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 correspond to the following 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 movies
82 `A History of Violence’: David (“The Fly”) Cronenberg’s new movie is an amusingly violent study of all-American crime, following the misadventures of small-town cafe owner Viggo Mortensen and his family. After he heroically foils a robbery, they are pulled inexorably into deeper layers of pathology while confronting meaner or more powerful bad guys (including Ed Harris and William Hurt). Cronenberg’s most universally accessible film in years, it’s also probably his sharpest, funniest exploration of the dark side since “Videodrome.”
80 `Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride’
Tim Burton,
Mike Johnson
72 `Proof’
John Madden
71 `Thumbsucker’
Mike Mills
71 `Reel Paradise’
Steve James
64 `Everything Is Illuminated’
Liev Schreiber
60 `Dear Wendy’
Thomas Vinterberg
55 `Hellbent’
Paul Etheredge-Ouzts
Now playing
70 `Cote d’Azur’
Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau
67 `The Constant Gardener’
Fernando Meirelles
62 `An Unfinished Life’
Lasse Hallstrom
57 `Flightplan’
Robert Scwentke
57 `Roll Bounce’
Malcolm D. Lee
52 `The Exorcism of Emily Rose’
Scott Derrickson
50 `Just Like Heaven’
Mark Waters
49 `Green Street Hooligans’
Lexi Alexander
New DVDs
90 `Masculin Feminin’: Jean-Luc Godard’s 1966 film portrait of reckless, anti-mainstream Paris youth, starring Jean-Pierre Leaud and Chantal Goya (with a cameo by Brigitte Bardot) was famed in its day for its catchphrase “the children of Marx and Coca Cola.” That’s what Godard shows us on this Criterion Collection release: politically radical French youth in the ’60s, opposed to the Vietnam War, but devoted to American pop culture, rock ‘n’ roll and movies and falling into the classical traps of French romance and malaise.
89 `Point of Order’
Dir., Emile De Antonio
89 `In the Year of the Pig’
Emile De Antonio
88 `Bob Dylan–
No Direction Home’
Martin Scorsese
87 `Naked’
Mike Leigh
86 `Gabbeh’
Mohsen Makhmalbaf
83 `Turtles Can Fly’
Bahman Ghobadi
82 `Beat the Devil’
John Huston
81 `An Angel at My Table’
Jane Campion
79 `Major Dundee’
(extended version)
Sam Peckinpah
72 `The Cardinal’
Otto Preminger
70 `The Outsiders’
(two-disc special edition)
Francis Ford Coppola
61 `Mallrats’
Kevin Smith
55 `The Longest Yard’
Peter Segal
35 `The Adventures
of Sharkboy and Lavagirl’
(2D version)
Robert Rodriguez
Previously released
91 `Avant Garde–Experimental Cinema of the 1920s’
Various directors
85 `Bunny Lake Is Missing’
Otto Preminger
82 `Head-On’
Fatih Akin
80 `Coal Miner’s Daughter’
Michael Apted
77 `Rumble Fish’
Francis Ford Coppola
75 `Carlito’s Way’
Brian Palma
73 `Places in the Heart’
Robert Benton
