Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
The Lost City of Z – 5
Supposedly based on a novel, The Lost City of Z seemed more likely to have been based on a comic book. The lack of sophistication and subtlety in plot and acting was on a par with Brad Pitt’s performances in, inter alia Inglorious Basterds and, more recently, Allied. Imagine my lack of surprise, then, when […]
Get Out – 8
A totally fun horror film, with just the right amount of sci-fi mumbo-jumbo and tension-breaking humor. Allison Williams is charming, until she isn’t; Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford are wonderfully debonair parents, until hell breaks loose. The racially charged setup – white girl bringing black boyfriend home for the weekend – adds tension and a […]
The Hero – 5
A little Sam Elliot is a delight to watch. An entire movie with nothing but closeups of Sam Elliot is rather too much. The story – an aging cowboy movie star given new life by a young girlfriend and a viral video – is neither deep nor plausible, and the secondary characters don’t do much […]
The Cage Fighter – 4
A not terribly well made documentary about a not terribly interesting man engaged, not terribly successfully, in mixed martial arts – something I’m not terribly interested in and certainly don’t enjoy watching. The filmmaker took life as he found it – and the access he achieved was remarkable; not every life, however, is worth a […]
The Salesman – 8
(fuller review TK). Real-world cinema, in this case from Iran: no special effects, no histrionics, just real people facing real situations, making choices that the viewer can admire or criticize. In other words, we are drawn into director TK’s vision and made to question our own feelings and reactions. Here, notably, we admire the lead […]