The National Society of Film Critics is a 57-member group comprising critics from major newspapers and magazines across the U.S. Movies and DVD/videos in their first national release (some of which have yet to open in Chicago) are ranked by NSFC members for the poll on a scale of 100 possible points. The averaged ratings follow this key: 100-81 = excellent; 80-61 = good; 60-41 = average; 40-21 = fair; 20-0 = poor.
The NSFC Web site, which contains more complete rankings of films and video past and present, as well as film descriptions, links to reviews by NSFC members, and the group’s history can be visited at
http://nsfc.zap2it.com/nsfc/cda/index.jsp.
NSFC chairman: David Sterritt (Christian Science Monitor). Poll editor: Michael Wilmington (Chicago Tribune).
NEW DVDS
95 Astaire & Rogers Collection, Vol. 1: The couple everyone knew as Fred and Ginger were the most popular movie dance team of all time, and when that great light-footed duo whirled together over ballroom floors, sidewalks, department stores, luxury hotels, nightclubs or Venetian fantasy squares, they spun magic we’ve never seen since and likely never will. This volume contains the cream of their films, mostly from the ’30s: the sublime “Swing Time” (George Stevens), the untoppable “Top Hat,” the infectious “Shall We Dance,” the seaworthy “Follow the Fleet” (all three by Mark Sandrich) and their underrated last dance, “The Barkleys of Broadway,” directed by Charles Walters and penned by “Singin’ in the Rain” scribes Betty Comden and Adolph Green.
92 `Top Hat’
Dir., Mark Sandrich
92 `Swing Time’
Dir., George Stevens
86 `The Barkleys of Broadway’
Dir., Charles Walters
84 `Follow the Fleet’
Dir., Mark Sandrich
80 `Shall We Dance’
Dir., Mark Sandrich
79 `Flic Story’
Dir., Jacques Deray
71 `The Man Who Copied’
Dir., Jorge Furtado
66 `Sin City’
Dir, Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino
66 `Brown Bunny’
Dir., Vincent Gallo
65 `The Mambo Kings’
Dir., Arne Glimcher
60 `The Ballad of Jack and Rose’
Dir., Rebecca Miller
46 `The Wedding Date’
Dir., Clare Kilner
PREVIOUSLY RELEASED
88 `Lady With a Little Dog’
Dir., Josef Heifitz
79 `Off the Map’
Dir., Campbell Scott
78 `Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte’
Dir., Robert Aldrich
78 `Kung Fu Hustle’
Dir., Stephen Chow
73 `Look at Me’
Dir., Agnes Jaoui
NEW MOVIES
84 `Tropical Malady’ (`Sud Pralad’): Two young men, a forest ranger and a provincial youth, engage in a languid flirtation interrupted by another episode: a long nightmarish sequence in the jungle, where one of them is pursued by a tiger-man who may be the other, enchanted. This strange, lyrical film from Apichatpong Weerasethakul (“Blissfully Yours”), the widely admired young Thai writer-director who once studied in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute, was a special jury prize winner at Cannes. It’s a fine introduction to a budding star of the Asian new wave. In Thai, with English subtitles.
79 `A State of Mind’
Dir., Daniel Gordon
67 `The 40 Year-Old Virgin’
Dir., Judd Apatow
63 `Asylum’
Dir., David Mackenzie
62 `Valiant’
Dir., Gary Chapman
54 `Red Eye’
Dir., Wes Craven
41 `Ma Mere’
Dir., Christophe Honore
NOW PLAYING
84 `Grizzly Man’
Dir., Werner Herzog
79 `Broken Flowers’
Dir., Jim Jarmusch
79 `A State of Mind’
Dir., Daniel Gordon
74 `The Aristocrats’
Dir., Paul Provenza
71 `Junebug’
Dir., Phil Morrison
68 `My Date with Drew’
Dir., Jon Gunn, Brian Herzlinger, Brett Winn
67 `Secuestro Express’
Dir., Jonathan Jakubowicz
61 `The Great Raid’
Dir., John Dahl
61 `The Skeleton Key’
Dir., Iain Softley
61 `Four Brothers’
Dir., John Singleton
58 `Sky High’
Dir., Mike Mitchell
51 `Must Love Dogs’
Dir., Gary David Goldberg
