The National Society of Film Critics is a 57-member group comprising critics from major newspapers and magazines across the United States. 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
72 `Match Point’: Woody Allen’s new movie, his best in recent years, takes him away from Manhattan and one-liners, deep into Hitchcock/Patricia Highsmith (“Strangers on a Train”) territory–even into a bit of Theodore Dreiser (“An American Tragedy”/ “A Place in the Sun”). Set in contemporary upper-class London, it’s an icy, witty, beautifully plotted and played psychological thriller about an opportunistic tennis player (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), his rich wife (Emily Mortimer), his sexy actress-mistress (Scarlett Johansson) and the traps of infidelity and violence into which he inexorably falls. Tied for this week’s top spot: Margaret Brown’s documentary on the great American songwriter, “Be Here To Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt.”
70 `Hostel’
Eli Roth
67 `The Matador’
Richard Shepard
Movies now playing
77 `Munich’
Steven Spielberg
75 `Brokeback Mountain’
Ang Lee
73 `King Kong’
Peter Jackson
69 `Casanova’
Lasse Hallstrom
68 `Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’
Andrew Adamson
67 `The Ringer’
Barry W. Blaustein
65 `The White Countess’
James Ivory
58 `The Family Stone’
Thomas Bezucha
56 `Fun With Dick & Jane’
Dean Parisot
54 `Wolf Creek’
Greg McLean
51 `Memoirs of a Geisha’
Rob Marshall
39 `Rumor Has It…’
Rob Reiner
36 `Cheaper by the Dozen’
Adam Shankman
New DVDs
87 `A Great Day in Harlem’: Jean Bach’s very loving and hip documentary about jazz and its finest practitioners (circa 1958) takes us back to one of jazz’s great days and gatherings: the Esquire magazine photo shoot in the summer of 1958 by photographer Art Kane, an event that assembled dozens of the era’s top musicians for a raffish pose before a Harlem brownstone. The lively subjects, some interviewed here, include Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Gerry Mulligan and Johnny Griffin. Glimpsed in the archive footage are giants such as Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus. It’s a happy, joyous, great day; it swings and so does the movie.
76 `Wedding Crashers–Uncorked’
(Unrated widescreen edition)
David Dobkin
75 `Broken Flowers’
Jim Jarmusch
74 `Secuestro Express’
Jonathan Jakubowicz
73 `Wedding Crashers’
(R-rated edtion)
David Dobkin
73 `Or, My Treasure’
Keren Yedaya
68 `Dumb and Dumber’
Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly
63 `Snatch’
Guy Ritchie
54 `The Valachi Papers’
Terence Young
Previously released DVDs
87 `Airplane’–The `Don’t Call Me Shirley’ edition
Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, David Zucker
87 `Cafe Lumiere’
Hou Hsiao-hsien
86 `The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach’
Jean-Marie Straub
86 `Seven Men from Now’
Budd Boetticher
83 `Grizzly Man’
Werner Herzog
83 `The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill’
Judy Irving
82 `2046′
Wong Kar-Wai
81 `Toy Story 2′
(2-disc special edition)
John Lasseter
81 `Austeria’
Jerzy Kawalerowicz
80 `Gallipoli’
Peter Weir
73 `The Producers’
Mel Brooks
69 `The Brothers Grimm’
Terry Gilliam
64 `Chicago’–The Razzle-Dazzle edition
Rob Marshall
