natalia Dyer is perfect and perfectly believable as a teen. The hypocrisy and absurdity of Catholic sex “education” may be a tad over the top, but it’s a […]