Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
The Shape of Water – 7.9
A completely charming film by the master director Guillermo del Toro: every scene, every shot had visual beauty and plot significance. The caricature of 1950s America was comically dead-on, but not distracting – notably, Michael Shannon’s Dick and Jane family and Richard Jenkins’s Norman Rockwell art. Shannon was wonderfully evil, Octavia Spencer provided her usual […]
Call Me By Your Name – 5
James Ivory’s gay wet dream goes from languorous to tedious about halfway through: how many slow-motion man-boy embraces do we need, or “let’s strip to our trunks and go for a swim”? (I subsequently read of screenwriter Ivory’s disappointment that both male stars had a no-nudity provision in their contracts.) More annoying were the unconvincing […]
The Darkest Hour – 7.9
What a nice companion to Dunkirk and The Crown, a view behind the scenes of what Churchill was going through in the days between his ascension to Prime Minister and the desperate evacuation of British troops from France. The portrait of Churchill doesn’t comport with the public view we’ve been given: here is generally disheveled, […]
Star Wars: The Last Jedi – 4
After 25 minutes (!) of previews for movies we will never see, involving sci-fi or cartoon creatures and lots of noise and violence, we returned to the galaxy far, far away for a very tired story featuring very tired actors – e.g., Carrie Fisher and Mark Hammill – and the new generation, all of whom […]
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – 8.5
Martin McDonagh channels the Coen Brothers at their best – think Fargo and No Country for Old Men – in this small-town dramedy where the stakes are small but emotions are large. Every line of dialogue is fraught and measured, delivered to perfection by Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson and an equally adept supporting […]