Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
The Assistant – 6
Imagine the most demeaning job you can think of, despite the status of working as assistant (what used to be called “secretary”) to the ceo of a glamorous entertainment company. Then imagine a movie that consists entirely of living through one day in that job, exclusively from the assistant’s point of view. I kept waiting […]
Just Mercy – 8
Wonderful performances by Jamie Foxx, Michael Jordan and Brie Larson make this a pleasure to watch. Even not having read the book, there were no surprises, and if the story were not true you’d criticize the screenwriter for a lack of imagination. But what’s wrong with a happy ending that makes you cry? And events […]
Palm Springs – 4.5
A must-see for all Andy Samberg fans, not so much for anyone else. OK, Cristin Milioti is pretty good, too. But the rest – plot, setting, secondary characters – is pretty puerile, a bad takeoff on Groundhog Day. The movie lurches from gag to gag, with no direction home.
John Lewis: Good Trouble – 4
We watched this in homage to a great American the day after he died. As a documentary, it wasn’t much: familiar clips of the civil rights struggle–still shocking and heartbreaking–mixed with contemporary film of Lewis greeting and hugging well-wishers, with about a fifty-year hole in the middle. The only new piece for me was a […]
The Truth – 5
I have to admit I don’t know what this film was about, although Siri’s comparison to the previous film by Kore-eda, Shopkeepers, was apt: what constitutes a family. Ethan Hawke seemed to have stumbled in from Before Midnight, in which he was equally lost; the husband Pierre seemed left over from Boudu Saved from Drowning. […]