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
60`Bubble’: Director Steven Soderbergh returns to his indie-regional “sex, lies and videotape” roots with this low-budget drama about obsession and jealousy in a bland, economically strapped mid-American small town. Working on location in Ohio near the West Virginia border, with a non-professional local cast, Soderbergh tells a disturbingly unexcited tale of love and murder, creating one of those David Lynch-ian “Twin Peaks” realms where dark veins and pathology are buried beneath a bland surface.
58`Nanny McPhee’
Kirk Jones
Movies now playing
78`Cache’
Michael Haneke
77`Munich’
Steven Spielberg
75`The Real Dirt
on Farmer John’
Taggart Siegel
73`King Kong’
Peter Jackson
72`Match Point’
Woody Allen
70`Casanova’
Lasse Hallstrom
69`The New World’
Terrence Malick
65`The White Countess’
James Ivory
65`Looking for Comedy
in the Muslim World’
Albert Brooks
64`Last Holiday’
Wayne Wang
62`Mrs. Henderson Presents’
Stephen Frears
60`Glory Road’
James Gartner
57`End of the Spear’
Jim Hanon
51`Tristan & Isolde’
Kevin Reynolds
51`Hoodwinked’
Cory Edwards
New DVDs
89`The Virgin Spring’: Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 medieval revenge tale, like “The Seventh Seal,” is a fable of pictorial beauty, relentless power and harrowing depth. Written by Ulla Isaksson, stunningly shot by Sven Nykvist, it’s a stark, scary work, with Max Von Sydow magnificent as the devout farmer driven to frenzy and violence when his daughter is raped and murdered. An Oscar-winner and a top-rank Bergman classic. In Swedish, with English subtitles.
78`Repo Man’
collector’s edition
Alex Cox
75`Dim Sum–
A Little Bit of Heart’
Wayne Wang
75`Educating Rita’
Lewis Gilbert
72`The Aristocrats’
Paul Provenza
69`Oliver Twist’
Roman Polanski
68`Chan Is Missing’
Wayne Wang
63`Thumbsucker’
Mike Mills
60`Cisco Pike’
B.L. Norton
50`Flightplan’
Robert Schwentke
