Ad Astra
This is rare, nuanced storytelling, anchored by one of Brad Pitt’s career-best performances and remarkable technical elements on every level. It’s a special film.
Lucrecia Martel
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Zama (2018)
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Director, Writer
Glenn Kenny -
La Cienaga (2001)
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Written and Directed by
Roger Ebert
* This filmography is not intended to be a comprehensive list of this artist’s work. Instead it reflects the films this person has been involved with that have been reviewed on this site.
Venice 2019: Roman Polanski's J’Accuse
A review of the new film by Roman Polanski, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
The Individual Top Tens of 2018
Our contributors share some of their favorite movies of 2018.
Glenn Kenny's Top Ten Films of 2018
The ten best films of 2018, according to Glenn Kenny.
Monica Castillo's Top Ten Films of 2018
The best films of 2018, according to Monica Castillo.
Venice Film Festival 2018: The Sisters Brothers, La Quietud
On two new films from Venice, including a career best piece of work by John C. Reilly.
Venice Film Festival 2017: “Our Souls at Night,” “Brawl in Cell Block 99,” “Zama”
A report from the Venice Film Festival on three world premieres.
The Most Influential Filmmakers of All Time
In search of a more inclusive look at the best directors of all time.
No Home Video: On Women-Directed Films
A reposting of Tina Hassannia's article from Movie Mezzanine, and the response it received from Peter Becker, president of the Criterion Collection.
Ebertfest to Welcome Jason Segel, Chazz Palminteri and More
Ebertfest to welcome Jason Segel, James Ponsoldt, Chazz Palminteri, Jon Kilik, Julieta Zylberberg and Alan Polsky.
The Return of the Autobiographical Dictionary of Film
Ever since David Thomson's "A Biographical Dictionary of Film" was published in 1975, browsers have said that they love to hate Thomson's contrarian arguments -- against John Ford or Frank Capra, Coppola or Kubrick, for example.¹ Fans and critics can cite favorite passages of resonant beauty, mystifyingly vague and dismissive summary judgements, and entire entries in which the man appears to have gone off his rocker. And that's the fun of it.
To be fair, Thomson broke faith with (or has been suffering a crisis of faith in) American movies at least far back as "Overexposures: The Crisis in American Filmmaking" (1981), and he's been writing about his crisis ever since. To put it in a sentence that could serve as the ending of one of his entries: I am willing to believe that he loves (or once loved) movies even if he doesn't like them very much. (Wait -- how does he conclude the Katharine Hepburn piece? "She loved movies, while disapproving of them.")
When I encountered the first edition of this book, the year I entered college, I immediately fell in love with it because it was not a standard reference. It was personal, cranky, eloquent, pretentious, pithy, petty, ambitious... It was, as I think Thomson himself suggested in the foreword to the first or second edition (this is the fifth), more accurately titled "An Autobiographical Dictionary of Film." Many times over the years I have implored my employers or partners to license digital rights to Thomson's book so that it could augment and be integrated with other movie databases and references (at Cinemania, FilmPix, Reel.com, RogerEbert.com)... but we've never done it. What, they would ask, is the "value-add"? (Really. Some people used to talk that way.) As a reference, its coverage is too spotty (Ephraim Katz's Film Encyclopedia is much more comprehensive but also has loads of incomplete filmographies), as criticism it's wildly idiosyncratic (nothing wrong with that) and as biography it's whimsically selective and uneven, leaving as many holes as it fills.
Jim's favorite movies of 2009: The movie
Once again, my favorite movies of the year engage in overlapping cinematic conversation with one another, blurring stylistic, thematic, national, linguistic, philosophical, theological and proprietary boundaries. No one is playing the blame game here. Happy new year!
(list and links after the jump...)
More film polls: Top 150 of Decade, Top 160 of 2009...
Ow, my brain hurts. So, let's just get these out of the way, shall we? In the annual Village Voice/LA Weekly Film Poll, announced just before Christmas, 94 critics (including me) came up with 160 nominations for best films of 2009 -- and voted in a bunch of other categories, too, including Best Film of the Decade ("Mulholland Dr."). [My decade favorites are here.]
Meanwhile, Film Comment polled another big batch o' crix (a lot of the same ones, in fact) and came up with a somewhat different 20 Best of 2009 list -- and 150 Best Films of the Decade (topped by... "Mulholland Dr."). Just for fun, let us compare the two groups' Top Dozen for both year and decade:
Cannes #9: 'Barley' d'Or
List of winners at the 59th Cannes Film Festival
