Weekend lists.

Chris Barsanti runs his annotated top ten, honorable mentions and such. His comments in full on his #1, The Constant Gardener:

Blasted or ignored by many critics for its desire to gobsmack the audience with some good old-fashioned liberal guilt (which apparently we're too enlightened for these days), Fernando Merielles's gorgeous, caustic adaptation of John Le Carre's thriller about pharmaceuticals doing evil in sub-Saharan Africa is a righteously furious roof-raiser wrapped in the guise of a murder mystery. What sadly makes the film stand out, however, is its ability (hardly ever seen in Hollywood) to treat the continent, in all its chaotic beauty, as simply a place where people have to live, work and die much as they do anywhere else in the world; Africa as neither simply a safari postcard or blighted horror story.

Cinemarati countdown watch: #16: Kung Fu Hustle; #15: Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit; #14: Pride and Prejudice; #13: Sin Cityand the best undistributed films of 2005 - six, plus honorable mentions - and cinematography, another top ten.

Adam Dawtrey in Variety: "Memoirs of a Geisha was the most nominated movie in the longlists for the British Academy Film Awards, closely followed by Brokeback Mountain, The Constant Gardener and Good Night, and Good Luck." Via Martha Fischer at Cinematical, where she notes, "Sadly, things can only get worse for both Munich, which was late in getting screeners out and is on only two lists (for best director and adapted screenplay) and The New World, which failed to receive a single mention."

David Poland breaks down the Sundance catalog into the top ten he's most looking forward to, 23 more he's also looking forward to and "22 titles that have my interest, but about which I have some reservations."

Matt Zoller Seitz writes up the films on his list of the "5 Greatest Uses of Contrapuntal Narration." Preceded by an explanation and several definitions.

Posted by dwhudson at January 7, 2006 1:57 PM