In his “Great Movies” article on Caché, Roger Ebert teases that he found a key to understanding this ever-mysterious movie: “How is it possible to watch a thriller intently two times and completely miss a smoking gun that’s in full view? Yet I did. Only on my third trip through Michael Haneke’s Caché did I consciously observe a shot which forced me to redefine the film.”
‘Anvil!’ merely repeats Spinal Tap’s satire and has too much Lips and too little Robb, but the duo’s determination is touching and truly sad
Creepy but generic, an otherwise austere ‘Paranormal Activity’ would have unsettled more sans the extra-diegetic rumble conditioning viewers
I love the elegant subversion of history in ‘Inglourious Basterds,’ how the Basterds themselves are MacGuffins, and QT’s endless patience.
The Top 10: 
1. Memento
2. Pan’s Labyrinth
3. Requiem for a Dream
4. Oldboy
5. The Royal Tenenbaums
6. No Country for Old Men
7. The Mothman Prophecies
8. Mulholland Drive
9. Donnie Darko (original theatrical version)
10. The Descent (international version)
Christopher Nolan directed five movies released this decade; two of them are nearly perfect, one of them has unparalleled rigor for a superhero movie, and the other one has Heath Ledger’s Joker casting an enormous shadow over (and therefore obscuring) its many flaws. The unnecessary remake of Insomnia was the necessary bridge between Memento and Batman Begins – from independent to studio work – but beyond it Nolan has made nothing but winners. To be clear, I don’t believe Nolan is a great filmmaker, and I’m skeptical he’ll ever equal any of these four movies, even though he hasn’t yet turned 40.
The goal: Make an album from favorite songs released in 2009, with special attention paid to the arc and to the relationships between songs. The rules: one song per performer; artists featured in the previous three years of this project are excluded. The caveats: I listen to a lot of music, and I estimate this list is culled from roughly a thousand songs from the past year. But I don’t hear everything, and my listening is constrained by both taste and work. These are merely favorites.
A throw-away bit of connective tissue struck me in Jim Emerson’s announcement of his and MSN’s movies of the decade: “That’s a pretty mainstream list (hey, it’s for MSN) – and so is mine.” Not really, I thought. Unsurprising? Yes. Dominated by English-language films? Yes. But mainstream? This is, of course, a matter of definition.
The Box Office Power Rankings do not like the Twilight movies. We are not fooled by the excitement or ticket-buying power of teenage girls. We are on Team No One. (Did I do that right?) Neither movie has ever finished better than third place in the Box Office Power Rankings. We are confident that this validates our methods.
With the broad rubbing hornily against the observant, the clear-eyed ‘Adventureland’ views an awkward age with fondness and well-aged shame.
