Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Top eleven films of the year. Still plenty left to see, but this was my personal cut-off to put a list out on the Internets. 1. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater) 2. The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino) 3. Bastards (Claire Denis) 4. Upstream Color (Shane Carruth) 5. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski) ...

UPSTREAM COLOR Cast: Amy Seimeitz, Shane Carruth, Andrew Sensenig, Thiago Martins. Dir: Shane Carruth. I really wanted to love this film. But I couldn't! First off, I appreciated how different it is and what Shane Carruth is trying to do. I've seen his previous film, Primer (which up until now, I'm...

Oscar Prospects: I'm rooting for James Franco to somehow sneak in Supporting Actor but since he only get prominently featured over 30 minutes into the film, most of the older Academy members will have been turned off by all the jiggling boobs. I bet a lot of them liked the jiggling boobs immensely,...

I haven't seen the film, and I probably won't unless my wife talks me into it (we're both big fans of the stage play, which is excellent). But my favorite comment I came across - on Twitter maybe - was that after Bug and Killer Joe , William Friedkin really deserved a chance to direct this one and c...

Of course it may still turn out that I love it, but I wonder - will I see a truly good American movie this year?! I'd say Computer Chess , Upstream Color , At Berkeley , Sun Don't Shine , The Unspeakable Act , Before Midnight , and Museum Hours (this last one only kind of American) are all worth a ...

*Very vague and minor spoilers.* I thought the movie was just OK. It's certainly being marketed as a rip-roaring, vaguely Scorsesean period jaunt, only with more overt comedy. But a lot of the scenes are just long, quiet, and talky. There's not much narrative propulsion - I don't say this as either ...

In fact, I think "sentimental" is a word thrown around way too cavalierly -- it basically amounts to "something that has emotional content to which I don't respond", with the most pejorative connotation imaginable. I'm plenty responsive to irony, but I'm also open to cinematic m...

His instincts tend toward this understated, totally unnecessary mawkishness. I dunno. It's not like I've ever resisted unequivocal rejections of irony on the largest of all possible canvasses (not just Children of Men -- which along with Inland Empire very literally restored my enthusiasm for movie...

I enjoyed Gravity but I'm completely puzzled as to why it's getting some of its more ecstatic rave reviews. Cuarón strikes me as kind of a minor virtuoso with camera movement and staging, but otherwise not a particularly good filmmaker. His instincts tend toward this understated, totally unnecessary...

I thought this was a godawful movie. Yes, its politics were "good" in the sense that it oriented dramatic identification with a dirty, mostly nonwhite (though Matt Damon...) underclass in favor of healthcare, amnesty, etc. But the evolving generic playfulness, the humor, the flexible ways ...

I thought this one was a masterpiece, or pretty close. How many other films in the last few years was this the case for you? It does not strike me that there were all that many. Going back to say 2009 ... I'd probably single out anders, Molussien (Nicolas Rey), The Tree of Life , Qu'il reposant en ...

Yeah Sabin, I loved Before Sunset very much and I think both of these two movies continued the story in ways that were comfortable, at times tinged with nostalgia, but also - importantly - were also full of surprises and disappointments and little awkward turns. Having only seen the movie once, and ...

I thought this one was a masterpiece, or pretty close. Really powerful and beautiful, and its dialogic, seasoned approach to the mythology of "romance" was a fantastic culmination to the romantic magic of the first two movies.

Huh - thanks for alerting me about this, Magilla. I guess making fun of Armond White is still a good way to spike movie buff web traffic.

When I saw you posted in here, Johnny, I thought you would be giving some love to the new Walter Hill movie. I haven't seen it yet myself, but I do like Walter Hill quite a bit. I actually ended up seeing Bullet to the Head this evening. I thought it was very disappointing - mostly rote macho-nosta...