The Brown Note Movie Review

Before the stunning Manchester by the Sea, writer director, Kenneth Lonergan, spent years in the wilderness trying to bring this almost uniquely, deeply flawed and brilliant film about nearly being an adult but not being able to handle the responsibility, to the screen. A great cast is centered by Anna Paquin, who creates one of the most grating and abrasive teenagers in history.

Kenneth Loergan's devastating portrayal of grief is anchored by an equally shattering performance from Casey Affleck.

Oh, I'm definitely being kind here - one of my most hated films of the decade, both a terrible film and a terrible musical. Sitcom worthy garbage that somehow ended up Oscar winning, after the magnificent Whiplash a grating letdown.

Writer Taylor Sheridan's frontier-trilogy (this, Sicario & Wind River) was one of the last decades greatest cinematic achievements and director David Mackenzie does superb work here in this rightly lauded modernist western.

In retrospect, not as great as I gave it here. The presence of Gibson and a noble theme do indeed infect it with the kind of simplistic, black and white morality I hate in Spielberg films but it's still good.

There are schlock directors and there is the legend that is Paul Verhoeven, long missing from Hollywood but returned here with an amazingly difficult, button-pushing and challenging rape story. That Isabelle Huppert lost best actress Oscar to a garbage turn by Emma Stone is criminal.

Both star Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg are cottage industries when it comes to these 'patriotic' feeling, true-life action movies and to be honest I've had a oft spot for nearly all of them. This underrated recreation of the famed oil-spill disaster would be top of the pile and with stunning production design.

Apex director Denis Villeneuve seems to have hewn even closer to sci-fi after this alien contact movie, here a stunning looking and sounding one that has narrative flaws from its short story origins. Amy Adams is superb though and the main question posed by the film is one of the most powerful in modern cinema (just a shame most viewers seem to be blind to it).

Spike Lee's take on the black Vietnam war experience via the prism of the current, sustained focus on the Black Lives Matter movement, is the years most important, timely and prescient movie - it's also TERRIBLE.

This Liz Garbus directed music biopic changed my opinion of its subject to being one of the top tier musicians of all time.