TSPDT's director pages...
We are gradually updating our director profiles,
endeavouring to spruce them up a little. The most
recently updated are featured here »
TSPDT's
annual update of the 1,000 Greatest Films is now
online.
49 changes to the list and for the first time
Fritz Lang
leads the way with 16 films. Please take a look for
yourself and please email us your thoughts.
...Or the 100 Most
Fortunate Actors in Film History?
Who are the most
important film actors of all-time? Is it those who had the
biggest star-power, those who won the most awards or accolades,
those who grabbed the most headlines? Or, was it those
performers who actually worked - for whatever reason - with the
best filmmakers and subsequently ended up appearing in many of
the screen's finest films?
See
what They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?
think, and prepare to be mildly surprised with some of our
inclusions and also by many of our omissions (last updated
during February 2011).
°
Another Man's Poison (Irving
Rapper/1951/UK) "Bette
Davis is feisty, man-hungry novelist on isolated Yorkshire
farm who won't let her criminal husband, or his crony
Merrill, get in her way. Well-paced melodrama can't hide its
stage origins, but Davis wrings every drop out of a showy
role."
-
Leonard Maltin
→ TSPDT:
Worth a Look
° The Trip(Roger
Corman/1967/USA)
"The Trip is a full-blown psychedelic odyssey that many
accused of being a "user's manual" for LSD, in spite of the
hilarious tacked-on bookends of an anti-drug disclaimer at the
beginning and a broken-mirror effect at the end... Based on a
Jack Nicholson
script, The Trip may be the longest high in film history, but
its kaleidoscope eyes take a remarkably ambiguous journey through
sensual wonderment and abstract horrors."
-
Scott Tobias, The A.V. Club
→ TSPDT: Approach with
Caution
° Moneyball (Bennett
Miller/2011/USA)
"Who knew statistical analysis could make you choke up with emotion?
Surprisingly poignant for a movie that turns America’s pastime into
a card-counting experiment—and filled with crackling dialogue from
Oscar winners Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian—Moneyball
focuses on the essential issue of baseball and of life: How do you
measure human value?"
-
Stephen Garrett, Time Out New York→
TSPDT:
Recommended
° Red Light (Roy
Del Ruth/1949/USA)
"Red Light is one of George Raft’s most unusual and
intriguing films, combining as it does themes of religion and
revenge. Presented starkly in true noir fashion, these conflicting
elements elevate the film from just an ordinary crime drama. Another
reason Red Light succeeds as a more effective entry than most
of Raft’s post-Warner Brothers films is due to the efficiency of the
director, Roy Del Ruth."-
Stone Wallace, Noir of the Week
→ TSPDT: Worth a Look
° Hugo (Martin
Scorsese/2011/USA)
"In attempting to make his first film for all ages, Martin Scorsese
has fashioned one for the ages. Simultaneously classical and modern,
populist but also unapologetically personal, Hugo flagrantly
defies the mind-numbing quality of most contemporary kidpics and
instead rewards patience, intellectual curiosity and a budding
interest in cinema itself." -
Peter Debruge, Variety
→ TSPDT:
Recommended
° Norwegian Wood(Tran
Anh Hung/2010/Japan)
"A movie like Norwegian Wood is a peculiar case – its
intentions are sterling, and it's hard to pinpoint any technical
flaws. The problem, maybe, is that it's trying too hard; Tran has
such firm control over the storytelling that the resulting picture
has no room to breathe."
-
Stephanie Zacharek, Movieline
→ TSPDT: Approach with
Caution
° The Descendants(Alexander
Payne/2011/USA)
"Payne is too acerbic - maybe too much of an asshole - to settle for
easy humanism. But he's too smart a dramatist to settle for easy
derision. Mockery and empathy seesaw, the balance precarious - and
thrillingly so. It's the noblest kind of satire: cruel and yet, in
the end, lacking the killing blow."
-
David Edelstein, New York Magazine →
TSPDT:
Recommended
° 50/50(Jonathan
Levine/2011/USA)
"Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen play to their strengths in the
comedic story of a twentysomething stricken with cancer that rings
true despite the odds... As a comedy about a young man with cancer,
it needs to be serious enough to be real as well as light enough to
be funny. Though it falls off the wagon at times, it maintains its
balance remarkably well."
-
Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times
→ TSPDT: Worth a Look
° It
(Clarence
G. Badger/1927/USA) "A department
store clerk (Clara Bow) tries to live according to the tenets of
Elinor Glyn's book about sex appeal (also titled It) and
winds up marrying her boss. This fast and funny silent comedy of
1927 has one of the great intertitle lines of the period—“Hot socks!
Here comes the boss!”"
-
Jonathan Rosenbaum,
Chicago Reader
→ TSPDT:
Recommended
° That Uncertain Feeling (Ernst
Lubitsch/1941/USA)
"A minor but effective late Ernst Lubitsch comedy, with Merle Oberon
and Melvyn Douglas as a couple whose perfect marriage is disrupted
by a deranged concert pianist, played full-tilt by Burgess Meredith.
The title might refer equally to Lubitsch's direction, but the film
is more than worth a look."
-Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
→ TSPDT: Worth a Look
° Le Quattro volte (The Four Times)
(Michelangelo Frammartino/2010/Italy-Germany-Switzerland)
"Le Quattro Volte is the freshest and the deepest film I've
encountered in a while. It's one of those rare films that anyone
could enjoy, whether or not they normally care for slow Italian art
cinema. I suspect that children would enjoy it, the more patient
kind at least – although they should be prepared for a Bambi-style
sob or two. This is an extraordinary film in every way – not to
mention the best goat film ever."
- Jonathan Romney, The Independent
→ TSPDT: Worth a Look
° Beginners(Mike
Mills/2011/USA)
"Beginners might sound insufferable, but it isn’t—or at least
not completely. Mills’s second feature (after Thumbsucker)
has way too many quirks for its own good, although it also flaunts a
rare freedom to jump back and forth in time—before and after Dad
goes to that gay-pride parade in the sky. Mills even adds a touch of
the experimental through slideshow interludes that
free-associatively riff on photo-album and pop-culture images from
then and now."
- Rob Nelson, The Village Voice
→ TSPDT: Worth a Look
° Despair(Rainer
Werner Fassbinder/1979/West
Germany)
"At two hours, Despair has stretches of longueurs and
moments of murkiness. But the film's pleasures are ample. The sets
are marvels of Art Deco baroque, and the scenes in the chocolate
factories, besides allowing for a sly visual rhyme connecting
chocolate figurines and Nazi brownshirts, have a Willy Wonka air of
warped fantasy." - Dennis Lim, Los Angeles Times
→ TSPDT: Approach with
Caution
° Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (Alex
Gibney/2010/USA)
"There's no getting around it: Client 9 is a slick piece of
work, full of turgid proclamations, unnecessary switches in camera
angles during interviews, and cutaways to symbolic images. And as
long as Gibney sticks to the political (tracing Spitzer's heroic
activity as attorney general, detailing the powerful enemies he made
both in Manhattan and Albany, and charting the machinations involved
in bringing him down), this aesthetic puffery proves only a mild
distraction."
- Andrew Schenker, Slant Magazine
→ TSPDT: Worth a Look
° Gimme Shelter(Albert
Maysles, David Maysles & Charlotte Zwerin/1970/USA)
"Gimme Shelter stands as the best rock film, if you take that
to mean the one in which the musical event is most closely shadowed
by cinema... Gimme Shelter cannot contain all the
moral quandaries it evokes—including its own impact on events—and
that, like it or not, is part of its brilliance and fascination. It
reminds us of the ever unsteady relationship between art and
morality, and that the strict correlation we wish to find between
the two may ultimately be necessary but illusory."
- Godfrey Cheshire, The Criterion Collection
→ TSPDT:
Recommended
The seventh edition of
our 21st Century list is now online, and incorporates many of 2011's
critics' ballots. Unsurprisingly,
Terrence Malick's Tree of Life
leads the 2011 bunch. And, yes, it's still in pink.
View
