Top Ten Lists

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Re: Top Ten Lists

Post by Sabin »

Mike D'Angelo does an annual awards survey among his peers known as The "Skandies". They have a pretty solid history of choosing interesting films. Every year he unveils the top five in every category, his "nominations" before counting down to the number one ranked choices. Last year, they gave Best Picture and Director to The Tree of Life and Malick, Actor and Screenplay to Peyman Moaddi and Asghar Farhadi's screenplay for A Separation, Best Actress and Supporting Actress to Anna Paquin and J. Smith-Cameron for Margaret, Best Supporting Actor to Albert Brooks from Drive, and Best Scene went to "Nights in White Satin" from House of Tolerance. The year before they awarded Dogtooth Best Picture and Best Scene (for the big dance scene) while The Social Network won Best Director, Actor, and Screenplay. Winter's Bone won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor and The Ghost Writer won Best Supporting Actress for Olivia Williams. Their big winner of all time Inglourious Basterds won Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor for Waltz, Supporting Actress for Melanie Laurent, Screenplay, and also Best Scene for "Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied France", leaving only two prizes left in 2009: Best Actor for Joaquin Phoenix in Two Lovers and Best Actress for Tilda Swinton in Julia.

This year, Holy Motors is their big winner. Everyone number one choice led from anywhere from two hundred-ish votes on the long end (between Lavant and Day-Lewis) and fifty-ish voters on the short end (between Hoffman and Waltz).

Best Picture
1. Holy Motors
2. Moonrise Kingdom
3. The Deep Blue Sea
4. The Master
5. The Turin Horse

Best Director
1. Leos Carax, Holy Motors
2. Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master
3. Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom
4. Terence Davies, The Deep Blue Sea
5. Bela Tarr, The Turin Horse

Best Actor
1. Denis Lavant, Holy Motors
2. Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
3. Joaquin Phoenix, The Master
4. Jean-Louis Trinignant, Amour
5. Jack Black, Bernie

Best Actress
1. Rachel Weisz, The Deep Blue Sea
2. Ann Dowd, Compliance
3. Emmanuel Riva, Amour
4. Hani Furstenberg, The Loneliest Planet
5. Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

Best Supporting Actor
1. Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
2. Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained
3. Matthew McConaughey, Magic Mike
4. Samuel L. Jackson, Django Unchained
5. Simon Russell Beane, The Deep Blue Sea

Best Supporting Actress
1. Amy Adams, The Master
2. Jennifer Ehle, Zero Dark Thirty
3. Cécile De France, The Kid with a Bike
4. Anne Hathaway, The Dark Knight Rises
5. Rosemarie De Witt, Your Sister's Sister

Best Screenplay
1. Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola, Moonrise Kingdom
2. Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained
3. Rian Johnson, Looper
4. Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master
5. Whit Stillman, Damsels in Distress

Best Scene
1. Entracte ~ Holy Motors
2. First Processing Scene ~ The Master
3. Opening Trudge ~ The Turin Horse
4. Landing ~ Flight
5. The Incident ~ The Loneliest Planet
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Re: Top Ten Lists

Post by rolotomasi99 »

I am not sure if anyone is still interested in this topic, but Movie City News crunched the numbers to see how each film did on critics top ten lists:

http://moviecitynews.com/2013/01/the-20 ... s-updated/

The top ten of top tens are:

1. Zero Dark Thirty

2. The Master

3. Moonrise Kingdom

4. Amour

5. Lincoln

6. Beasts Of The Southern Wild

7. Holy Motors

8. Argo

9. Silver Linings Playbook

10. Django Unchained
"When it comes to the subject of torture, I trust a woman who was married to James Cameron for three years."
-- Amy Poehler in praise of Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow
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Re: Top Ten Lists

Post by OscarGuy »

I honestly don't think Les Mis is the BFCA's thing in general. So yes, I do think the only reason they would be voting for it is if they were bribed.
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Re: Top Ten Lists

Post by Big Magilla »

Only if you think the only reason they'd vote for it was if they were bribed. The soundtrack being released commercially in the U.S. is a highlights album. Wonder if it's the same truncated thing.
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Re: Top Ten Lists

Post by OscarGuy »

Fair warning about BFCA. Many of us have been concerned that they are becoming the Golden Globes. They've started receiving the same kind of swag. This year, they received an engraved iPod with the Les Mis soundtrack on it. We'll see if that influences their voting or not.
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Re: Top Ten Lists

Post by ITALIANO »

anonymous1980 wrote:Lights Camera Jackson's Top 10 List. 14 year old "critic" and actual voting member of the BFCA/Critic's Choice Awards. Taste is fairly middle-brow but it has more personality than Peter Travers

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Re: Top Ten Lists

Post by anonymous1980 »

Lights Camera Jackson's Top 10 List. 14 year old "critic" and actual voting member of the BFCA/Critic's Choice Awards. Taste is fairly middle-brow but it has more personality than Peter Travers':

1. ARGO
Ben Affleck not only stars-in but masterfully directs this drama based on the true story of six Americans hiding-out during the Iran Hostage Crisis. Affleck’s achievements both in front of and behind the camera are amazing. Bryan Cranston (who appeared in practically every movie this year) has some strong moments. And Alan Arkin and John Goodman are 2012’s best duo playing a producer and make-up artist who are key characters in this daring rescue plan. Arkin’s a frontrunner for every Best Supporting Actor award. “Argo” is part drama; part movie about the making of movies; part suspense thriller, and it was the only film this year where my heart was truly pounding while I was watching it and it’s made a lasting impression on me since.

2. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
Bradley Cooper stars in this “slice of life” comedy about a some-what dysfunctional guy who’s looking to put his life back together. It works every step of the way. Jennifer Lawrence is excellent; Robert De Niro and Chris Tucker help maintain a perfect tone throughout. It’s an engaging story with very believable characters. Probably the most FUN I had at the movies this year.

3. RUBY SPARKS
It’s rare that someone in Hollywood comes-up with an original concept for a film - and then can pull-it-off. Writer/Star Zoe Kazan created this story of a struggling writer who dreams-up a character - a young woman, and after he writes about her, she literally comes to life. Great cast: Paul Dano, Annette Bening, Antonio Banderas, Chris Messina and Steve Coogan. Watch it.

4. SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD
I’ve been telling you about it since it opened in June because it’s simply incredible. Steve Carell and Keira Knightley are at their finest, dealing with a “what would you do if the world was ending in a few weeks” scenario. Funny, sad, smart and an honest pay-off at the end.

5. THE IMPOSSIBLE
Based on a true story, Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor play parents vacationing with their kids in Thailand when the deadly 2004 tsunami hits and tears them apart. Strong performances by Critics Choice nominee Watts and newcomer Tom Holland - and McGregor is great as well. This is a powerful and moving film.

6. LINCOLN
Daniel Day-Lewis is simply outstanding as our 16th President. It has the best ensemble of the year - including Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Hal Holbrook. And Steven Spielberg stages it all perfectly.

7. FRANKENWEENIE
Tim Burton’s first animated film since 2005’s “Corpse Bride” is smart, funny, emotional and visually stunning. It’s the best animated film of the year and has a real shot at taking home the Oscar.

8. SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN
It was a great year for documentaries, and this is the best of the bunch. Tells the story of a singer from Detroit named Rodriguez who is unknown in America, but his music becomes legendary in South Africa. Fascinating, featuring some candid interviews, amazing footage. Inspiring filmmaking.

9. LES MISERABLES
The first movie musical in which actors performed every song live (no prerecorded music), and it paid off. Credit to Director Tom Hooper. Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway are locks for Oscar nominations.

10. MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS
Director Joss Whedon’s extravaganza brought together all of the Marvel superheroes and dominated the box office, becoming 2012’s highest-grossing film with $623 million. Action-packed, good performances, particularly by Mark Ruffalo and Samuel L. Jackson, and a whole lot of fun.

HONORABLE MENTIONS
BERNIE - Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine star in this true-life crime story. Fascinating and fun.
BULLY - Powerful documentary about the current state of bullying in our education system.
HITCHCOCK - Anthony Hopkins is perfect as the legendary film director, and Helen Mirren is equally strong as his wife. One of the best times I had at a theater in years.
MADAGASCAR 3: EUROPE'S MOST WANTED - The best of the trilogy. Great script and vivid animation.
ZERO DARK THIRTY - Kathryn Bigelow's hunt for Osama bin Laden drama may be the most authentic-looking film of the year.
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Re: Top Ten Lists

Post by Sabin »

Roger Ebert concedes and ranks his films. Poor guy has been through so much over the past ten years.



A funny thing happened on the way to the Oscars. Not to the Oscars. To me. I sustained a hairline fracture of my left hip. I didn't fall. I didn't break it. It just sort of... happened to itself. Most of the time, it causes me no pain at all. But my left leg won't bear any weight, nor can I walk on it. This pain is off the charts. It has nothing to do with cancer. It's plain bad luck.

The good news is that I've seen the films of one of the best recent years in cinema. I wrote more than 300 reviews in 2012 -- a record -- and it was unusually difficult to leave out many of the quote-unquote "best" films in 11th place.

Here are the Best Films I saw in 2012:

1. • "Argo"

This film takes first place on my best movie list because it is above all else a movie -- pure, strong and sound. It has the classic values of a Hollywood thriller. It is "based on a true story." Yes, it is. Countless movies are "inspired on real events," but these truly took place. The extraction of the six Americans remained top secret for 18 years. They all returned safely to America. In "Argo," a fake sci-fi movie called "Argo" is floated as a cover story to explain some Americans in Iran during the hostqage crisis. This fake "Argo," needless to say, was never filmed. The new film reveals surprises about a story we all lived though. It is told with classic comedy and tension.


2. • "Life of Pi"

Ang Lee's "Life of Pi" is a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery. Inspired by a worldwide best-seller that many readers must have assumed was unfilmmable, it is a triumph over its difficulties. It is also a moving spiritual achievement, a movie whose title could have been shortened to "Life."

The story involves the 227 days that its teenage hero spends drifting across the Pacific in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. It expands into a parable of survival, acceptance and adaptation. The story begins in a small family zoo in India, where the boy christened Piscine is raised. The zoo goes broke, and Pi's father puts his family and a few valuable animals on a ship bound for Canada. In a bruising series of falls, a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a tiger tumble into the boat with the boy, and are swept away by high seas. His family is never seen again. The film steadfastly refuses to sentimentalize the tiger.


3. • "Lincoln"

I've rarely been more aware than during Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" that Abraham Lincoln was a plain-spoken, practical, down-to-earth man from the farmlands of Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. He had less than a year of formal education, and taught himself through his hungry reading of great books. I still recall from a childhood book the image of him taking a piece of charcoal and working out mathematics by writing on the back of a shovel.

Lincoln lacked social polish but he had great intelligence and knowledge of human nature. The hallmark of the man, performed so powerfully by Daniel Day-Lewis in "Lincoln," is calm self-confidence, patience and a willingness to play politics in a realistic way.


4. • "End of Watch"

Here is one of the best police movies in recent years, a virtuoso joining of performances and often-startling action. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña as Taylor and Zavala, two Los Angeles street cops who bend a few rules but must be acknowledged as heroes. After too many police movies about officers who essentially use their badges as licenses to run wild, it's inspiring to realize these men take their mission -- to serve and protect -- with such seriousness they're willing to risk their lives.

Taylor and Zavala fit the template of the "cop buddy movie," but "End of Watch" goes so much deeper than that. They've been partners for years, and are so close that Zavala's wife Gabby (Natalie Martinez) and Taylor's girlfriend Janet (Anna Kendrick) have become like sisters. They're transferred to a tough, largely Mexican-American district, where their persistence leads them across the scent of a Mexican drug cartel operating in L.A. This is really an assignment for a detective, but they don't avoid risk, and eventually become so dangerous to the cartel that a hit is ordered against them.


5. • "Arbitrage"

We tend to identify with the leading character of a film, even if he is a heartless bastard. Few films illustrate this curiosity better than Nicholas Jarecki's "Arbitrage," and few actors might have been better at making it work than Richard Gere . Here is man involved in a multi-million-dollar fraud, who cheats on his wife, tries to cover up the death his mistress, and would throw his own daughter under a bus. Yet we are tense with suspense while watching him try to get away with it.

Gere has always been an actor good at suggesting secrets under the surface. Improbably handsome, he has aged here into the embodiment of a Wall Street lion, worth billions, charming, generous, honored, and a fraud right down to his bones. He plays Robert Miller, whose face must have beamed reassuringly from the covers of many magazines. As the story opens, he's involved in the merger of his venture capital empire, and has hidden $400 million in debt not only from the investors but even from his daughter Brooke (Brit Marling), the CFO of his empire. Young, smart, she doesn't suspect her father has cooked the books. If the deception is revealed, she'll be left hanging out to dry.


6 • "Flight"

After opening with one of the most terrifying flying scenes I've witnessed, in which an airplane is saved by being flown upside-down, Robert Zemeckis' "Flight" segues into a brave and tortured performance by Denzel Washington -- one of his very best. Not often does a movie character make such a harrowing personal journey that keeps us in deep sympathy all of the way.

Washington plays Whip Whitaker, a veteran commercial airlines pilot who over the years has built up a shaky tolerance for quantities of alcohol and cocaine that would be lethal for most people. At the film opens, he's finishing an all-night party with a friendly flight attendant named Katerina (Nadine Velazquez), and jolts himself back into action with two lines of cocaine. Their flight takes off in an alarming rainstorm, and encounters the kind of turbulence that has the co-pilot crying out, "Oh, Lord!" But Whip powers them at high speed into an area of clear sky, before a mechanical malfunction sends the aircraft into an uncontrollable nose-dive. The way Zemeckis and his team portray the terror in the cabin is stomach-churning. Acting on instinct, seeming cool as ice, the older pilot inverts the plane to halt its descent, and it flies level upside-down until he rights it again to glide into a level crash-landing in an open field.


7. • "The Sessions"

You can tell from his reedy voice that speaking, for Mark, is an effort. He's 38 years old and has spent most of those years in an iron lung. His body is thin and twisted. He depends on Vera, his caregiver, to wheel him around during a few hours a day out of the mechanism.

He has an instinct that his time is running out. He would like to experience sexual intercourse with a woman once before he dies. His need requires an awesome dedication. Mark is played by John Hawkes, who has emerged in recent years as an actor of amazing versatility. What he does here is not only physically challenging, but requires timing and emotion to elevate the story into realms of deep feeling and even comedy. More than most movies, "The Sessions" depends on two actors if it is to work at all -- and here Helen Hunt provides a performance of tact and delicacy.


8. • "Beasts of the Southern Wild"

Cut off from the mainland, surrounded by rising waters, the Bathtub is a desolate wilderness of poverty where a small community struggles to survive. Hushpuppy considers it "the prettiest place on Earth." She is a fierce and unbreakable 6-year-old girl who lives here with her father Wink and other survivors who exists so close to the earth that it might as well be them.

In the opening moments of "Beasts of the Southern Wild" I had no idea when or where we were. Only gradually did I understand that the Bathtub is offshore from New Orleans, isolated by levees, existing self-contained on its own terms. The distant profiles of drilling rigs and oil refineries might as well be mysterious prehistoric artifacts.

A fearsome storm is said to be on the way, but existence here is already post-apocalyptic, the people cobbling together discarded items of civilization like the truck bed and oil drums that have been made into a boat. Their ramshackle houses perch uneasily on bits of high ground, and some are rebuilding them into arks they hope will float through the flood. Hushpuppy is on intimate terms with the natural world, with the pigs she feeds and the fish she captures with her bare hands, and sometimes she believes animals speak to her in codes.


9. • "Oslo, August 31"

"Oslo, August 31" is about a day, a city, and a 34-year-old man named Anders, who is on release from a drug rehab center so he can go to a job interview. The film opens with his memories of growing up in Oslo, described in snatches of dialog and shown in glimpses of film. Here he was happy. Almost every street and turning is familiar.

Are we seeing a dream as it unwinds? Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie) awakens in a hotel room next to a woman we never meet, walks nearby to a wooded stream, fills his pockets with rocks and walks into the water. After an uneasy time, he pops up sputtering and climbs back on the shore. He changes clothes and goes for his interview.


10. "A Simple Life"

This film paints portraits of two good people in gentle humanist terms. It filled me with an unreasonable affection for both of them. Here is a film with the clarity of fresh stream water, flowing without turmoil to shared destiny. No plot gimmicks. Just a simple life.

The life is that of Ah Tao, who was orphaned during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, spent her entire life in the service of four generations of a Chinese family, and is now the servant of the only family member still living in China. He is Roger, a movie producer. They have a settled routine: During a meal he puts out his hand, knowing she will be standing behind him with a bowl of rice. No words.


Grand Jury Prizes

At many film festivals, the juries come up with a cockamamie category named the Grand Jury Prizes. It finds room for titles that were as good, in one way or another, as the others. Finding them a place in the numerical listing is a problem, because, really, what does such a ranking mean? Here are my ten Grand Jury Prizes, arranged in that frustrating order -- alphabetically:

"Central Park Five," "Impossible,""In the Family," "Last Ride," "A Late Quartet," "The Master," "Paradise Lost 3," "Rampart," "Searching for Sugar Man" and "West of Memphis."
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Re: Top Ten Lists

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A sample of the top 'five' films from some of the well known contributors to the Sight and Sound list:

Mark Cousins

Sofia's Last Ambulance
Hadewijch
Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present
Killing Them Softly
Florentina Hubaldo, CTE

Michel Ciment

Dormat Beauty
The Master
Mud
Tabu
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Philip French

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Berberian Sound Studio
This Is Not a Film
Moonrise Kingdom
Cosmopolis

J. Hoberman

Hayware
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
The Turin Horse

Nick James

Amour
Beyond the Hills
The Master
Something in the Air
Tabu

Philip Kemp

About Elly
Killer Joe
Looper
The Kid with a Bike
Sightseers

Kim Newman

Sightseers
Excision
Damsels in Distress
Moonrise Kingdom
Berberian Sound Studio

Nicolas Rapold

Almayer's Folly
Cosmopolis
Leviathan
The Master
Silver Linings Playbook

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Far from Afghanistan
Jerry and Me
Margaret
The Last Time I Saw Macao
Testonics

Amy Taubin

Cosmopolis
The Gatekeepers
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Amour
Memories Look at Me

David Thompson

The Kid with a Bike
Moonrise Kingdom
Holy Motors
Amour
The Master

Kenneth Turan

Amour
The Gatekeepers
Lincoln
No
Silver Linings Playbook

Armond White

Unforgivable
The Deep Blue Sea
Sacifrice
Damsels in Distress
Holy Motors
"I want cement covering every blade of grass in this nation! Don't we taxpayers have a voice anymore?" Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977)
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Re: Top Ten Lists

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Sight and Sound

They have 12 only because there are 4 equal at 8.

1. The Master
2. Tabu
3. Amour
4. Holy Motors
5. Beasts of the Southern Wild
= Berberian Sound Studio (the only film on the list I haven't seen despite plenty of opportunities. I will finally get to see the film in the new year)
7. Moonrise Kingdom
8. Beyond the Hills
= Cosmopolis
= Once upon a Time in Anatolia
= This is Not a Film
"I want cement covering every blade of grass in this nation! Don't we taxpayers have a voice anymore?" Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977)
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Re: Top Ten Lists

Post by Sabin »

David Edelstein's Top Ten List


1. Zero Dark Thirty
It opens in darkness with sounds, sirens, and sobbing phone calls from the burning Twin Towers. Revenge—such as it is—will take time. Kathryn Bigelow’s thriller is mercilessly gripping. It’s all hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. Captured suspects don’t want to talk, and wearing them down—with waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and other methods of extreme interrogation—takes weeks, months, each day uglier than the last.

Money, lots of it, must be freed up, operatives inserted into dangerous settings. There is always another busy, professionally skeptical CIA bureaucrat to be pitched—and then he’ll have to pitch his superior, who’ll have to pitch his. All of them, up to the (unseen) top honcho, ask, “What are the odds that this is Osama bin Laden?” The question still hangs as the Navy seals board the craft that will carry them into Pakistan, where, at zero dark thirty (half past midnight), they’ll don their night-vision goggles and burst into the compound—and hurry up and wait, and hurry up and wait. Most of the people they kill will be unarmed, with extra bullets pumped into prone bodies for added certainty. Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal (who wrote The Hurt Locker) give you one lonely protagonist, but she’s not in every scene and she doesn’t fight—except to make herself heard: a CIA analyst, played by the arresting Jessica Chastain, who shows her character’s rage via tension in her face and body. This is a phenomenal piece of action filmmaking—and an even better piece of nonaction filmmaking. It also borders on the politically and morally reprehensible. By showing these excellent results—and by silencing the cries of the innocents held at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and other “black sites”—it makes a case for the efficacy of torture. How to reconcile these two feelings? The debate begins December 19.

2. Lincoln
Steven Spielberg comes at our sixteenth president from an unexpected angle: He’s an executive pushing a vital piece of legislation through a Congress full of boobs, cowards, and racists. How modern. The peerless Daniel Day-Lewis lets you see the wheels turning in that overfamiliar head. James Spader, John Hawkes, and Tim Blake Nelson can lobby for me anytime.

3. Amour
The elderly Jean-Louis Trintignant watches his wife (Emmanuelle Riva) slowly fail, the vestiges of high culture crumbling with her body. The punk-sadist Michael Haneke finally made a film in which his cruelty is a kindness—i.e., a higher form of compassion.

4. The Gatekeepers
A documentary that’s even more real than Zero Dark Thirty—and, given that it’s about the Israelis and Palestinians killing one another, shockingly lucid. Director Dror Moreh brings together six former heads of Israel’s secret service, who tell us what we already know. But they really know.

5. The Deep Blue Sea
Terence Davies’s free adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 adultery drama is a tone poem of genius, the camera in harmony with the music, the images held together by pure emotion.

6. Life of Pi
There’s nothing safe or cute about Ang Lee’s 3-D, CGI-infused fairy tale in which a boy drifts through the South Pacific with a man-eating tiger. For once Lee’s over-meticulousness connects with his hero: The film is a testament to the transformative power of storytelling in the face of unimaginable horror.

7. How to Survive a Plague and Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
Two documentaries, one historic, one up-to-the-minute, about getting out the message, taking to the streets to forestall the AIDS epidemic, and to Twitter to drive a totalitarian government nuts.

8. Pitch Perfect
This a cappella rom-com musical for teens zaps you into happy submission, with Anna Kendrick leading a cast that sings as well as it zings.

9. Oslo, August 31st
It’s 24 grueling hours in the life of a cleaned-up junkie on his first trip to the big city after a year in rehab. Director Joachim Trier depicts the ache of a man for whom transcendence is beyond reach, then the liberation that becomes a death spiral.

10. Friends With Kids
Jennifer Westfeldt’s ensemble comedy has a nervous, high-strung rhythm, as if the characters’ backs are against the wall and the biological clock is ticking down. The intensity feels just right for a look at How We Breed Now.


Plus: The Good

Best Film of 2005 (First Viewed in 2012)
Margaret
Kenneth Lonergan’s extended “director’s cut” (available on DVD) of Margaret, the story of an overdramatizing Manhattan teen (Anna Paquin) and her tumultuous coming-of-age in a world in which no one really knows (or feels for) anyone else. It’s more than half an hour longer than the version released theatrically—but feels half as long. (Read the full review.)

I Love You, Too, Damn It
Holy Motors, Flight, Starlet, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Detropia, Monsieur Lazhar, Killer Joe, Skyfall, Silver Linings Playbook, Take This Waltz, Return, Beasts of the Southern Wild. [Read more on Edelstein's runners-up — as well as his thoughts behind this list — here.]

Make Way for a Duckling
Quvenzhané Wallis
A star—no, a nova—arrives in the form of little Quvenzhané Wallis of Beasts of the Southern Wild.


The Bad

Biggest Disappointment
The Campaign: Brilliant as they are, Will Ferrell and other satirists couldn’t compete with the Republican primaries for absurdity.

Biggest Shrug
Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike: They built that, you didn’t come.

Most Honorable Failures
Anna Karenina, Wuthering Heights: We salute these filmmakers for their bold artistic choices, however catastrophic the outcomes.

Note: Not seen at press time: Django Unchained, The Hobbit, The Guilt Trip, and Tabu.
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Re: Top Ten Lists

Post by Sabin »

Richard Corliss

01. Amour
02. Beasts of the Southern Wild
03. Life of Pi
04. Anna Karenina
05. The Dark Knight Rises
06. Zero Dark Thirty
07. Dark Horse
08. Dragon
09. Frankenweenie
10. Invisible War

Top Ten performances after the cut.
01. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva as Georges and Anne in Amour
02. Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild
03. Clarke Peters, Red Hook Summer
04. Rachel Weisz, Deep Blue Sea
05. Matthew McConaughey in Killer Joe
06. Denis Lavant, Holy Motors
07. Denzel Washington, Flight
08.Vanessa Paradis. Cafe de Flore
09. Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln
10. Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
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Top Ten Lists

Post by Sabin »

About time for one of these.


Owen Gleiberman
1. Lincoln (Steven Spielberg)
2. Amour (Michael Haneke)
3. Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell)
4. Room 237 (Rodney Ascher)
5. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)
6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky)
7. Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik)
8. Argo (Ben Affleck)
9. Flight (Robert Zemekis)
10. Bernie (Richard Linklater)
Worst
1. John Carter (Andrew Stanton)
2. 2016: Obama's America (Dinesh D'Souza)
3. House at the End of the Street
4. Rust and Bone (Jacques Audiard)
5. Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection (Tyler Perry)

Lisa Schwarzbaum
1. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)
2. Lincoln (Steven Spielberg)
3. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
4. Amour (Michael Haneke)
5. Argo (Ben Affleck)
6. The Gatekeepers
7. Beasts of the Southern Wild (Behn Zeitlin)
8. Skyfall (Sam Mendes)
9. The Loneliest Planet (Julia Loktev)
10. How to Survive a Plague
Worst
1. Hitchcock
2. That's What She Said
3. Hyde Park on Hudson (Roger Michell)
4. Butter
5. Trouble with the Curve
"How's the despair?"
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