classics update

Classic films our members are watching:

Robert Roten reviews Captains Courageous (1937) and Broadcast News (1987)

John J. Puccio reviews The First Easter Rabbit (1976)

Dennis Schwartz reviews Who Can Kill A Child? (1976)

Donald J. Levit reviews Destiny's Son/Kiru (1962)

Matthew Sorrento reviews Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)

Nathan Shumate reviews Blood and Black Lace (1964)

Anton Bitel reviews The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship (1990) and M (1931)

Gabe Leibowitz reviews Sansho the Bailiff (1953), Walkabout (1971), and Laura (1944)

John J. Puccio reviews Clash of the Titans (1981)

TV update

TV shows and DVDs our members are reviewing:

Paul Mavis reviews The Road from Coorain, Cranford: The Collection, and Blood & Orchids

Essay Question: What was the biggest cinematic flop, disappointment, or failure of the 2000-2009 decade?

OFCS members answer the question, suggested by member Don Levit:

“What do you think was the biggest cinematic flop, disappointment, or failure of the 2000-2009 decade?”

Answers after the jump.

Survey Says: OFCS members chose the best GWOT war film

In advance of the release of Green Zone and the possibility of The Hurt Locker winning Best Picture at the upcoming Oscars, the members of the Online Film Critics Society have voted Kathryn Bigelow’s movie about an American bomb disposal squad in Iraq the best movie about the Iraq/Afghanistan/GWOT war. With 34 members responding to the poll, The Hurt Locker came out on top by a wide margin: 22 votes.

Other films that received at least one vote:

The Messenger (3 votes)
In the Valley of Elah (2 votes)

And with one vote apiece:

Battle for Haditha
Delta Farce
Pig Hunt
Redacted
Taxi to the Dark Side
Standard Operating Procedure
The Way We Get By

classics update

Classic films our members are watching:

Amber Wilkinson reviews And Then There Were None (1974)

Felix Vasquez Jr. reviews Alive (1993)

Nathan Shumate reviews Conqueror of the World (1983)

Donald J. Levit reviews World Without Sun and The Man Who Skied Down Everest (1964/1975)

Dennis Schwartz reviews The Heiress (1949)

John J. Puccio reviews Bugs Bunny's Easter Funnies (1977)

Dan Jardine reviews Tokyo Story (1953)

Cole Smithey reviews Z (1969)

Christopher Long reviews Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) and George Bernard Shaw on Film: Eclipse Series 20 (1941-1952)

Ed Howard reviews Peyote Queen and Here I Am (1965/1962), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and Nashville (1975)

Phil Hall reviews On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970)

James Kendrick reviews Paris, Texas (1984)

Sean Axmaker reviews Palermo rr Wolfsburg (1980), Lola Montes (1955), Goodfellas (1990), and King Lear (1953)

A.J. Hakari reviews Werewolf of London (1935) and The Wolf Man (1941)

Marilyn Ferdinand reviews A Fool There Was (1915)

TV update

TV shows and DVDs our members are reviewing:

Christopher Long reviews The Universe: The Complete Season Four

Paul Mavis reviews Midsomer Murders: Set 14, Wartime Britain: Three Dramas (Housewife, 49, The Heat of the Day, and Island at War), and G.B.H.

international update

What our members outside North America are watching:

Uruguay
Enrique Buchichio reviews Precious and Sherlock Holmes (reviews in Spanish)

Brazil
Pablo Villaça reviews The White Ribbon, The Lovely Bones, and A Serious Man (reviews in Portuguese)

U.K.
Rich Cline reviews The Unloved, The Headless Woman (La Mujer Sin Cabeza), and Beyond the Pole

Anton Bitel reviews The Headless Woman (La Mujer Sin Cabeza)

Essay Question: How much should critics worry about spoiling a film?

OFCS members answer the question:

“How much should critics worry about spoiling a film?”

This was inspired by critic Christian Toto calling out Rex Reed for spoiling The Wolfman in his review of that film and Stephanie Bunbury’s recent discussion in The Sydney Morning Herald about how long critics should wait before not worrying about spoiling.

Answers after the jump.

Survey Says: OFCS members chose their favorite Martin Scorsese film

In advance of the release of his latest film, Shutter Island, the members of the Online Film Critics Society have voted Goodfellas their favorite Martin Scorsese narrative (ie, non-documentary) movie. The 1990 mob drama came out on top by a slim margin: with 37 members voting, 10 named the film their favorite, but the second ranked movie was close behind. Other films that received at least one vote:

Taxi Driver (9 votes)
Raging Bull (6 votes)
The King of Comedy (3 votes)
Bringing Out the Dead (2 votes)
Casino (2 votes)
The Aviator (1 vote)
Cape Fear (1 vote)
Kundun (1 vote)
Mean Streets (1 vote)
New York, New York (1 vote)

One member took exception to the exclusion of Scorsese’s documentaries:

classics update

Classic films our members are watching:

Rob Gonsalves reviews Cruising (1980), Monterey Pop (1968), and Popeye (1980)

Donald J. Levit reviews The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)

John J. Puccio reviews Goodfellas (1990)

Felix Vasquez reviews You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1985)

Matthew Sorrento reviews I Am Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)

Dennis Schwartz reviews Arruza (1972) and Moonlighting (1982)

Nathan Shumate reviews Watch Me When I Kill (1977)

Anton Bitel reviews Mad Monster Party (1967)

Ed Howard reviews Lights (1966) and Marie Menken Shorts (1945-1966)

Paul Mavis reviews Possessed (1931)

Glenn Erickson reviews The Story of Three Loves (1953) and Paris, Texas (1984)

William Goss reviews Duck Soup (1933)

Roderick Heath reviews King & Country (1964)

Sean Axmaker reviews To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) and Bad for Each Other, Two of a Kind, The Killer That Stalked New York, The Glass Wall, Women's Prison, and Night Editor (1946-1953)

Betty Jo Tucker interviews Cammie King Conlon from Gone with the Wind (1939)

John Nesbit reviews Black Rain (1989)

Cole Smithey reviews The Night of the Living Dead (1968)

TV update

TV shows and DVDs our members are reviewing:

Paul Mavis reviews Vegas: The First Season, Volume 2 and The Patty Duke Show: The Complete Second Season

James Plath reviews The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Season 6, Mister Ed: Season 2, and The Patty Duke Show: Season 2

MaryAnn Johanson reviews Doctor Who: The Complete Specials

Sean Axmaker reviews Second Sight: The Complete Series

Phil Hall reviews The Best of Match Game

Cynthia Fuchs reviews Past Life: Series Premiere, Frontline: “Flying Cheap,” Frontline: “Digital Nation”, and Independent Lens: “P-Star Rising”

David Cornelius reviews Doctor Who: The Complete Specials

international update

What our members outside North America are watching:

Uruguay
Enrique Buchichio reviews The Hurt Locker and The Young Victoria (reviews in Spanish)

Australia
Anders Wotzke reviews A Single Man and Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

Essay Question: Which technical Oscar category interests you most?

OFCS members answer the question:

“With regards to the Oscars, what technical race (editing, production design) do you follow with the most interest and which films would you have nominated?”

Answers after the jump.

Survey Says: OFCS members chose the least-worthy Oscar Best Picture

By a relatively wide margin, the members of the Online Film Critics Society have voted Crash, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture for 2005, as the film least deserving of that award in Oscar history.

With 38 members voting, 11 chose Crash as the film as the least-worthy Oscar Best Picture ever. One member complained:

I'm just going to pick Crash as a movie I felt was flatly undeserving, since I've been writing about movies. There are many years where I think the movie that won was the wrong movie (Rocky over Network, Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction), but Crash isn't just worse than all of its competition, it's just a poor, melodramatic movie. American Beauty has some of the same problems, but that has several excellent performances in it to make up for it.

Beyond this “winning” film, however, there was less consensus, with the remaining votes spread across 15 movies:

criticism news roundup

Chris Parry at The Vancouver Sun highlights the mysterious and repeated acts of plagiarism of junketeer Paul Fishcher, and laments the emergence of “a new kind of critic; one who is often accused of exchanging high praise for access.”...

...Vadim Rizov at IFC’s The Independent Eye parries to Parry: “Plagiarism, criticism: what's the difference?”...

And Edward Champion at Reluctant Habits connects the Fischer debacle to “the crisis in American film criticism and that the need for trust has reached an unprecedented level.”

From the Guardian’s Film blog: “Why Warren Beatty's attack on Pauline Kael failed: Warren Beatty’s disingenuous offer to employ the film critic Pauline Kael on his film Love and Money was motivated by neither love nor money – just spite for a powerful, critical woman.”

Robert Sietsema at the Columbia Journalism Review is a food critic, but what he has to say has a lot to do with the current state of film criticism, too.

Robert W. Butler at KansasCity.com defends critics by noting that “you can’t really love a movie if you've never really hated one.”

OFCSer MaryAnn Johanson at FlickFilosopher.com explains that critics have nothing to do with voting on Oscar nominations or winners.

British film critic Mark Kermode, in a profile at Scotsman.com, says, “I love being in a movie theatre and seeing a film with lots of other people, but I want them out of my line of vision and I don't want to hear them.”

SmartMoney purports to reveal the “10 Things Movie Critics Won't Tell You”...

2009 top 10s from OFCS members: part 5 (finale)

John J. Puccio, DVDtown.com: “Top Theatrical and Disc Releases of 2009”

Mark Dujsik, Mark Reviews Movies: “The 10 Best Films of 2009”

Felix Vasquez Jr., Cinema Crazed: “Best of 2009” and “Worst of 2009”

Ed Howard, Only the Cinema: “My 2009 in Movies”

Christopher Null, Filmcritic.com: “The Year in Film - 2009”

Susan Granger: “Best Movies/Performances of 2009”

Christopher Long, DVDtown.com: “Top Theatrical and Disc Releases of 2009”

Robert Roten, Laramie Movie Scope: “Top, bottom films, etc. of 2009” and “The aught decade in review”

Wesley Lovell, Cinema Sight: “2009 Year in Review”

Mark A. Pfeiffer, Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema: “The Best Films of 2009”, “The Honorable Mentions,” and “The Worst Films of 2009”

classics update

Classic films our members are watching:

John J. Puccio reviews TCM Greatest Classic Films: Sci-Fi Adventures: Them!, Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Satellite in the Sky, and World Without End

Dennis Schwartz reviews The Shout (1978)

Nathan Shumate reviews Johnny Mysto: Boy Wizard (1997)

Cole Smithey reviews Ace in the Hole (1951)

Dan Jardine reviews Straw Dogs (1971) and Stroszek (1977)

Jonathan Richards reviews Rashomon (1951) and The Red Shoes (1949)

Ed Howard reviews They Live by Night (1948) and Gosford Park (2001)

Robert Roten reviews The Long Goodbye (1973)

Glenn Erickson reviews Countdown (1968), The Last Stage (1948), The Woman on Pier 13 (aka I Married A Communist) (1950), Goodfellas (1990), Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy (1946-48), Bad Girls of Film Noir 1 (1950-1953), and Bad Girls of Film Noir 2 (1946-1953)

Roderick Heath reviews Plague of the Zombies/The Reptile (1966) and Sayat Nova (aka The Colour of Pomegranates) (1968)

Marilyn Ferdinand reviews The Damned (1969)

James Kendrick reviews Rome Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), and Germany Year Zero (1948)

Sean Axmaker reviews Mystic River (203), Buena Vista Social Club, The Rough and the Smooth and Kill Me Tomorrow (1959/1957), Dying Room Only (1973)

Paul Mavis reviews The Deadly Tower (1975) and A Death in California (1985)

Rob Gonsalves reviews Quigley (2003)

TV update

TV shows and DVDs our members are reviewing:

Rob Vaux reviews Human Target, Spartacus: Blood and Sand, and Caprica

Dave Johnson reviews 24

Paul Mavis reviews Mister Ed: The Complete Second Season and Route 66: The Complete Third Season

Sean Axmaker reviews She-Wolf of London

international update

What our members outside North America are watching:

U.K.
Rich Cline reviews Malice in Wonderland, Tony, and Oil City Confidential

Brazil
Pablo Villaça reviews The Hurt Locker and Mother (Madeo) (reviews in Portuguese)

Essay Question: Do you watch trailers? If not, why not? If so, do you worry about having a movie spoiled for you before you see it?

OFCS members answer the question:

“Do you watch trailers? If not, why not? If so, do you worry about having a movie spoiled for you before you see it?”

Answers after the jump.

OFCS members 92% accurate in Oscar nominee predictions

All through January, the members of the Online Film Critics Society were polled for their best guesses about Oscar nominations in four major categories: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director. The nominees were announced this morning. How did the OFCS predictions measure up? Amazingly well. We went 5 for 5 in the Best Actor and Best Director categories, 4 for 5 in Best Actress, and 9 for 10 in Best Picture. Over 25 guesses, we picked accurately 23 times. That’s an accuracy rate of 92 percent.

Take a look:

criticism news roundup

Urlesque compiles, YouTube style, the darker side of Siskel and Ebert’s review show, noting that these outtakes “reveal [that] these friends’ relationship was far from perfect.” (Ken Tucker at EW says, about the video, “the thing is, they also make some good points about movie criticism in the midst of all this. These clips make me like these men even more.”)

OFCS member Eric D. Snider is profiled at Deseret News on the occasion of his professional attendance at Sundance.

Freakanomics explores the notion of whether withholding a film from critics helps rescue, financially, a bad movie.

“My Life Is Film Criticism” goodies at CafePress? Yes: T-shirts, caps, etc.