Two Jell-o lovers share a romantic interlude in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Kristin here: Back in early 2007, I posted an entry about the supposed over-supply of animated films due for release that year. I realize that journalists have to find topics to fill pages. That year���one topic...

By Matt Zoller Seitz Film criticism as we know it tends to fall into a handful of time-worn categories: an expression of one's personality, politics and taste, with traces of social critique and memoir (Pauline Kael, James Agee); or a kind of performance art on the page, using individual films...

By Matt Zoller Seitz Clint Eastwood owes a great deal to Sergio Leone, who jump-started the actor's movie career with the Dollars trilogy of “spaghetti westerns.” His collaboration with Leone gave him the seeds of his screen persona. It also foretold many of Eastwood’s obsessions as a director. Obsession No. 1 is revenge. The most unusual treatment of the subject occurs in the second Dollars film, For a Few Dollars More (1965), in which Eastwood's Man With No Name teams up with a bounty hunter, Col. Mortimer, to track down a bandit named Indio. While flashbacks reveal that Indio raped Mortimer's sister and killed her lover, Leone and his co-screenwriters complicate the...

Coraline (top); Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (middle); Jim Carrey in A Christmas Carol (bottom) Fifteen animated features are up for consideration in the Best Animated Feature category for 2010 Golden Globe Awards, Hollywood Foreign Press Association president Philip Berk has announced. They are: 9 Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel Battle for Terra Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Coraline A Christmas Carol Fantastic Mr. Fox Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs Mary and Max The Missing Lynx Monsters vs. Aliens Planet 51 [...]

And here’s another Golden Globes 2010 item: 173 live-action feature films (105 dramas and 68 comedies or musicals), 15 animated feature films, 133 television series (79 drama and 54 comedies), 33 mini-series or telefilms, and a record 69 foreign language films have qualified for 2010 Golden Globes, Hollywood Foreign Press Association president Philip Berk has announced. Additionally, a record 103 songs are eligible for the Golden Globe for Best Original Song in a Motion Picture. Nominations for 2010 Golden Globe Awards will be announced at 5:00 a.m. PT on Tuesday, December 15. Hosted by Ricky Gervais, the 2010 Golden Globe Awards ceremony will be broadcast live coast to coast Sunday...

Krystyna Janda, Pawel Szajda in Swet Rush The European Film Academy, EFA Productions, and the International Federation of Film Critics FIPRESCI have announced that the 2009 Prix FIPRESCI goes to 83-year-old Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda (right) for Tatarak / Sweet Rush. Based on Sándor Márai’s short story, Sweet Rush — which has some points in common with The Door in the Floor — chronicles the love affair between a neglected doctor’s wife (veteran Krystyna Janda) whose two sons died in World War II and a man half her age (US-born actor Pawel Szajda). Shooting was interrupted following the death of Janda’s husband, Wajda’s frequent cinematographer Edward Klosinski. When production resumed...

George Clooney in Up in the Air The fact that Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, which opens in the US tomorrow, was named best picture of 2009 by the National Board of Review should come as no surprise. On the other hand, the fact that Lee Daniels‘ Precious earned only one mention — breakthrough performance by an actress for Gabourey Sidibe as the film’s abused, pregnant, illiterate teenager — was a major upset. Precious was nowhere to be found among either the year’s top 11 best films (Star Trek, Where the Wild Things Are, and Up, however, were) or top 10 best independent films (but District 9, In the Loop, and Me and Orson Welles made the cut). [...]

Tahar Rahim in A Prophet National Board of Review 2009: Top Winners Other National Board of Review 2009 winners: Jacques Audiard’s tough prison drama A Prophet, a likely Oscar candidate in the best foreign language film category, was named best foreign-language film. Michael Haneke’s widely acclaimed The White Ribbon and Sebastian Silva’s The Maid, which earned star Catalina Saavedra a breakthrough performer Gotham award, were both listed among the year’s top five non-English-language features. Louie Psihoyos‘ The Cove, about the abuse and slaughter of dolphins, was named best documentary, while Pete Docter’s box-office hit Up was the best animated feature. The best actress winner was An...

...and because my best-of-the-decade list of 70 slighted (inevitably, I insist) at least two dozen other worthy works, if not more, I hereby consider my readers' suggestions, and my own memory lapses, and give you thirty more outstanding motion pictures...