Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
Anatomy of a Fall – 8
A French psycho-drama from Justine Triet and production company “didshedoit.com,” which is the movie’s hook. The director prejudiced the question whether the husband’s fall was a suicide or a murder by making the prosecution witnesses bombastic and the prosecutor smarmy and not good-looking, as against a sympathetic defendant (a measured and marvelous Sandra Huller) and […]
Flora and Son – 7
A happy-making bauble from John Carney, previously responsible for Once and Sing Street,” with which it shares a Dublin setting and charming, sensitive songs. Eve Hewson is the whole reason to watch, and it is a good one; she is brassy but not abrasive, pretty but real, and her three relationships–with her son, her ex-husband […]
Joan Baez I Am A Noise – 5
I could have used a lot more about the music, even more about the political activism and the personalities of her world, and a lot less about the sturm und drang of her psychological state, especially since she came across as a wonderfully adjusted, successful and attractive 80-year-old. And what a terrible title!
Killers of the Flower Moon – 6
There is surprisingly little drama in this movie, perhaps because we knew the story but just as likely because the pacing is so s-l-o-w. After three hours forty minutes with no resolution, Martin Scorsese flips to a simulated radiocast to wrap things up, leaving his characters to meet their fates offstage. My other problem is […]
The Pigeon Tunnel – 4
This nominal documentary is little more than an interview with David Cornwall (a/k/a John Le Carre) replete with reenactments of recollections and occasional film clips. The subject, however, seems to be Cornwall’s con man father and his effect on his son’s view of betrayal. As for Le Carre’s writing or his books, there’s barely a […]