Lineup Announcement: Cannes 1996

As the world absorbs the newly announced Cannes 2016 lineup, we (read: I) here at Nick's Flick Picks prepare our annual traditional of participating in all the madness by revisiting some Cannes Film Festival of the past.  This year, I've booked a trip to Cannes 1996, roundly celebrated at the time as one of the richest Competitions in then-recent history.  Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves, the Coen Brothers's Fargo, and Mike Leigh's Secrets & Lies all emerged as Palme front-runners in the top half of the festival.  Not only did each reap major prizes on the Croisette, their acclaim persisted across the year, landing them on year-end Ten Best lists around the world and scoring major Oscar wins and nominations.  Revisiting these three films alone would be a worthwhile errand on their 20th anniversary, since electing on a "best" among them is as tricky now as it was then. Same goes for their three leading ladies, who eventually held down three-fifths of a notably superb Best Actress roster at that year's Academy Awards.

But Cannes 1996 offered even more than its three principal breakout titles. David Cronenberg shocked the festival so completely that Francis Ford Coppola's jury had to devise a separate prize for originality, daring, and audacity. Ewan McGregor was the where'd-he-come-from ingénue of the moment, flashing his gorgeous eight-inch ...smile in both Trainspotting and The Pillow Book. Jacques Audiard and Arnaud Desplechin took major strides toward global renown in the Main Competition, where Robert Altman, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Michael Cimino staged more elegiac bids for continued relevance. New names like Paul Thomas Anderson, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Mary Harron, and David O. Russell attracted more devotees, none of them realizing that their next movies would really make their names. Iran, Japan, Romania, Australia, Russia, Poland, Senegal, and Spain extended the glorious runs of their national cinemas, while Georgia, Lithuania, and Guinea-Bissau marshaled more meager resources to yield memorable titles.

I'll fold as many sidebar titles as I can into my Cannes 1996 screenings, but at the very least, I'll have my notepad out for all the movies selected for the Main Competition (pending the availability of one elusive title, but even 21 out of 22 wouldn't be bad).  There'll be no jury joining me this year.  I'm too busy at my day job to coordinate another mass effort this spring.  But I still hope you'll all play along as much as you can at home, especially if you notice a title that you've been thirsty to reexamine or eager to dig up for a first encounter.  Here's what I can tell you about my main itinerary. More to follow, all leading up to the main action from May 9-20, the dates of the actual 1996 Cannes Film Festival.

Main Competition

Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier, Denmark/France/Sweden): I've seen this three or four times over the years, always with astonishment at its ambition and uniqueness, but with some upward and downward swings of real affection.  How will it go down this time, especially on that recently-issued Criterion Blu-ray?

Crash (David Cronenberg, Canada): One of those movies I can't imagine my life without, and effectively the film that inspired my entire first book, despite registering only peripherally in the finished product. I'm a sucker for this one, but I noticed on my most recent return that my reactions were shifting a little.

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Supporting Actress: Jan's Out, Feb's In

We've reached the end of our first month of the yearlong Supporting Actress retrospective, honoring the 365 movies that have yielded nominations in that category's first 80 years. (This year's AMPAS voters, whatever their other foibles, at least complied with my schema and furnished nominees from five separate films, which keeps my math on track.) I hope you've had fun reading along, if you have been.  You can click the image to the left and visit the Calendar for more on each nominated movie, plus a few individual performance reviews.

So, who are your five favorite nominees from this early batch? And, separate question, what are your five favorites among the films? My own all-star team of performances from this batch probably entails Judith Anderson for Rebecca, Fay Bainter for Jezebel, Jane Darwell for The Grapes of Wrath, Agnes Moorehead for The Magnificent Ambersons, and Barbara O'Neil for All This, and Heaven Too, with apologies to close runner-up Patricia Collinge for The Little Foxes. If we're talking actual movies, my cream of the crop encompasses Dead End, Dodsworth, Gone with the Wind, The Magnificent Ambersons, and The Philadelphia Story, though it stings to leave out Grapes, Rebecca, and Stage Door, especially.

What are your thoughts, dear reader? And—one more question—are there supporting performances by women from 1936-1942 that you especially wish had appeared on Oscar's ballot?

Lastly, do consider following along with the Supporting Actress films for February, already posted. The beauty of this feature is that you can already see what film will be up for review on the site and on Twitter for any given day. I'd love to hear other voices on the same movies. I know you're out there, you opinionated queens. Four of February's performances are first-time viewings for me: Paulette Goddard in So Proudly We Hail (1943), Lucile Watson in Watch on the Rhine (1943), and two winners, Ethel Barrymore in None But the Lonely Heart (1944) and Anne Baxter in The Razor's Edge (1946). Beyond my curiosity about these four, I'm especially keen to revisit The Song of Bernadette (1943), which I saw once, ages ago. I wish I remembered Crossfire (1947) more clearly. Two famous films that I didn't love the first and only times I saw them, Mildred Pierce (1945) and Key Largo (1948), are also ripe for reassessment.  And somehow, we'll all get through the mid-40s fad for nominating ethnically inappropriate performances: Aline MacMahon's "Chinese" peasant in Dragon Seed (1944), though she at least applies a soft touch; Gale Sondergaard's member of the palace in Anna and the King of Siam (1946); and, easily worst of all, Flora Robson's blackface part in Saratoga Trunk (1945, but nominated in 1946). Jesus, keep me close to the cross.

A Whole New Year of Actressing

Having just successfully completed one long-deferred project, my resolution for 2016 is to get cracking on updates to the Best Actress section of my website, which has been virtually static for five years.  The rehab will be extensive: ditching the cumbersome html frames, reformatting, editing existing prose, and adding updates from years I have not covered, including the most recent ones.  I'll also make some minimal and carefully curated expansions to cover un-nominated performances by heavy campaigners, by actresses working nowhere near Oscar's tastes, and by non-anglophone performers who too rarely catch the Academy's eye.  As you'll see in this mockup, I've already worked out some of the design issues, at least provisionally, and I'm ready to get watching, re-watching, writing, and re-writing.  For many of you, the Best Actress section was your entryway into the site, or remains your favorite wing of it, or both. I get lots of nice e-mails from you with firm but tactful suggestions that I report back for duty.  So here I am, showing up.  (The old versions will persist on Nick's Flick Picks for a few more weeks before the first new page is ready.)

As I've said before, part of the delay has involved some strategizing about how to reboot this as a website feature while simultaneously developing it as a book or series of books, which I have already discussed with one excited editor who has given me some great leads.  This part of the plan obviously means not giving away all the content for free.  Still, the response to what I've written so far and what currently remains available on the site is why there is a documentable audience for such a publishing venture anyway.  So the compromises here will be twofold: 1) updates and reboots, but rarely for full years, and requiring that portions of what's currently posted will have to come down; and 2) a focus at first on two particular decades, since these subsets of the larger project will serve as the sample material for prospective agents and presses.  My current plans are to start with 1970-79 and 2000-2009, so expect the first wave of new and revised posts to fall within those frameworks.  I hope you'll be excited about this material, and since your enthusiasm will be a huge help in making the case to publishers, please be vigorous in the Comment sections, even when you disagree with me!

Meanwhile, turning from leading ladies to their supporting sisters, this year marks the 80th birthday of the Best Supporting Actress category at the Oscars, meaning we'll soon meet our 400th nominee.  But here's a statistic I don't think you'll read anywhere else: because of multiple nominations from the same movies in many years, our existing constellation of Supporting Actress nominees hails from 360 movies.  Barring the unlikely scenario whereby Rooney Mara's transfixing lead performance in Carol gets nominated in the Supporting race, as per studio wishes, and her castmate Sarah Paulson comes from behind to reap a surprising but well-deserved mention on the same list, we'll be looking at 365 movies over time that reaped recognition in this race.

Did someone say 365?  Who am I to ignore a number as resonant as that?



Yes, I know, 2016 is a leap year. But that won't stop me from posting this handy calendar representing all the movies that have made that category such an enduring joy, if also an occasional head-scratcher or locus of frustration.  When there's time, I'll post some occasional performance reviews here, too.  One's up today for Beulah Bondi in The Gorgeous Hussy, the first name listed on the first ballot in the first year of Best Supporting Actress.  And yes, it's 365 words long.  Obviously, the Supporting Actress Smackdowns at Nathaniel R's The Film Experience, having originated at StinkyLulu's Blog, remain the best, most thorough, and most excitingly multi-voiced spots to investigate "actressing at the edges."  I'll be less of a completist in this area and don't want to horn in on their turf.  Though in fact, the idea of the Smackdowns was initially inspired by my own Best Actress section, so everything comes full circle!

I'll look forward to more posts, conversations, and hopefully publications in 2016.  No website can satisfy all your actressing needs, which I assume are substantial, and no new year ever goes exactly according to plan.  But I'll keep showing up if you do.  Cheers!

The Website that Went Up a Hill and, Ten Years Later, Came Down a Mountain

Updated, Dec. 30: And at long last... it's a wrap!

Original, Nov. 28: Wow. Even I didn't expect to be this productive.  When I decided a week ago to update the Favorites Countdown, a project that's been gestating on my site for literally ten years, I was responding to a few prompts. I've been pushing through one more essay for my job, having submitted three already in the last six months, and finding that my prose was getting more abstruse and congested. (Trust me, my editors agreed.) Writing more for the site usually coaches me back to less fussy, more avid self-expression.  I wanted more new content to show to anyone dropping in from my new gig at Film Comment, or from one I hope to start soon at Sight & Sound.  I was reluctant to show my face to Jonathan Storey, whom I'll finally meet this week, and who sent me a hand-written letter from the UK well over a year ago imploring me to wrap up this loose end. I couldn't even bear to show my face to myself if I actually let the project take more than a decade. Having written eight new entries inside of a week, I'm suddenly in striking distance of that goal.

Some time ago, I'd posted a version of the new entry on Junebug, hoping it might help me finish if I just wrote up the movies as I re-screened them, rather than honoring their order on the list. But that seemed confusing, and didn't work, anyway. Now that the revised entry is posted, the remaining 17 are all relative surprises, though I admit I'm curious: since several of you have been sweet enough to follow the site for years, how much of what's coming do you think you've deduced? I sometimes feel I talk about the same movies all the time, regardless of context, so I'm curious if I've tipped my hand more than I realize.

I'll also fess up that these last 17 films were all, at some point, in the endlessly shuffled Top 10, where any of them could still be plausible. The "ranking" aspect of this list is silly even by ranking standards, especially given the codicil that I'm omitting all the movies on my re-energized Top 100. (To keep from bewildering everybody, I'm going to pause on updates there while I finish the updates here.) There's no question that any list of my favorite-favorite movies would include The Piano, When Harry Met Sally..., Safe, Morvern Callar, Aliens, Harlan County USA, and several other movies you'll eventually find on that other roster, which pretends to disentangle aesthetic merit from personal bias.  So, probably none of the next and final 17 Favorites are the movies I name first when pressed at parties for my desert-island trove.  At the same time, I'd definitely want all of them on that desert island, #17 as much as #1.

The last thing to stipulate, given how long I've taken, is that I haven't altered the titles on the Favorites countdown to include any movies released after 2005, when I got going. A year or two into the saga, during the first Dormant Period, I shuffled a few out (still archived at the bottom of the sidebar scroll) and some new ones in, including Dave Chappelle's Block Party, Junebug, and The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, all quite new at the time. There is one more Favorite of comparable vintage still to come, and one more fugitive from the former Top 100 list that moved over here when Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind migrated in the opposite direction. By all rights, several movies from my last decade of moviegoing should be here: Margaret, Prodigal Sons, Sleeping Beauty, Fish Tank, Deep Water, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and The Heat all spring to mind as likely contenders. But lest anyone wonder, I wanted to give you the feature you've been awaiting all this time, not some weird Blade Runner/New World amalgam of the original, the rough cut, and the changes I now wish I'd administered all along.

So, without further ado—but also with protracted, belabored surfeits of ado, which I thank you so much for indulging—here are the final 17 movies I hope you'll take to your hearts as I have to mine, if you haven't already... and I hope, too, that you'll keep sharing reactions and personal pets in the Comments!

1. Pola X (1999, dir. Leos Carax)
2. Velvet Goldmine (1998, dir. Todd Haynes)
3. The Way We Were (1973, dir. Sydney Pollack)
4. The Portrait of a Lady (1996, dir. Jane Campion)
5. Dog Day Afternoon (1975, dir. Sidney Lumet)
6. Frances (1982, dir. Graeme Clifford)
7. The Bridges of Madison County (1995, dir. Clint Eastwood)
8. 11'09"01 (2002, dirs. Miscellaneous)
9. Ocean's Eleven (2001, dir. Steven Soderbergh)
10. Grizzly Man (2005, dir. Werner Herzog)
11. Cape Fear (1991, dir. Martin Scorsese)
12. The China Syndrome (1979, dir. James Bridges)
13. Strange Days (1995, dir. Kathryn Bigelow)
14. Blackboards (2000, dir. Samira Makhmalbaf)
15. The Cell (2000, dir. Tarsem Singh)
16. You Can Count on Me (2000, dir. Kenneth Lonergan)
17. demonlover (2002, dir. Olivier Assayas)
18. Junebug (2005, dir. Phil Morrison)
19. Crash (1996, dir. David Cronenberg)
20. Walking and Talking (1996, dir. Nicole Holofcener)
21. Eyes Wide Shut (1999, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
22. Opening Night (1977, dir. John Cassavetes)
23. Blonde Venus (1932, dir. Josef von Sternberg)
24. Beau travail (1999, dir. Claire Denis)
25. Naked Lunch (1991, dir. David Cronenberg)

Nick's Flick Picks: The Force Awakens

What are those guys doing in Claire Denis's Beau travail? Has anyone ever figured that out?  My guess is that, after many years of assuming that my website would never get its act together, they have just found out there are long-postponed updates to the Top 100 listings, where I've recently celebrated Hiroshima mon amour, The Wages of Fear, and The Third Man, and to the Favorites countdown, where I've shared some of the backstory that led to my late-breaking ardor for Beau travail and Naked Lunch, both of which survived cool first impressions to become personal pets and central frames of reference for my book, The Desiring-Image.  (I've also, incidentally, re-programmed both features to ditch the cumbersome frames, streamline the html, and make for easier viewing on tablets as well as laptops. Hope that's all working on your end.)

I'm drafting another essay for work, and as usually happens when writing juices flow in one part of my life, they start moving in others as well. I've already written the next entries on both countdowns, so maybe I can keep some momentum going through the holidays. Some of you have been waiting on these for ten years!  Hope you'll share your thoughts about these posts and others soon to follow.

Subsequent entries added to Favorites: Crash, Walking and Talking, Eyes Wide Shut, Opening Night, Blonde Venus
Subsequent entries added to Top 100: Under the Sun of Satan

The Fifties for 2015

I'm back with one of my most popular features: The Fifties, honoring the year's best filmmaking achievements among the first 50 U.S. releases I saw in 2015.  I think this is the earliest I've ever hit this numerical milestone; it's nice to be drafting this post on July 2, at the exact midpoint of the year.  Many of the films I'm honoring are either still in theaters or newly available on DVD and streaming services, so I hope you'll investigate any titles you've missed.  And, as ever, please suggest your own favorites in the comments, especially if you suspect I've missed the film.

I've gobbled up so many movies post-graduation—ten features in five days, after seeing only three in theaters during the previous two months—that I hustled all the way to a tally of 56 before I could catch my breath. Amy, The Look of Silence, Phoenix, and Tom at the Farm have not technically opened yet, and I'll only believe the last one's planned release when I see it. I'll sideline these for now, which means Tom's Lise Roy, Amy's impressive sound mix, Phoenix's mishandled but interesting script, and just about every stunning aspect of The Look of Silence (easily one of the year's best films, towering over all of the other documentaries I've seen) won't get recognized below.

Otherwise, the eligible movies were '71, About Elly, Amour fou, Blackbird, Blackhat, Boy Meets Girl, Clouds of Sils Maria, Dope, The Duke of Burgundy, Eastern Boys, Eden, Ex Machina, Far from Men, Far from the Madding Crowd, Fifty Shades of Grey, Futuro Beach, Gerontophilia, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, Girlhood, Heaven Knows What, The Hunting Ground, Inside Out, Insidious: Chapter 3, It Follows, It's All So Quiet, Jauja, Joy of Man's Desiring, Jurassic World, The Last Five Years, Li'l Quinquin, Love & Mercy, Mad Max: Fury Road, Madame Bovary, Magic Mike XXL, Maps to the Stars, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Of Horses and Men, The Overnight, Paddington, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, Play, The Princess of France, Serena, Spy, Testament of Youth, Timbuktu, The Tribe, When Evening Falls on Bucharest, While We're Young, White God, Wild Tales, and The Wolfpack.  And the nominees are...




BEST PICTURE
Girlhood (rent it!), tough-minded but affecting coming-of-age ensemble drama
It Follows (DVD in July), an ingenious and brilliantly executed horror yarn
Li'l Quinquin (rent it!), Bruno Dumont's amazingly effective foray into comedy
Mad Max: Fury Road (in theaters), tense, implacable, and baroquely conceived
Timbuktu (rent it!), a quietly confident and increasingly tense social document
The Tribe (in theaters), come for all-signing conceit, stay for potent storytelling

Also: I followed Oscar's lead and drew a contour line around the choices that most excite me, though the wonderful Eastern Boys, Pigeon Sat on a Branch..., Eden, Princess of France, and Jauja are all closely clustered just beneath this sextet, and The Look of Silence would unquestionably appear if it had opened yet.


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Cannes 1995: Meet the Jury

My friends and I review the titles in high, brassy style.

The 48th Cannes Film Festival opened on May 17, 1995, with the gala premiere of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's The City of Lost Children.  My own 20th-anniversary return to that year's lineups will also begin on May 17, which is two weeks from tonight.  No time like the present, then, to introduce you to the game, rambunctious, movie-mad colleagues who will be jumping with me into the time machine and leveling judgments at films I either half-remember or never saw at all.  Though we're unquestionably as chic as last year's congress, we've humbly elected to let our work speak for itself rather than rely on our collective beauty to entice you into this imminent, unfolding feature.

Ivan Albertson is well-known to any Chicago filmgoer: if he isn't tearing your ticket, he's probably sitting with you in the audience, or may even have programmed the especially delicious and hard-to-find titles you're about to enjoy. Ivan sees more movies than anyone I know, maintaining both a high bar and a wide-ranging taste; he is intimidating both in his expectations and his generosity, and it's never clear in advance when or how fully we'll agree. You can keep up with his thoughts during or after Cannes on Letterboxd. He also called the Siskel staff behind my back and had them do this as a kicky surprise before the screening we recently attended of Good Men, Good Women, so I worship him even more than before.

Tim Brayton of Antagony and Ecstasy is, as many of you know, a confoundingly prolific and engaging writer of long-form movie reviews. His work arcs across current releases, pet genres and traditions (from Disney fables to slasher films), and month-by-month obsessions (from Tarkovksy to Tyler Perry). He is a recent festival juror, a Film Experience regular, and ...Tim, can I spoil your other big news? Tim agrees not to judge me for buying a DVD of The Descendants, which I loathed, just because it got Oscar nominations, and I agree not to perform an intervention when he goes to see, e.g., Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 because he think it's snobby when critics disdain to see what folks are out there paying to watch. He's also amidst a fundraising drive you should consider donating to.

Alex Heeney (Twitter) is two of my favorite types of cinephile: the kind based in Toronto, and the kind who does something totally different during the day. She's a Stanford Ph.D. candidate in Industrial Engineering, with an emphasis on confronting structural quandaries related to food waste and climate change. Raise your hand if you're doing that much to better the world...  Hmmm?  Nobody?  Alongside all this, Alex manages to review film, theater, and music at her website The Seventh Row, which, like Tim's, leaves me agog at both the scale and caliber of commentary. She'll also be in actual Cannes while slumming around our faux one. Citizen of the world, that one.

Amir Soltani (Twitter) co-hosts and co-edits the podcast Hello Cinema with Tina Hassannia, which you should really start listening to if you already know a lot about Iranian film, or if you know a little but wish you knew more, or if you don't know anything and recognize that this is a failing on your part. (Sorry: tough love. And for real, why are you denying yourself?) Amir, like Alex, is based in Toronto and is paid to do something completely different than reviewing movies, and I hope he's really good at that other thing, because he's great at reviewing movies. A regular presence at The Film Experience, he organizes all our internal polls, which is more like herding cats than you'd guess.

Ed.: The fabulous foursome above turned out to be my accomplices. As the personal king of biting off more than I can usually chew, I expected some attrition.  Even though they had to bow out of the time machine just before we closed the hatch, you should still be following these folks if you don't already! —

Guy Lodge (Twitter) wears nattier cardigans, cooks more titillating tarts, and maintains finer facial-hair grooming than any other film critic on the net, in addition to soliciting more revealing and genial conversation from Andie MacDowell than you have, or I have.  He writes mostly for Variety now with a side-gig at The Guardian and a distinguished past we all recall with deep yearning at HitFix, née In Contention. Though I tend to require a tighter CV than that for contributors to this site, I've decided on this one occasion to let it pass. (No picking on Guy if his packed spring itinerary of real-world reviewing means he has to bow out.)

Angelo Muredda (Twitter) is another dapper Torontonian, or perhaps I should say another chic Torontoist. I first started reading his work at Film Freak Central, where the hits just don't stop coming. Those guys just know the game. Every game. You're reading them all, right? Angelo's movie writing shows up lots of other places, and he has a better batting average of funny tweets than almost anyone in this racket. He's also getting ever-closer to that Ph.D. in Canadian literature, and is thus a man after my own heart, proving that academics aren't all immured in library stacks (which, by the way, there's nothing wrong with), speaking only to each other (which, I'd wager, there is).

Tim Robey (Twitter) remains the film critic I'd want to be if I had a) stuck with a long-ago aspiration to write movie reviews for a major daily paper, b) actually gotten such a gig, and c) proved to be sublimely good at it, week after week. He makes shrewder points than I do in sentences shorter than I can manage. I don't know why I keep evoking myself. I think I enjoy being in sentences with him.  He's my annual roommate at TIFF, where he sometimes asks me to vet his drafts, even though all I ever do is cut very severe bangs and say, "You've done it, Robey. You've cracked it wide open." Like Alex and Guy, Tim will be offering real-time dispatches from this year's Croisette, so any energy he expends here I extra-appreciate.

Sarah Turner has survived what nobody else on this list has even attempted, i.e., taking one of my classes. She was consistently brilliant talking and writing in academic registers about gender, sexual, and racial politics in contemporary sci-fi features and is just as consistently brilliant writing to a mass audience about everything the Pop Insomniacs can throw at her, including pieces I especially liked about Dear White People and Mr. Turner (no relation), and all the weekly reviews of Mad Men I can't read yet because I've only ever seen 1.5 episodes. Those are all rich, chewy texts, but when you can whip up interesting thoughts about Mike Epps' AOL series, you've arguably shown your chops even more. I don't know who's out there trying to hire young, interesting, eclectic writers, but I didn't plead for her to participate and offer her this platform for my health, okay? Managing editors? Talent scouts?

I hope you're all as excited as I am for what this crew has to say about the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, from the best and brightest to Beyond Rangoon. (Honestly, is that even a spoiler?)  Keep checking back.

Oh, and what's that?  I have a whole other jury assembled of research specialists and published film writers with targeted insights to drop about specific titles along the way?  I've offered you Iron Man, Thor, the Black Widow, Hawkeye, Captain America, and all the others above (you can work out who's who...), and that's only half the tally of Cannes Avengers I've got working on the case?  What??? [/Teaser]



He seriously set this whole thing up and I didn't even know.

Counting Down Two Top Tens for 2014

Tying a ribbon on a Top 10 list and calling it a day is hard. (I know, I know: almost as hard as four tours in Iraq or walking into a phalanx of billy-clubbing police!) Here are some movies I saw a year and a half ago at festivals in other countries, which have taken permanent root in my mind; there is one I literally saw this afternoon, down the block from where I live, and instantly adored. Watch as I judge films that dextrously show new possibilities in the form against those that reflect or uncover deep social needs (though many of the best do both). And while we're at it, let's induce false rivalries or frames of comparison among movies that seem incorrigibly esoteric against those that are merrily commercial! It's all silly, and impossible, and obsessively absorbing, and great fun.  You already know all that.  So enough of the hemming and hawing that delayed my 2012 and 2013 lists for months, during which I did none of the re-watching that I considered necessary, in order to make sure my lists were "right."  What would that even mean?

The rankings were made more difficult this year by the fact that I had way more A– grades than usual but no actual A's among U.S. releases. In other words, I'm not that much more beholden to my favorite movie of the year than I am to my 17th favorite, and I had no runaway cause célèbre.  It seems nuts not to see Mr. Turner or Heli or Exhibition or A Most Violent Year on here, or even films I rated slightly lower on balance but think about constantly, like the intoxicating Under the Skin, the exquisite and subtly suggestive Love Is Strange, the heartwarming but unsentimental Ilo Ilo, the soft-spoken but tough-minded melodrama Beyond the Lights, or the shimmering, sobering Timbuktu.  I've included a couple movies that I'm suspicious might reveal more "cracks" on second viewing and also excluded some, like The Immigrant (featuring the year's best performance, by Marion Cotillard), that I relished on first pass and only admired more on two successive viewings. There's no higher compliment I could pay to my chosen titles than to observe how movies as staggering, lifelines as invigorating, experiments as successful as the ones in this paragraph were kept from the roster.

Enough. What will follow over the coming days are two overlapping Top 10s, one here and one here, in keeping with my website's delineation between U.S. releases and world premieres in each calendar year.  Can't be up too late rhapsodizing, but here are the first thoughts that come to mind in relation to the movies I'm seating in first class as we board our flight into, hopefully, another spectacular year in the cinema ...

Liveblogging the 2014 Golden Globes

10:02: I'm a ridiculous person, but thanks to everyone who read along.  And it's never too late to comment, or to read about some of my favorites of the year, or to learn about 120-year old movies, or to count down till the Top 10 list next weekend. Keep coming back! 

10:00: And BEST PICTURE (DRAMA) goes to a movie Meryl has re-christened Boyhoooood. The Ellar-Lorelei-Ethan-Patricia family is having the best time up there.  They feel like a family!  (But Patricia is clearly being pierced by her whalebone corset.  It's a new century, girl! We have Spanx now, and Tadashi Shoji! No need to go full Edith Wharton if it's hurting you. Or just let it hang out! What I'm saying is, the pain isn't worth it.)

9:59: Imitation Game's won nothing, right? I'm really asking.  Even though it seems like I'm just rubbing it in.

9:58: Only in this immediate context, I feel a bit sorry for this American Sniper ad.

9:57: And I assume it's going to be Boyhood? But it could be any of them, kind of, Foxcatcher aside? Right?

9:56: FOR ONCE, Meryl is going to present Best Picture!  Hasn't that literally never happened?

9:54: When Eddie Redmayne wins BEST ACTOR (DRAMA), his fellow nominees all get visibly misty-eyed, especially Gyllenhaal and Oyelowo, but whether they're sad about losing or inspired by him or just tired past their wits or 45% constituted of champagne, it's all impossible to say.

9:53: I don't know who Benedict and Keira brought with them as their dates to this thing but they don't even stand for Julianne Moore winning BEST ACTRESS (DRAMA) and one of them checked her phone while Julianne walked up there, so as far as I'm concerned they are beasts and should be outside getting trained or even walked.

9:50: "When your producers tell you you're running long, there's only one thing to do. Ladies and gentlemen, Matthew McConaughey." The joke has no time to ripple, because McConaughey immediately starts doing this weird Yoknapatawpha thing with his voice, and everyone is uncomfortable. And by that, I mean I am.

9:48: What've we got left? Julianne and the Actor and Picture (Drama) prizes? Am I forgetting anything? Did Modern Family already win?

9:44: Robert Downey, Jr., presenting BEST PICTURE (MUSICAL/COMEDY) to something that sh... Whoa!!! It's The Grand Budapest Hotel!! Wes had to put down his glue stick and plastic scissors so fast in order to get up there!  Not too many powerful or actual women on that stage with him, but he at least gets more laugh than any scripted "funny bit" all night. (Well, at least since the Amal Alamuddin joke, which remains the night's clear peak.)

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Celebrating Cinematic Anniversaries in 2015

New Year's has always been my favorite holiday. I was born on October 9 but due on October 1, and if you dial that back nine months, you see I'm not kidding about "always." Even before I gleaned this tidbit, and before the ritualized annual viewing of When Harry Met Sally..., I always liked this holiday's equal soliciting of introspection, retrospection, and speculation, plus its hospitality to the greatest activity of all time, which is list-making. (I'm more of a stay-home-and-think New Year's celebrant than a crash-the-hotel, let's-get-drunk-on-the-minibar type. And despite what we pretend on New Year's, people don't change.) For many years, starting in high school, I would make a list on New Year's Eve of 24 movies I wanted to see and 24 books and 24 plays I wanted to read in the coming year. Though I never finished them, I made great discoveries that way. I also found these to be more motivating resolutions and easier ones to keep than "exercise more," "learn Spanish," or "chug less Mountain Dew."

This year, I'm reviving that habit. Each month I will write short reviews of at least two films celebrating an anniversary in 2015, starting in January in 1895 (often cited, however debatably, as the birth-year of "the movies") and ending in December in 2005. One will be a film I've never seen but clearly should have. Another will be a title I'm eager to revisit—not necessarily a "best" or a personal favorite, but the kind of artistic or cultural landmark that scores high on my recently-reinstituted VOR scale. Beyond filling out some viewing holes and clarifying my takes on challenging milestones, I'm hoping this cycle will re-habituate me to at least publish capsules about films I watch, will further clarify what I mean by "VOR," and might approximate the phantom film-history survey I rarely get to teach in my day job but would happily offer for free. And it'll keep me on track for other major changes to the entire site I'll be unfolding over the year.

Am I aware that I never finish website projects? Yes. But New Year's Day is the global day of optimism! And it's just two movies per month—more when time permits, and/or when being a Libra impedes my ability to choose. Best of all, I've already gotten a head start in the waning weeks of December. So I hope you'll keep me going through this marathon with your comments and clicks, and I hope you'll enjoy following along!

For our first installment, we begin in 1895, as crucial a year in the history of sexuality as in the history of movies, which brings us quickly to Thomas Edison's laboratory and the Dickson Experimental Sound Film...

Prepping for the Final Sprint

Fall festival furor meant that I missed my annual fall-preview post where I rank my enthusiasms for upcoming film releases with the help of some noted diva.  Too bad, because I really had an inspired choice in mind this year.  He'll still be with us in 2015.  But, as December bows and awards season commences (way to go, Marion, Darius, and Jennifer!!), maybe it's not too late to forecast what I still have left to see before I wrap up the year and fail miserably to post a Top Ten list.  A few of the remaining big-ticket releases I saw earlier this fall, like Still Alice, Mommy, Wild, and Two Days, One Night, but since I'm only a minor-league player, most of it will be news to me when it's also news to you. Unless you're major.

STUDIO RELEASES
Inherent Vice - Idea of adapting Pynchon puts a smile on my face. So does trailer.
   B– - Tries something different. PTA doesn't repeat himself. But I didn't get it.
American Sniper - Hot on Cooper lately (hush!), and seems like good fit for Clint.
   A– - Fearsomely edited. Tonally complex. Much more than Red State red meat.
Into the Woods - Not expecting sublimity, don't love the show, but pipped for cast.
   C+ - Fine, meat-and-potatoes staging. Cast is game. Garish look. Effort shows.
Unbroken - Smells weirdly programmatic: "Please, sir, may I inspire you today?"
   D - Disconcertingly poor. Neither gets inside Louie nor helps frame his travails.
Big Eyes - Burton and Waltz both seem to be running in place lately. Is Amy, too?
   D - A failure of direction. No two elements match; most are weak on their own.
Exodus: Gods and Kings - Would have been lower but critics I trust don't mind it.
Annie - Y'all know me well enough to know it's Quvenzhané 4-Ever around here.
Top Five - In theory, I'd be more jazzed about this, but TIFF crowds seemed cool.
   C– - Funny, warm passages snuffed by awkward framework, ungenerous spirit.
Big Hero 6 - Already out for weeks now, but I don't feel flooded with incentive.
   B+ - For the second year in a row, Disney exceeds my expectations. Delightful.
The Gambler - If it weren't for Jessica Lange, this would be easier to dismiss.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - Sorry, but Smaug's still in Time Out.
The Interview - I'll have to see this because a student is writing about it. Pity me.
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb - Some secrets are meant to be kept.

EXCITING INDIES
Leviathan - Won't open in Chicago until Jan 9, but Zvyagintsev's so up my alley.
   B - Impressively engaging given length and measured tone. Still, hardly subtle.
Selma - I loved DuVernay's Middle of Nowhere. Advance audiences are beaming.
   A– - King's dream deferred, as triumphal story, team effort, palpable lament.
The Strange Little Cat - No film this year elated more friends. On DVD Jan 13.
   B - I wasn't as enchanted as some friends, but it's a curious, engaging, unusual.
A Most Violent Year - I really admired All Is Lost. All the signs look good here.
   A– - Every performance, every technical element, every writing conceit works.
Mr. Turner - Should I be even more enthused? A little Spall goes a long way.
   A– - Leigh again manages an intimate epic. Puts most "period" films to shame.
Goodbye to All That - Junebug was such a transformative experience for me.
   B/B+ - Oddly broad at moments, but so behaviorally and observationally rich.
The Two Faces of January - Admirers really admire. Viggo's had a banner year.
   D - Not easy to adapt Highsmith with zero psychological pull or erotic charge.
Bad Hair - People love this Venezuelan import, arriving at Facets on Friday.
   B+ - Acute characterizations, observant of its city, mature on sex and gender.
Beloved Sisters - I've heard interesting things. Apt companion to Amour fou?
The Tale of Princess Kaguya - I'm no animation nut, but one hears good things.
   B/B+ - Some tightening wouldn't hurt, but loveliness and feeling only deepen.
Happy Valley - Is it bad hosting to take brother to sex-abuse doc when he visits?
Red Army - Festival crowd-pleaser and likely Oscar nominee. But still. Meh.
Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles - What's new to say?

BEST-KEPT SECRETS
Maps to the Stars - So brilliant to kill off Cannes buzz and hide the release date!
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night - If they'd build it in Chicago, I would come.
   B+ - Deliciously stylish. Sound design especially impressive. Elegant pastiche.
Tales of the Grim Sleeper - Broomfield inspires ambivalence, but is this a peak?
Cake - Good way to get Aniston an Oscar is to obscure whether this has opened.
   D - One feels good intents here, but tone, structure, storytelling are fairly dire.
Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks - If Gena wants to dance, she needn't ask twice.
Black or White - What a perfect time to release a tone-deaf race-relations drama.
The Pyramid - Seriously! It turns out a movie with this title opens in four days!

GUESS I BLEW IT
Fury - Must-see factor never got very high, but Ayer, Pitt, Lerman, Peña appeal.
   C+ - Overproduced, highly uneven, but has some mad, Steel Helmet conviction.
The Boxtrolls - Liked Coraline, ParaNorman fine, but I'm missing something.
   C - Dense with visual detail, but expended labor exceeds storytelling dexterity.
Men, Women, and Children - Just fucking with you! Though I do love moralizing.

LATE DATES ON DVD
Archipelago - I've stumped for Unrelated for six years. Thrilled about follow-up.
   B - Hogg repeats aspects of style and subject from debut; good, but feels forced.
Listen Up Philip - The Schwartzman film for folks with Schwartzman allergies?
   C - Moss, Pryce impress. Still, even more purgatorial experience than intended?
Oculus - 40% the admiring reviews, 40% the ambitious premise, 20% Starbuck.
   C+ - Too many rules? Too few? Adds up only vaguely but has a weird elegance.
The Drop - Tim Robey fired me right up, but I just couldn't get there. Out soon.
Locke - In fact, managed to drop a ball on Tom Hardy twice. Foolish both times?
   C+ - Worthy stab at something different. Comes close to working. Good cast.
The Good Lie - Blinked during CIFF and missed its brief release back in October.
Manuscripts Don't Burn - Not Rasoulof's best-reviewed movie, but I'm intrigued.
Venus in Fur - Very clever play. Sounds like Polanski, Seigner surprised people.
   B - Fruity, sleek, and tricksy at the same time. Even its mustier ideas have juice.
Camp X-Ray - Gutsy. Stewart's had a good year, and I've admired her many times.
   B - Credible enough on Gitmo, richer as character drama. Very smartly acted.
Starred Up - Jack O'Connell hubbub started here. Seems like right place to begin.
   B - Adds welcome layers as it goes, and well-acted. Just didn't feel all that new.
Fishing Without Nets - Somali-pirate documentary promises to be eye-opening.
Horses of God - Has sounded enticing since two Cannes ago when it premiered.
Exhibition - Not as warmly received as Archipelago or Unrelated, but still Hogg.
   A– - Inventive, quietly gutsy meditation on human coldness that isn't a critique.
Burning Bush - Critics all admire this prohibitively long Agnieszka Holland epic.
Omar - What the eff is wrong with me? An Oscar nominee by a good filmmaker!
   B - Sturdy melodrama places plot over style, but it sure thickens. Tense, bold.
Bad Words - Nobody I know was enraptured, but I giggle at every clip I've seen.
   C– - Such a nasty pall. So besmirching of Bateman; amazing he's responsible.
Hateship Loveship - Notices were hardly fawning but I admire Wiig for reaching.
   C - Too harsh to say it's bad, but it's very hazy, and disappointingly forgettable.
Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian - Even if it's a botch, likely indelible.
Finding Vivian Maier - Getting the impression I flubbed, but it seemed so trendy.
   B– - Intriguing, but "investigative" framework too often looks right past the art.
Muppets Most Wanted - Because Kermit. Because Rowlf. Because Beeker. Becau
The Fault in Our Stars - Not excited, but since I've twice been taken for Green...
   B - The performances and the lucid emotional through-lines really disarmed me.
Particle Fever - Near-universal raves. Pertinent to some (non-lab) work I'm doing.
About Last Night - I like many members of its cast and want to support Headland.
   B - Zippy script, inspired cast. Nicely balanced between the earnest and profane.
Manakamana - Iron Ministry recently reminded me how much I admire this style.
A Good Marriage - Once more, got hopes up Joan was Back. Then it got dumped.
   C+ - Adroit audience manipulation. Nervy themes. Allen! And still it feels flat?
Vic + Flo Saw a Bear - Boy did this polarize people when it premiered at Berlin.
Jimi: All Is By My Side - Seems like an idiosyncratic biopic. I'm curious, anyway.
Miss Lovely - Hard to predict if it's got a hold on its luridness or just revels in it.
Frank - "Fassbender as DeadMau5" could technically go well or be The Worst.
   C– - Eccentric enough I can see it lingering, but it's both arch and sentimental.
Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas - For my Cannes completism.
Stand Clear of the Closing Doors - The Indie Spirit nomination intrigues me.
Cheap Thrills - My site may not make this obvious but I'm game for dicey horror.
Devil's Knot - Just how far am I willing to take the Reesurgence? Nobody bit...
Chef - ...whereas, in this case, everybody bit, but I can't stop feeling suspicious.
Moebius - I tried with Kim again on Pietà and it wasn't bad but also wasn't great.
Breathe In - A fully improv'd drama gives pause. But there are jewels in the cast.
300: Rise of an Empire - I have a right to know just how fun Eva Green is in this.
   D+ - Green's fun, but stuck in a cauldron of Tarsem-ish, Cheney-ish jingo-kitsch.
Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me - Keep being promised I'll like it even if I didn't like her.
   B– - Both a valentine and something more pointed and rounded. Chilly breezes.
Divergent - Look, they filmed parts on my block, and Roth's an alum of my Dept.
   C - Unimaginative filmmaking works against the speculative pull of the story.
Dormant Beauty - Huppert is an ineluctable draw, but even she's made lame films.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Not a Marvel fan. But, Mackie in uniform.
Ivory Tower - Given my vocation, I ought to make this a priority. But is it hacky?
Blood Glacier - You guys, this movie is called Blood Glacier. It's Blood Glacier.
Rob the Mob - Nina Arianda is the kind of actress worth following into tiny films.
G.B.F. - Joe Reid and other friends imply that I'll be charmed at the very least.
In Secret - Watching Lange hate a movie she's in is a rare, succulent pleasure.
White Bird in a Blizzard - Araki's never been my cuppa. Shailene's more the draw.
Palo Alto - "A Coppola picked up a book by James Franco" is not an enticing start.
   B/B+ - Another Coppola proves me wrong! Familiar ideas, insinuating direction.
God's Pocket - Worth tracking Hoffman wherever he went, but I'm still too sad.
Cesar Chavez - I've sat through many biopics with less stirring subjects. Peña!
The Double - I've had over a year to make good on this, and nothing's working.
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit - So stoked for Keira these days, I'll try anything.

And now, please do your part by saving me from myself! Let me know where I'm investing too much optimism or, even better, clue me in to a diamond I've overlooked. And keep checking back here and on my U.S. Releases of 2014 page for updates as I cross titles off these lists.

The Fifties Eligibility Lists, 2014

It's all happening... Joe Reid, whom you know and love from The Wire and from the Film Experience podcasts, will join me again for The Fifties, my annual tradition of listing the best achievements in major Oscar categories in the year by around mid-summer, once I've hit the milestone of seeing 50 U.S. commercial releases from the calendar year. Beyond sharing ridiculous list-mania, Joe and I have a knack for reaching that goalpost at almost exactly the same time without even trying. We don't, however, see all the same movies—this year we only overlap on 26 titles—so you can't draw a one-to-one comparison between our choices.  Happily, the discrepancies increase the overall eligibility pool and make consensus all the more striking when it does emerge.

We are very aware of not finishing our announcements last year. To prevent that happening again, we've already filled out our individual ballots and are planning shorter conversations about our choices. The first categories will be posted soon. For now, here are the lists of films we're each working from, with shared titles in bold. File your favorites and FYC's in the Comments! And use that space to fight over whether Emily Blunt is a lead or a supporting player in Edge of Tomorrow.

P.S. Now that The Fifties are finished, I've included final nomination tallies for each movie in parentheses.

NICK'S FIRST 50 (25 got nominations) 22 Jump Street Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq Before You Know It Begin Again (3) Belle (1) Blue Ruin (2) Borgman Child's Pose Closed Curtain Cold in July Edge of Tomorrow (9) Enemy The Final Member Frankie & Alice The German Doctor (1) Gloria (4) Godzilla (2) The Grand Budapest Hotel (4) Heli (2) Hide Your Smiling Faces (1) Honey (2) How to Train Your Dragon 2 Ida (5) Ilo Ilo (4) The Immigrant (8) It Felt Like Love The Last of the Unjust (3) The LEGO Movie (1) Like Father, Like Son Maleficent (1) The Missing Picture (5) Neighbors Night Moves Noah Non-Stop Norte, the End of History (5) Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1 Nymphomaniac, Vol. 2 Obvious Child (4) Only Lovers Left Alive (8) The Rover Snowpiercer Stranger by the Lake (2) Tammy They Came Together Under the Skin (7) Unrelated (8) Le Week-end (3) Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Young & Beautiful

JOE'S FIRST 50 (29 got nominations) 22 Jump Street (1) Adult World The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Blue Ruin (3) Borgman (2) Boyhood (6) Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2) Chef (1) The Congress (6) Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2) Devil's Knot Divergent Edge of Tomorrow (8) Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me G.B.F. The German Doctor Gloria (3) Godzilla (4) The Grand Budapest Hotel (3) Happy Christmas Hide Your Smiling Faces (3) How to Train Your Dragon 2 (1) The Immigrant (2) The LEGO Movie Locke (2) Lucky Them Maleficent Neighbors (1) Night Moves Noah (1) Non-Stop Obvious Child (6) Omar (1) Only Lovers Left Alive (6) The Pretty One Raze (1) The Sacrament Snowpiercer (6) Stand Clear of the Closing Doors Stranger by the Lake (8) Tammy Teenage They Came Together Trust Me Under the Skin (8) Veronica Mars (1) Le Week-end (1) Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (1) Winter's Tale X-Men: Days of Future Past (1)

We both elected to disqualify The Normal Heart and other movies that premiered on U.S. television, as well as films scheduled for U.S. release later this year that haven't technically bowed yet (which for me knocks out Child of God, The Dog, and Tracks). Joe got to Boyhood and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes before the 50-film cutoff but I didn't.

The Anticipations of NicksFlickPicks

Every January, I re-invest in two myths, no matter how often they've been disproved.  First, someone reports that Lauryn Hill's eternally-postponed CD is finally coming out in the new year, and I believe it. Second, I truly think I will update my site more often, write more reviews, resolve unfinished projects, or at least keep up with annual features.  Usually I'm at least reliable to post a Fall Preview in September or early October, with a ranked list of the movies I'm most anticipating, divided into echelons furnished to me by some favorite pop star: Janet Jackson in 2012, when Holy Motors was a "Throb" and Atlas Shrugged a "Black Cat"; Mariah Carey in 2011, when We Need To Talk About Kevin was a "Touch My Body" and Jack & Jill was an "Up Out My Face"; and noted in-cinema texter Madonna in 2010, when White Material was "Erotica" for me and The Owls of Ga'Hoole prompted shouts of "Rescue Me."

I badly missed my start time this year: I've been too busy teaching, advising, bungling other important site features, and hitting every film festival in North America, to a degree that even the programmers find remarkable.  But late is better than never, as I can only hope Lauryn agrees. So, here goes.  I've of course already seen several of these titles, but I did a handy System Restore on my own brain and remembered how I felt Before as well as how I responded After...

---

TO ZION
Gravity - Even small steps for Cuarón are often giant leaps for popular cinema

A– - Sure, the emotional allegory feels kind of shoehoOH MY GOD! THE CAMERA! Maybe a bit maudJESUS! DID YOU SEE AND HEAR THAT?!

12 Years a Slave - Hollywood finally taps major vein of U.S. lit and life. McQueen!

A– - Solomon as open book and opaque protagonist, caught in a heightened nightmare and in yes-it-was-that-bad history.

Bastards - Even at her most opaque, Denis commands loyalty like few other auteurs

B+ - Sort of Denis' Skin I Live In, a handsome, tensile take on a story bound to repel. Semi-illuminating, fiercely confident.

Blue Is the Warmest Color - Eager for any Kechiche, but especially a Palme winner

B - Two very compelling characterizations in engaging but oddly proportioned film with few interesting images

Faust - Two-year delay of release augurs poorly. But I'm still a Sokurov devotee.

A– - Intoxicating, even if, like a lot of intoxicants, it puts you to sleep a little. Painterly, imaginative, and sells the myth.

Her - Sure, premise could tilt into precious self-pity, but I have confidence it won't.

B - Toggles between blunt and subtle approaches to its themes. Generous in spirit. Actors really lift it. Adams a standout for me.

The Past - After Elly, Separation, I'd follow Farhadi anywhere. Breakout for Bejo?

C - Turgid, sporadically wise wallow in exposition, with few stakes for viewers. Stale visuals. Farhadi's rhythmic gift fails.

SUPERSTAR
American Hustle - I'm cool on Silver Linings but so far I dig this one's splashy vibe

B - American cons, America as con. Film's a con at times, though Cooper, Adams never are. Uneven, for better and worse.

The Square - Urgent topic for documentaries, especially from reliable Noujaim
At Berkeley - I'm not a Wiseman completist, but great subject for him and for me

A - Prodigious in every sense. Typically lucid institutional survey, comprising many views of what ideas and politics mean.

Inside Llewyn Davis - Tuneful blend of Coens' comic charm and scabrousness?

B+ - Aloof, icy, yet almost secretly tender. Steel, sadness, and spook knitted together. Funny-ish. Isaac amazes.

Captain Phillips - Even "lesser" Greengrass like Green Zone lands well with me

B - US drama of Somali pirates, rendered as seasick immersion in a military precision strike. Uneven but ends strong.

Blue Caprice - Shootings sure got to me in '02. Tour-de-force for a new director?

B+ - Backstory of 10 murders that remain inexplicable. A grotty national and psychological moodpiece. Bracingly assembled.

Carrie - Peirce a great choice to give high school rough textures, moral complexity

C–– - Halves of Carrie seem further apart than ever. Direction most invested in the Mom, production in the Prom. Ensemble flails.

Mother of George - In Notting Hill, I'd be Hugh and d.p. Bradford Young my Julia

B+ - Lustrous images heighten emotions of a rich, bold script; odd angles, sound mix keep it from feeling on-the-nose.

Dallas Buyers Club - Felt stunty on paper but trailer and buzz for Leto encourage

B+ - Moving, funny, excitingly angry. McConaughey hits Brockovich levels of typecasting, type-busting, and charisma.

Fire in the Blood - Doc sounds very probing; a good companion to Dallas Buyers
A Touch of Sin - Jia always merits attention. Intriguing swerves in tone, content.

B+ - Hard work, which I'm not against. Sharp images, knotty plotting both entice. A Chinese Amores perros, but glassier.

JUST WANT YOU AROUND
August: Osage County - Uneven play has high peaks. Eager for Roberts, Lewis.

C - Enjoyable but rarely admirable beyond MVP actors. Script has great moments but smug calculations still rankle.

American Promise - I hope it's more Love & Diane than Waiting for Superman

B - Affecting, but director-parents may not have distance necessary to make a Hoop Dreams about their kids' schooling.

Let the Fire Burn - Crucial but obscure U.S. tale has already inspired good films

B - Less penetrating or contextualized but possibly more harrowing than other films on 1985 bombing of MOVE compound.

Museum Hours - Not on my radar till many friends ranked it among year's best

B - Elegant, involving, aloof by design; strong sense of the past within the present. Something a tad calculated about it.

God Loves Uganda - Another promising doc; bookend to spring's Call Me Kuchu
The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete - Buzzy at Sundance. New sides of Hudson?

C - Fitfully affecting but rarely adroit. Soderbergh's King of the Hill from synthetic fabric.

Enough Said - I'm still seeking a Holofcener vehicle that's as strong as her debut

B– - After ace debut, Holofcener's follow-ups all have execution problems. Still, rich ideas for starved demos. Gandolfini!

We Are What We Are - Notably strong reviews for a horror film and for a remake
Saving Mr. Banks - For Emma, I'll accept anything, even from John Lee Hancock

D+ -  Markedly unsubtle for an explicit defense of subtlety. Broad, repetitive, untrusting. Nails a moving end, though.

The Invisible Woman - Wasn't too jazzed till every review cited a pleasant surprise
Camille Claudel 1915 - I tend to like Dumont, even if I always feel guilty about it

D+ - Never connects with Camille. Casting stunt sullies and disjoints the film. Alienating; next day, feels worse.

Computer Chess - Beeswax was incomparably winning. Will I react that way again?

B– - Seemed funnier during my first, more fatigued screening. A great premise with gold moments, but execution is muddy.

Wadjda - Dramas with Noble Themes can break any which way, but I'm optimistic.
Prisoners - Sharp-looking Villeneuve pic drew both hoots and cheers in Toronto

B– - Lots of craft on display. Gutsy script. Real steel from Jackman. Virtually all of it poisoned by escalating absurdities.

Black Nativity - Trailer looks a bit off to me. Still: Lemmons? That cast? Sure.

C– - Earnest but perfunctory. Reads as if producer TD Jakes literally called more shots than snazzy helmer Kasi Lemmons..

Concussion - Nifty premise for lesbian drama. Weigert in lead is a cool prospect.

B– - Story, chic images feel affected throughout, which only makes sharp script and Weigert's candid acting more impressive.

After Tiller - Risk-taking profile of doctors who offer third-trimester abortions
Touchy Feely - Things got awfully quiet after Sundance, but ensemble entices
Here Comes the Devil - Just read the setup and tell me you're not a bit intrigued

LOST ONES
The Immigrant - Every still looks transfixing, but the Weinsteins seem ambivalent

B+ - Operatic conception, playing romantic hope against inexorable forces of grief and myth. Cotillard, Khondji astonish.

Foxcatcher - Such an odd tale, but you won't catch me betting against Miller
Grace of Monaco - I liked La Vie en rose but let's kindly call Dahan a big variable
The Monuments Men - Your $11 can help these rich pals take a European vacay!

I FIND IT HARD TO SAY
All Is Lost - Sounds like awards-baiting stunt for Redford, yet I hear otherwise

B+ - Water, water everywhere, and not a bad or boring shot in sight. Exercisey but absorbing. Boy is Redford in good shape.

Out of the Furnace - For those who wish Crazy Heart had featured more hitting

C - Winter's Boner: characters, filmmakers treat grotty vision of rough, hophead Appalachia as macho proving-ground.

Adore - A good movie seems too much to ask, but possibly deliciously bad?

D+ - Unquestionably misdirected, stifling scenario's capacity to indicate more than tawdry melodrama. Wright saves what she can.

Oldboy - I found Park's film both tedious and repellent, but at least I'm curious
Kill Your Darlings - Seems likely to glorify yet render dull a minor anecdote

D+ - Early sparks gutter completely. Climactic montage ties anal sex to drug injection and murder. Opaque and inert.

The Face of Love - Bening's lowest-profile work in years. Harris a good match?
Philomena - Festival audiences sure love it. Dench inspires hope. Frears doesn't.

C+ - Pro or con to keep mixing tones and to avoid overstating analogies at the cost of vague, fitful storytelling? Your call.

As I Lay Dying - It's my favorite novel, maybe. I think I just don't want to know.
The Summit - Climbing docs have gone wrong before. Still, a whopper of a tale.
Great Expectations - A year after its debut, smelling like moldy wedding cake.
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology - Little Žižek goes a long way. Maybe too long.
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom - Evidently even Elba, Harris can't animate it?
Lone Survivor - Late add to season. Beefy cast. Berg a mixed bag. Trustworthy?

C+ - Actors very committed; moving as soldier tribute. Still, Berg wobbly director of action, dialogue. Ending feels off.

All Is Bright - Director Phil Junebug Morrison is only draw here. But a big one.
Machete Kills - Good, bad, or good/bad? Hoping for a Planet Terror groove.
A.C.O.D. - Love the topic, but maybe just charming comedians farting around?
Metallica: Through the Never - Good or bad, I can't even work out what this is
Insidious: Chapter 2 - Never got it up to rent the first, but ample for a rainy day
Dracula 3D - Even with tepid reviews, dashing Kretschmann is hard to resist

C - Two D's are for Dumb and Dumber. The other's for Delirium, which at least has its pleasures. Garishly but gamely stupid.

Escape from Tomorrow - Trailer has some kick, but strains hard for cult status
Nebraska - Hated Descendants. Not that wild about earlier Payne, either. So...

D+ - Payne still loves: banal images, banal music, using one character as bellwether of Reason and ranking others in relation.

Sal - Film-star bio from the Franco factory that's sat around for two years? Sure!
Mr. Nobody - A Venice prize-winner that's sat around for four years? Why not?
Inequality for All - These films vary widely in quality but Reich's a good hook
The Best Man Holiday - Statute of limitations on credit for Undercover Brother?
Instructions Not Included - I lamely keep skipping Spanish-language breakouts

I USED TO LOVE HIM
About Time - Gleeson's my hope. Curtis, McAdams have exhausted good will.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - The title begs non-converts to stay home.
The Wolf of Wall Street - Is latter-day Scorsese right guy to critique wild excess?

D+ - One-hand tally of interesting shots. Wonky edits abound. Flatly plotted in story and style. Elephantiasis.

Labor Day - I hear it's safe for Kate, risky for Reitman, triumphant for neither
Finding Mr. Right - I'd go anywhere with Tang Wei after Lust, Caution. I think?
Diana - Can we now agree that Watts has Swank-ish range and batting average?
The Armstrong Lie - Gibney should slow down. Armstrong should hide in a hole.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - Anyone else getting a big Majestic hit off this?
Don Jon - I'm glad Juli & Scarlett get along with Gordon-Levitt. I usually don't.

B– - Flat technique; hashed final act seems more annoying with time. But funny. Moore is good, and Johansson deliciously great.

Out in the Dark - Gay cinema can't cast enough bland hotties in familiar plots

C - Scene by scene, the Serious Drama you'd expect about a handsome Palestinian guy and a handsome Israeli guy in love.

Rush - Feels like an aging producer-director pair's idea of Youthful Excitement

D+ - Tritely conceived, stylistically ragged. A dispiriting pile-up of shots and entire scenes that only pad or coarsen the movie.

Salinger - At last! A venue for John Cusack's ideas about The Catcher in the Rye!
Runner Runner - Excited me for six minutes as IMDb news item. Never since.

NOTHING REALLY MATTERS
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire - Director's a trade up. Still not persuaded.

C– - Talk about death that never feels deadly and whispers of revolution that never feel revolutionary.

The Counselor - Sorta thing that seduces stars on paper, then explodes on them
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues - Not if I missed the first part, it doesn't
Ender's Game - The only things I'm boycotting are iffy casting, awful preview
Winnie Mandela - Virtually laughed out of existence two years ago. A zombie.
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa - Uninspiring, but I never count this crew out.
Homefront - Franco in a Statham film written by Stallone? Is this an installation?
The Fifth Estate - Wan thrillers keen on trumpeting their Importance are the pits
The Family - Best show in town is watching Tommy Lee Jones hide involvement
Shepard and Dark - So there's this famous guy and this less famous guy, and... ?
Baggage Claim - As a title, that's a half-notch above Sack Lunch, but not funny.
Frozen - Disney hasn't hit for me since Lilo. Images and cast list leave me cold.

B - Charm, belly laughs, sweetness, and story momentum. Songs, character designs, backgrounds not on same level, but I liked it.

Thor: The Dark World - I'm even less interested than Natalie Portman seems to be.

WHEN IT HURTS SO BAD
One Chance - Clears path for Salt, Pepper, and Success: The Taylor Hicks Story
The Book Thief - Those Pyjamas are looking awfully Striped, if you ask me
How I Live Now - Why aren't Saoirse's agents scared to piss her off? See: Hanna.
Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas - Perhaps unwisely, I stick to just his dramas
Romeo and Juliet - While we're at it, how 'bout Twelfth Night with Chloë Moretz?
Last Vegas - If we were talking Sally Kirkland, Diane Ladd, and Diahann Carroll...

C - AARP Hangover is funnier and better acted than Hangover. Looks awful and has unwell ideas about young women. Semi-sweet.

47 Ronin - The nobility of the samurai, minus authenticity or production values
Riddick - Vin Diesel still trapped in the cl projects no one wants. A tax write-off?
Haute cuisine - Some people see any film about food. But some people ain't me!
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 - Probably not a sequel to see first, or at all
Free Birds - Tagline: "The greatest turkey movie of all time." I'm not kidding.
Walking with Dinosaurs 3D - A feature? An IMAX Experience? No, don't answer.

FORGIVE THEM FATHER
Parkland - We've all wondered how JFK's murder went down for hospital staff
Escape Plan - Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte for straight guys, except not amazing
Grudge Match - What Ever Happened to Raging Bull? with laffs, mo-cap suits
Delivery Man - A horror film where Vince Vaughn fathers a town's worth of kids