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21 December 2003

Roger Ebert's 'Best Films of 2003'


I can't say I agree with the list much at all but here's the link, and here's the list:

  1. Monster (Patty Jenkins)
  2. Lost In Translation (Sofia Coppola)
  3. American Spendor (Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini)
  4. Finding Nemo (Andrew Stanton)
  5. Master and Commander: The Far Side Of the World (Peter Weir)
  6. Mystic River (Clint Eastwood)
  7. Owning Mahoney (Richard Kwietniowski)
  8. The Son (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
  9. Whale Rider (Niki Caro)
  10. In America (Jim Sheridan)
I guess my main complaint is that Ebert is telling us that, with a
single token exception, the only movies worth watching are those in
English. I try not to be such a bigot with my personal tastes, but it's
hard to take seriously a film critic who has such a low opinion of
Abbas Kiarostami...

18 December 2003

Sur mes lèvres (Jacques Audiard, 2001)



I finished Read My Lips last night. It wasn't really as bad as I'm making it out to be, but it was nothing special. Just your standard caper/thriller/romance, that, because it's in French and stars people most Americans don't know, somehow gets passed off as "art cinema" or something. Among my many gripes about cinema, this is near the top. And the problem is, it cuts both ways - people think they're film snobs 'cause they like Amelie or The Killer or Cinema Paradiso, yet people who love shit like Speed and Die Hard would never watch a movie like Yojimbo or A Better Tomorrow or Time and Tide because they're subtitled.