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
78 `Cache’: Michael Haneke’s 2005 Cannes prize-winner–about an intellectual bourgeois Parisian couple, Georges and Anne Laurent (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche), terrorized by mysterious surveillance cameras and cryptic notes–is a psychological thriller with a strong political agenda. Haneke turns our initial expectations radically inside out, using the methods of “Rear Window” to evoke the world of Jean-Luc Godard’s ’60s political films and “The Battle of Algiers,” crafting an icy tale about the secret guilt of Europe’s elite.
62 `Mrs. Henderson Presents’
Stephen Frears
61 `Glory Road’
James Gartner
60 `Tristan & Isolde’
Kevin Reynolds
59 `Last Holiday’
Wayne Wang
52 `Hoodwinked’
Cory Edwards
Movies now playing
77 `Munich’
Steven Spielberg
72 `Match Point’
Woody Allen
70 `Casanova’
Lasse Hallstrom
69 `The Matador’
Richard Shepard
65 `The White Countess’
James Ivory
64 `The Ringer’
Barry W. Blaustein
54 `Wolf Creek’
Greg McLean
52 `The Producers’
Susan Stroman
39 `Rumor Has It…’
Rob Reiner
36 `Cheaper by the Dozen 2′
Adam Shankman
New DVDs
91 `The Wild Bunch’: Sam Peckinpah’s great violent western about bad men going to Mexico, a tale of demonic intensity, nightmare nihilism, cockeyed courage, outrageous compassion and savage grandeur, with William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson and Edmond O’Brien as the bunch, Robert Ryan as their pursuer. An American masterpiece, with fantastic cinematography by Lucien Ballard; the restored original director’s cut is a cause for celebration.
90 Sam Peckinpah’s
Legendary Westerns Collection
(`The Wild Bunch’ / `Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid’ / `Ride the High Country’ / `The Ballad of Cable Hogue’)
88 `Vidas Secas’
(`Barren Lives’)
Nelson Pereira dos Santos
87 `Ride the
High Country’
Sam Peckinpah
84 `The Magnificent
Seven’ (Two-disc collector edition)
John Sturges
83 `The Ballad
of Cable Hogue’
Sam Peckinpah
83 `The Short Films
of David Lynch’
David Lynch
80 `The Bad Sleep Well’
Akira Kurosawa
