Another strong year at the movies means, once again, I can’t stop at ten. Top Ten lists are so limiting! And there are many films in this roster of 15 more that, for me, will be equally defining of the past year in film. We were fairly spoiled in 2019, not just in the quality […]
Read More The Best Of The Rest Of Film: 2019As children, we are strongly advised against taking candy from strangers, but the lesson doesn’t stick. The grown-up version of that — taking alcohol from strangers — is something many of us do carelessly and often, particularly when underage. That’s the underlying premise of Ma, in which a seemingly kind middle-aged veterinary assistant takes a […]
Read More Fatal FOMO: ‘Greta’ & ‘Ma’It’s just about Oscar time again — though for once, the Best Picture race isn’t exactly the most disappointing contest I’ll witness over the past year. At times like these, the Academy Awards feel somewhat frivolous. It’s possible that some likely winners — The Salesman, Mahershala Ali, The White Helmets, OJ: Made In America, and even […]
Read More The Not-Oscars 2016Another year, another awards season. But this was no ordinary year. Where to begin, when we speak of 2016? Most years, I just pick my favorite films, and that’s it. But this year, it felt important to really think about these choices, and what they expressed about my feelings this year. That’s not to say […]
Read More Top Ten Films: 2016In the movies, if not so much in life, 2016 has turned out to be a very good year for the ladies. While the Best Actor race is suffering from a dearth of truly exciting performances in 2016, the Best Actress race is stacked. You could fill the Best Actress category twice before you come […]
Read More Trauma Queen: Isabelle Huppert Leads The Rest Of The Best ActressesMarriage is hard work. Ben Affleck said it, rather awkwardly, in his Oscars acceptance speech for Argo, allowing us to wonder what hells he and Jennifer Garner had been through that caused him to profess such a sentiment in front of millions of viewers. And this year, Affleck stars in Gone Girl, a movie that […]
Read More ‘Rigby’ Goes Down: Marriage Is A Bummer From Both PerspectivesIt’s Oscar time! As usual, the Academy Awards are poised to make some very wrong decisions this year. So as usual, I am prematurely correcting them by releasing my Top Ten of the year. That year is 2012, of course — real film critics release such lists at the end of December or beginning of […]
Read More Top Ten Films: 2012It’s that time. Every year there are so many movies released in the latter months, fighting it out for our attention as Oscar frontrunners. Les Miserables, Zero Dark Thirty, Argo… to name just a few. And then there are those the average moviegoer likely hasn’t even heard of. Yet.
Read More Broken Lovers: ‘The Sessions,’ ‘Amour,’ & ‘Rust And Bone’
REAL NOBODY 