Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Green Book – 8
The “feel-good” movie of the year, with scene after scene of the good guys standing up to the bigots, one great song after another filling the soundtrack, and an almost entire cast of characters the modern, educated audience could feel superior to. Danish-American Viggo Mortenson was splendid as the minor Mafioso Tony Lip and Linda […]
Roma – 7
Alfonso Cuaron’s paean to his childhood nanny in 1971 black-and-white made me think, for different reasons, of The Bicycle Thief and Proust’s Francoise, but it clearly meant more to him than to me. I kept waiting for something to happen, and when I realized that wasn’t the point, it was too late. I was more […]
The Front Runner – 7.5
A fascinating look at recent political history, turning on the question whether a candidate’s “zipper problem” should outweigh the substantive benefits he could provide the country. Of course, the question seems a bit quaint and dated, given the personal foibles of our current president, but it was certainly alive a decade later when Ken Starr […]
Maria by Callas – 4
If you’re an opera fan – or, better, a Maria Callas devotee – there’s plenty here to savor: biography, interviews, soaring music and endless views of La Diva. If you’re not, there’s a lot of scratchy recordings, pictures of Maria getting into limousines and out of airplanes, old newsreel-style clips and not much insight into […]
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs – 7.9
There’s only one Coen Brothers – well, actually, there are two of them, but their vision is singular and unique. They are also masters of the craft of filmmaking; you feel they can do whatever they want, and you luxuriate in the experience. For the Coens, violence is an art, genres are meant to be […]