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 `Pride & Prejudice’: Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice”–that ageless, sparkling British comedy of manners that has delighted many generations of readers and a few more of moviegoers and TV-watchers–gets a zesty, vital new film translation from director Joe Wright. He makes the cast younger, the setting older and the camera more active, while giving us a heart-stealing Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) and a callower-than-Colin-Firth but still likable Darcy. (Admirers of Firth’s or Olivier’s Darcy will be disappointed, but few others should be.) The staunch supporting cast includes Donald Sutherland, Brenda Blethyn and Judi Dench.
73 `Sarah Silverman:
Jesus is Magic’
Liam Lynch
66 `Zathura’
Jon Favreau
51 `Get Rich or Die Tryin”
Jim Sheridan
48 `Bee Season’
Scott McGehee, David Siegel
38 `Derailed’
Mikael Hafstrom
Revival
85 `The Passenger’
Michelangelo Antonioni
Now playing
76 `Shopgirl’
Anand Tucker
67 `North Country’
Niki Caro
61 `Chicken Little’
Mark Dindal
58 `Jarhead’
Sam Mendes
53 `The Legend of Zorro’
Martin Campbell
41 `Saw II’
Darren Bousman
New DVDs
94 `Pickpocket’: Robert Bresson’s 1959 classic about the French underworld is more sublimely unnerving than almost any other crime film: a cinema poem giving its subjects intense religious and aesthetic resonance. Bresson’s sad-eyed anti-hero Michel (Martin Lassalle) the pickpocket, makes himself an intellectual criminal modeled on Dostoevski’s Raskolnikov; the film is an odd, grave, graceful masterpiece. (In French, with English subtitles.)
86 `La Dolce Vita’
Federico Fellini
81 `Edward Scissorhands’
Tim Burton
67 Warner Bros. Classic
Holiday Collection
(`Boys Town’ / `A Christmas Carol’ (1938) / `Christmas in Connecticut’)
57 `Jumanji’
Joe Johnston
35 `Christmas with the Kranks’
Joe Roth
