Top Ten Films: 2022
What do you know about art, kid?
Read More Top Ten Films: 2022What do you know about art, kid?
Read More Top Ten Films: 2022It’s been fashionable to say that the Oscars are irrelevant for quite some time now. Movies are less central to the cultural conversation than they used to be. Recent Best Picture winners like Nomadland and CODA weren’t exactly entertainment milestones the way Forrest Gump, Titanic, and The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The […]
Read More Not-Oscars 2023Greatness isn’t what it used to be. For better and worse, the rules are different now, changing rapidly in the past few years after staying more or less the same for decades… maybe centuries? Cancellation has come to call on so many luminaries. Many, perhaps most, deserve to have their actions interrogated, but it’s rarely […]
Read More Diminuendo: A Master Descends In ‘Tár’“Inspired by the true stories of daring women.”
Read More Top Ten Films: 2015Whether you’re a fan of former president George W. Bush or not, you have to admit his term contained some profound low points, kicking off with 9/11 and ending in a nasty recession. You may or may not blame Bush himself for these and other pieces of unfortunate Americana in the 21st century, but let’s […]
Read More ‘Jobs’ & ‘Homes’: Politics, Technology & Economy In America’s Recent Past(A “Then & Now” perspective.) Like my 2005 list, this Top Ten comes at you twenty strong, because that’s how I wrote it back in the day on my LiveJournal. And like last time, I’ll be adding my commentary about how the movies have held up 11 years later, because tastes change. Some of these […]
Read More Top Ten Films: 2004Continuing my retroactive Top 10 lists, this one takes us back to 2006, originally published in my “Confessions of a Dangerous Film Student” column in INsite Boston.
Read More Top Ten Films: 2006The secret is out. If you don’t know the main twist in Gone Girl by now, then I feel sorry for you, because you will undoubtedly be spoiled any minute now, given the level of buzz the film has received. (And definitely by me, if you keep reading.)
Read More Gone Girls: Ranking David Fincher’s Films From Least To Most FeministIt’s the morning of the Oscar nominations, and I’m not upset. This is weird. All the films I wanted to see nominated for Best Picture are. All the actors I hoped to see receive nominations for this year’s performances were. Compare and contrast to last year’s fatal omission of Kathryn Bigelow as Best Director, or […]
Read More The Not-Oscars 2013It’s a little glib to label the entire Woody Allen oeuvre “White People Problems,” but the man has often explored the neuroses of the reasonably well-to-do (and sometimes the very, very well-to-do). His films often feel cut off from the world as we know it; his characters exist in sealed-off realms that aren’t much affected […]
Read More Deep ‘Blue’: Woody Allen Dives Into The RecessionIt’s that time of year again, folks! What I like to call “movie Christmas.” And like an actual holiday, the Academy Awards often end up as more of a disappointment than anything else — any Oscars handed out to not-so-great nominated films like Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and The Iron Lady can be chalked […]
Read More The Not-Oscars 2011Is it me, or were 2011’s movies more united by theme this year than is usual? Nostalgia was the big one, with several titles capitalizing not just on our nostalgia of a past era, but of movies from a past era — from silent films to Spielberg blockbusters and everything in between. Films like The […]
Read More Top Ten Films: 2011