Top Films by Year
Top Films of 2020
Top Films of 2017
Top Films of 2015
The Unknown Girl – 8
A thoughtful, very real examination of guilt, confession and community responsibility from the Belgian masters, the Dardennes brothers. Star Adele Haenel was onscreen the entire time, and I never tired of watching her. The plot toyed with that of a policier, which the directors said they wanted to avoid, but that’s what drove the action and […]
Bright Lights – 5
An overlong, pointless documentary about two aged former film stars – Grey Gardens, anyone? – that is ultimately dispiriting, especially as one of the former film stars, Carrie Fisher, is the daughter of the other. Debbie Reynolds, America’s Sweetheart in the ’50s, is still performing, sort of, on the geriatric circuit; whereas Carrie, famous as […]
Niagara – 8
It won’t do to compare this 1953 thriller to current movies, but, much as Elevator to the Gallows showed us, it can be tremendously fun to watch well-crafted old movies on the big screen. Director Henry Hathaway showed more than a touch of Hitchcock with his visual clues, but what set him apart was his use […]
Queen of Katwe – 6.5
A by-the-book sports movie, with no story-arc cliche left unexplored, made interesting and eminently watchable because of its (purported) setting: the slums of Kampala, Uganda. I couldn’t help think of the current hurricane-induced tragedy in Haiti as I watched Phiona’s family evicted from their one room, then washed by a flash flood. Seeing humans triumph […]
Deepwater Horizon – 6.5
Sully, Everest (which I watched on the plane the day before), Patriots Day (for which I saw the trailer) and Deepwater Horizon – there seems to be a trend to dramatize recent real-life tragedies, and the formula is becoming somewhat predictable. There’s the Everyman in the lead – a guy just doing his job, albeit a rather specialized job […]