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
96 `Los Olvidados’: Luis Bunuel’s great 1950 drama of juvenile delinquency in Mexico City–which won him the best director’s prize at Cannes, re-ignited his career and influenced countless other films from “Pixote” to “City of God”–remains as powerful, searing and savage as ever. In this gorgeously restored re-release, Bunuel tells the story of two boys, good Pedro (Alfonso Mejia) and evil Jaibo (Roberto Cobo), caught up in the vibrant, corrupt life of the streets. The film’s alternate “happy ending” will be shown afterwards. (In Spanish, with English subtitles.)
78 `Pulse’
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
70 `First Descent’
Kevin Harrison, Kemp Curley
20 `The Kid & I’
Penelope Spheeris
Now playing
86 `Ballets Russes’
Daniel Geller, Dayna Goldfine
80 `Good Night, and Good Luck.’
George Clooney
78 `Pride and Prejudice’
Joe Wright
77 `Capote’
Bennett Miller
74 `Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’
Mike Newell
72 `Walk the Line’
James Mangold
70 `The Weather Man’
Gore Verbinski
61 `Chicken Little’
Mark Dindal
54 `Just Friends’
Roger Kumble
53 `The Ice Harvest’
Harold Ramis
44 `Yours, Mine and Ours’
Raja Gosnell
43 `Rent’
Chris Columbus
43 `Get Rich or Die Tryin”
Jim Sheridan
40 `Derailed’
Mikael Hafstrom
New DVDs
87 `Landscape in the Mist’: A lyrical road movie about the odyssey of two children searching for their lost father across the dreamy and desolate topography of modern Greece, Theo Angelopoulos’ great 1988 film is one of his long-take, poetic masterpieces. Austere, pure and epic, filled with gorgeous vistas and an undercurrent of trauma, the film opens up veins both real and surreal and takes us into a world embracing both the painful present and the enigmatic past. (In Greek, with English subtitles.)
86 `The Unknown Chaplin’
Kevin Brownlow, David Gill
81 `The Last of England’
Derek Jarman
69 `A River Runs Through It’
Deluxe edition
Robert Redford
60 `Loving Couples’
Mai Zetterling
57 `Legends of the Fall’
Deluxe edition
Edward Zwick
52 `Mr. & Mrs. Smith’
Widescreen edition
Doug Liman
28 `Deuce Bigalow–
European Gigolo’
Mike Bigelow
Previously released
91 `King Kong’
2-disc special edition
Merian C. Cooper,
Ernest Schoedsack
89 `Ran’
Akira Kurosawa
88 `Scarlet Street’
Fritz Lang
88 `Vidas Secas’
Nelson Pereira dos Santos
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Edited by Michael Wilmington, Tribune Movie Critic
