John Dillinger and Johnny Depp Roger Ebert gives Public Enemies 3.5 stars, though it reads like a 4-star review right up to very last paragraph. This is very disciplined film. You might not think it was possible to make a film about the most famous outlaw of the 1930s without clich√©s and “star chemistry” and a film class screenplay structure, but Mann...
Monthly Archives: June 2009
It is still surprising to me that so many see the ten best picture nominees change as a negative. In any given year, there are at least twenty “best pictures.” Ten of them is better than five. Five never does justice to a year and, in fact, rewards the best campaigns and the “Oscar” movies, now becoming more and more marginalized and obscure. The...
Tomorrow I’ll post a poll of 30 or 40 films that seem to be the most likely Best Picture contenders. When we did this last year, the poll results were collected the week after the Oscars, March 2008. We scored 4 eventual nominees in our first 7 poll positions. So as frivolous as this might seem when we’ve seen none of the films, it can yield interesting...
I hadn’t seen this until it ran after True Blood last night. Happy to find somebody else has already youtubed it, saving me the trouble. Currently standing with a score of 70 on RT, we’re keeping our eyes peeled all day for any reviews that might tip that average up or down. [EDIT: Thanks to Alison Flynn for spotting David Denby's New Yorker review] Michael...
In the avalanche of stunning events last week — both good and very bad — a couple of guest essays got elbowed out of the way for more urgent breaking news. We’ll kick off the pre-holiday relaxation this morning by kicking back and catching up with tjose two AD reader submissions. You’ll remember Ben Would’s Oscar Ranking project in March,...
As mentioned above, last week we were offered a pair of special contributions that got lost in the news cycle of Academy chaos and celebrity tragedy. Eric Beck wrote us with his thoughts about the announcement of 10 Best Picture nominees, taking a look at 10 significant films that might have benefited from a broader slate in past years. ===== The 10 Most Unhappy Films...
