Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Little Women – 7
Not having read the book, I first struggled to identify the four sisters, then I continued to struggle with Greta Gerwig’s constant cutting between “seven years earlier” and the present. Then I had to adjust to the semi-saccharine tone of the girls (with the occasional exception of nasty little sister Amy), the mother, and the […]
Harriet – 5
Sorry, I know I’m supposed to feel warmhearted about Harriet Tubman’s story, but the movie left me cold. First, the characters were too, pardon the expression, black-and-white. Second, Cynthia Erivo may have looked like Tubman but was neither inspired nor inspiring enough to convince me. The two supposedly rousing speeches she gave, to abolitionists in […]
1917 – 5
Despite theoretically compressing 18 non-stop hours into a two-hour film, the pace was so slow that I kept overanalyzing the absurd story. Yes, war is senseless, but if 1,200 lives are at stake, can’t you do better than send a total greenhorn and whomever he chooses off on a horrendously challenging rescue mission? And why […]
Honeyboy – 5
Enough already of movies about losers, fathers as bullies and situations that make you scream, just leave, for Pete’s sake. If I want to be miserable I can read the New York Times, I don’t need to spend two hours in a movie theater. The film’s structure resembled Pain and Glory, but that may be […]
Laundromat – 7
This is the third “whistleblower” film I’ve seen this week. Whereas the first two – The —Report” and “Dark Water” – were unremittingly serious, Laundromat is a comedy, with Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas hamming it up as Mossack and Fonseca, name partners of the Panama City law firm recently exposed for its tax-evasion and money laundering (hence the […]