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
87 `Cafe Lumiere’: The latest film by Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien (“City of Sadness”) is another of this great director’s beautifully composed, meditative portraits of society’s outsiders and Asia in flux. Shot in Tokyo and dedicated to the late Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu (“Tokyo Story”), Hou’s new picture follows a young pregnant music journalist (played by pop star Yo Hitoto) on a journey through Tokyo’s photogenic streets and trains, Japan’s musical past and her own evolving life.
75 `The Real Dirt
on Farmer John’
Taggart Siegel
69`The New World’
68 `Transamerica’
Duncan Tucker
65`Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World’
Albert Brooks
57`End of the Spear’
Jim Hanon
Now playing
77`Munich’
Steven Spielberg
73`Fateless’
Lajos Koltai
63`Last Holiday’
Wayne Wang
62`Mrs. Henderson Presents’
Stephen Frears
60`Glory Road’
James Gartner
52`Hostel’
Eli Roth
51`Hoodwinked’
Cory Edwards
49`Tristan & Isolde’
Kevin Reynolds
New DVDs
83`Ju Dou’: Another of Zhang Yimou’s sensual “forbidden” romances, his 1989 foreign-language-Oscar nominee about the forced and impossible marriage between an angry old dye factory owner and his stunning but unresponsive wife (the exquisitely lovely Gong Li), who revolts by having an affair with her husband’s young nephew. Beautifully designed and photographed, Zhang infuses this period drama of infidelity and murder (originally censored in China) with vibrantly colored visuals and an undertow of aching eroticism. In Chinese with English subtitles.
80`Enron–The Smartest Guys
in the Room’
Alex Gibney
78`Ghost in the Machine’
Rachel Talalay
74`Junebug’
Phil Morrison
63`Lord of War’
(two-disc special edition)
Andrew Niccol
49`Asylum’
David Mackenzie
35`Two For the Money’
(widescreen edition)
D.J. Caruso
12`The Man’
Les Mayfield
Previously released
91`The Wild Bunch’
Original director’s cut, two-disc special edition
Sam Peckinpah
90Sam Peckinpah’s
Legendary Westerns Collection
(“The Wild Bunch”/”Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”/”Ride the High Country”/”The Ballad of Cable Hogue”)
Sam Peckinpah
88`Vidas Secas’
Nelson Pereira dos Santos
87`Ride the High Country’
Sam Peckinpah
84`The Magnificent Seven’
(two-disc collector’s edition)
John Sturges
83`The Ballad of Cable Hogue’
Sam Peckinpah
83The Short Films
of David Lynch
David Lynch
82`Saraband’
Ingmar Bergman
81`The Bad Sleep Well’
Akira Kurosawa
80`Eraserhead’
David Lynch
80`Pat Garrett and
Billy the Kid’
(two-disc special edition)
Sam Peckinpah
