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
75 `King Kong’: Peter Jackson’s mind-bendingly spectacular remake of “King Kong” is, like the 1933 Merian Cooper-Ernest Schoedsack original, a great horrific, romantic adventure/fantasy about a recklessly obsessive moviemaker (Jack Black) and his volatile subject: an ape who runs off with a blond (Naomi Watts). But it’s also the passionate record of a filmmaker (Jackson) in love with the movies and all they can accomplish, who here stretches popular filmmaking to its near-limit.
74 `Brokeback Mountain’
Ang Lee
67 `The Family Stone’
Thomas Bezucha
53 `The Producers’
Susan Stroman
53 `Memoirs of a Geisha’
Rob Marshall
53 `Ellie Parker’
Scott Coffey
Movies now playing
74 `Syriana’
Steven Gaghan
67 `Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’
Andrew Adamson
60 `First Descent’
Kemp Curly, Kevin Harrison
58 `39 Pounds of Love’
Dani Menkin
55 `The Ice Harvest’
Harold Ramis
55 `Just Friends’
Roger Kumble
47 `Aeon Flux’
Karyn Kusama
42 `Yours, Mine and Ours’
Raja Gosnell
39 `Rent’
Chris Columbus
New DVDs
87 `Airplane–The “Don’t Call Me Shirley” Edition’: This rowdy, hilarious 1981 sendup of every airplane disaster movie ever made–and particularly of 1957’s “Zero Hour!,” whose plot it sends through the comic shredder, was the funniest movie of the Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker writer-director team and maybe of its whole era. With Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty and an amazing cast of straight-faced Hollywood vets making grand hammy fun of their old images, including Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Robert Stack and, in his comedy star ascension, Leslie Nielsen.
83 4 Films by Otar Iosseliani
Stan Beek, Otar Iosseliani, Peter Wortmann
80 `The Producers’
Mel Brooks
80 `Let Him Have It’
Peter Medak
80 `Gallipoli’
Peter Weir
78 `Next Stop, Greenwich Village’
Paul Mazursky
77 `Rock ‘n’ Roll High School’
Allan Arkush, Joe Dante
76 `Bad News Bears’
Richard Linklater
71 `Frank Miller’s Sin City’
(Recut, extended, unrated)
Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
71 `The 40 Year-Old Virgin’
(Unrated widescreen edition)
Judd Apatow
70 `Women in Revolt’
Paul Morrissey, Andy Warhol
69 `The Yards’
James Gray
62 `Big Bad Mama’
Steve Carver
60 `F.I.S.T.’
Norman Jewison
57 `The Baxter’
Michael Showalter
57 `The Island’
Michael Bay
Previously released DVDs
91 `Shoot the Piano Player’
Francois Truffaut
87 `Forbidden Games’
Rene Clement
85 `Kiss of Death’
Henry Hathaway
81 `Where the Sidewalk Ends’
Otto Preminger
74 `The Ninth Day’
Volker Schlondorff
73 `The Dark Corner’
Henry Hathaway
73 `Star Wars’ Trilogy
George Lucas
71 `Cinderella Man’
Ron Howard
66 `Spanking the Monkey’
David Russell
53 `Fun With Dick and Jane’
Ted Kotcheff
