What Are the Best Movies of the Decade So Far?
It’s hard to imagine we’re five years removed from the myriad “Best Movies of the Decade” posts of 2009. That was fun, and each intervening year since has produced more than enough titles worthy of appearing on such lists. Of course, most of those titles won’t eventually make it when we get to the end […]
The Best Movies of 2013
Outstanding. That’s the simplest but most appropriate way to sum up the year in movies that was 2013. Outstanding. A more interesting way would be to discuss the year in movie themes. The American dream, in one way or another, was a noticeable theme in seven of my top ten movies movies this year. It […]
2014 Oscars: Don’t Forget About Us
Films released in the first two thirds of a given year are automatically at a disadvantage when it comes to possible Oscar nominations. There are exceptions, of course—Beasts of the Southern Wild, Midnight in Paris, Winter’s Bone, for example—but the nature of campaigning rewards those films that don’t have to remain in voters’ minds very […]
The Best Movies of 2013 So Far
It’s been an OK movie year so far. I’ve given a number of titles 3.5 stars; just one movie earned 4 stars. Yet, when I look over this list, I can’t help but think most of these films miss out on my end-of-year top ten list. I’m just not over-the-moon about many movies this year […]
Spring Breakers Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers is perhaps the ultimate test (or, less hyperbolically, the ultimate test this year) of seeing the forest for the trees. Is Korine—an infamous boundary pusher whose first film was about an HIV-positive man deliberately infecting young women—saying something profound about our youth and culture with this would-be exploitation […]
