By now you know all the basic recurring features. You know about the Oscars coverage, the year-end lists and the weekly previews. But starting this year, I’m going to add a lot more of those to the site. Below is a sneak peek at what you can expect to see in the weeks ahead.
SECOND CHANCE CINEMA
These are movies I was initially critical of, but after years of suggestions from friends and the tide of critical consensus decided to give another shot. Feel free to make more suggestions, as this category could expand from a monthly installment.
January: A.I. (Steven Spielberg, 2001)
February: Lars and the Real Girl (Craig Gillespie, 2007)
March: Back to the Future, Part II (Robert Zemeckis, 1989)
April: Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, 2004)
May: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)
June: Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984)
July: Unbreakable (M. Night Shyamalan, 2000)
August: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik, 2007)
September: Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005)
October: The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, 1999)
November: Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster, 2008)
December: The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965)
THE SHAME LIST
“You call yourself a critic?!” That’s the charge I hear leveled against me when I admit I haven’t seen the 10 classics below. I limited the list only to movies made before I was born. My goal is to watch all 10 before my birthday, because that’s when I’ll be starting a huge undertaking: picking the best movie from each year I’ve been alive. I figure if I do two entries a month for the following 12, I’ll be right up to 25. Any movies that have come out since I’ve been alive that people would be surprised to hear I haven’t seen (like Schindler’s List or Braveheart) I’ll get to before I make my pick for that year. We’ll see how that goes, but for now, here are the top 10 movies I’m most ashamed to admit I haven’t seen.
Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969)
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)
Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
The Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1957)
The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
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