Top 100 Films of the Decade: 2010-2019

If you asked me in 2010 which studios’ films would be amongst my favorites over the next ten years, I probably would have answered two correctly: Fox Searchlight (11) and Sony Pictures Classics (7). Those are two independent shingles of big Hollywood names that have been pumping out quality pictures for decades. Next up would have been The Weinstein Company (5), Warner Bros. (4), Paramount (4), Universal (4), and Sony Pictures (3) because they were cinema. So why are they barely beating those other two combined? Because the game changed.…

Read More

Top Ten Films of 2015: Where emotions run high

I have no problem saying 2015 was a great year for cinema. Putting together a Top Ten was difficult at every turn—both because each time I had to do so meant I had seen more films and as a result of my preferences constantly changing. There are more than a few from 11-20 that easily could be Top Ten candidates on a different day. Sadly for them that day isn’t today. Happily for us: the art’s level of quality was good enough to cause such problems. Rules: eligible feature-length films…

Read More

REVIEW: The Diary of a Teenage Girl [2015]

“And now the making of a harlot” You don’t realize what might be missing from a film until it’s staring you in the face elsewhere. I love The Perks of Being a Wallflower for its universality, authentic emotions, and resonance, but there was something absent I could only see while watching Marielle Heller‘s adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner‘s graphic novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl. To say it is honesty would be a disservice to Perks because Stephen Chbosky‘s fictional memoir is honest as far as the subject matter and…

Read More