AFI Top Ten gives a boost to "Nope" and "She Said"

by Nathaniel R

The American Film Institute has named their top ten films and television programs of 2022, giving them all a boost in the awards conversation. And that's clearly what the prize is intended for, given their resolutely mainstream Oscar and Emmy buzz focused lists each year (in their early years they were sometimes a bit more adventurous though still mainstream). The two most "daring" choices for films, if you can call them that, are Nope and She Said, neither of which have a huge amount of Oscar buzz at the moment, though Nope has been performing well in early top ten list / precursor season.

The AFI lists in film and television and some commentary after the jump...

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John Waters kicks off an already swinging 'Top Ten Season'

by Nathaniel R

 It's the most wonderful time of the year. No, not Christmas... "top ten season"!!! It's when we get to read so many different writers on what they valued most in a given year of entertainment (movies and otherwise). As per usual the festivities kicked off with director John Waters annual list for Film Forum. He places François Ozon's Peter Von Kant up top. 

By far the best movie of the year. Fassbinder’s classic lesbian melodrama is appropriated and remade as a gay Frenchman’s love letter to the original version. Hilariously stilted, often overwrought, but always highly entertaining.

The enthusiasm is a smidge confounding...

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Sight & Sound 2022 "All-Time" List

by Nathaniel R

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

The once a decade Sight & Sound poll of the "Greatest Films of All Time" is upon us, and there's a new winner. Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). The Belgian film jumped 35 spots from a decade ago to claim the top spot from Hitchcock's Vertigo which itself had pushed Citizen Kane from the top of the heap in an earlier poll. The list is getting extremely recent! A full forty percent of the top ten is now from the still newish 21st century... which seems extreme to us for an all time list given that there's nearlly 100 years of feature films before the year 2000! 

A few more notes after the jump and the top 50...

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Links: Death Scenes, Star Salaries, and Filmmaker Arrests

Today's Must Read
• Slate examines the "50 Greatest Fictional Deaths of All Time". For a piece on death it's surprisingly fun and life-affirming. But the best reason to read it is that, unlike 95% of "all time" lists unline, it's genuinely far reaching stretching across all storytelling mediums and time periods. At this point it's a miracle to see an "all time" list that acknowledges that the world existed before the 1990s! Obviously spoilers abound though...

Movie and tv salaries at the moment, Jafar Panahi's prison sentence, Amanda Seyfried's Wicked audition, Bollywood anxiety and more after the jump ...

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Ranking the Men of "L.A. Confidential"

We're revisiting the 1997 film year in the lead up to the next Supporting Actress Smackdown.  Here's Ben Miller on L.A Confidential

For my money, Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential is a bonafide masterpiece. Despite nine Oscar nominations and a Best Supporting Actress victory for Kim Basinger, the ample group of fine male actors missed any sort of accolades. It doesn't mean some of them didn't deserve it.

Here are my picks for the 10 best male performances from that film...

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