Really? Nothing against Nicholson, but his performance was the worst part of "The Departed." Who thought it was a good idea to let him do a rat imitation during that one conversation scene in the bar? Talk about scenery chewing. *rimshot*

"Shattered Glass" was the movie that cemented Chloe Sevigny as my favorite actress. I really wish she showed up in films more often.

What about Guy Pearce in "Memento"? You could argue that his performance was shaped a lot in the editing room, but I think he does an excellent job of suggessting a man who only barely manages to hide how lost he is behind a facade of logic and determination.

I think it's a little weird that I picked the exact same films for my list that zxcvb did, without reading his post first. Just goes to show how memorable PSH is, I guess.

Seriously, how did Hoffman not pop up on here? Capote; Synecdoche, NY; Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (crap movie, but excellent performance); The Savages … the guy is mesmerizing in everything.

I'll second the love for Oryx and Crake. That was some fine, fine postapocalyptic science fiction.

"The Terror" was a fine thriller, though not great, for most of its length, but *SPOILER* the "white man finds idyllic life among the natives" ending was such a sellout of the book's themes that it retroactively ruined much of what came before. I wasn't surprised to see it on this list, given the AVC's previously…

Questionable Content is a soap opera in webcomic form. The author's not a bad writer/artist (though the finished strips usually amount to "hipsters standing around being smartasses"), but the melodrama … jeez, the melodrama.

Good post, Camaxtli, but I think the Copacabana tracking shot is a bad example to illustrate your point. For one thing, the directors' aims for their respective techniques are different. Cuaron is using it to achieve a visceral effect, tension, while Scorsese's shot is meant to reflect one character's subjective…

Actually, D'Angelo came out and said in a previous Scenic Routes that the column's purpose was simply to analyze noteworthy scenes, not necessarily "great" ones. Some of the columns have praised the scenes in question, some haven't. I think the feature as a whole would be much less interesting if it were just some…

I disagree with your specific example of 4M3W2D (the dinner party scene absolutely needed to be a single take for it to work the way it did), but Romanian cinema in general does fall victim to this problem. "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" is a particularly egregious offender, and "Police, Adjective," while the long-shot…

I'm not a hardcore gamer - I only own a Gamecube, and I don't have many friends who own systems which I can play on - but RE4 definitely should have been on this list (even if I'm not sure what it should replace). Reasons:

What did you say?!? Insects' life doesn't compare to human lives!!

Not sure why "Mary & Max" is getting so much love
Is it just because it deals with adult subject matter? I'm all for animated movies that don't aim at the kids' seats, but "Mary & Max" felt more like the rough draft of a movie, or a story outline, than an actual finished product.

I agree with ________. WALL-E and Coraline are, IMHO, the forerunners of a new animation renaissance. Animated films are only endangered insofar as the entire film industry itself is endangered.

I call shenanigans, ortenzia! The combined Extended Editions are much, much longer than 8 hours. They're more like 10 and a half hours. Just the EE of Return of the King alone is something like 4 hours.

Look Who's Wondering Why He Got Married Too!

This December, Curtis "Fifty Cent" Jackson is … The Thing in "The Fantastic Four: Get Superpowers or Die Trying"

Angels in America?
Wait, "Angels in America" *wasn't* self-indulgent? That's exactly what it was—a stagy, pretentious, preachy glob of self-indulgence. You do concede that not all of it works, but I'm not sure if you remember just how much of it doesn't work. The last half-hour, with all of its monologues that are…

I'm surprised no one's called Warren out on his stealth firstie yet, so I guess I have to be the one: Die in a comically overproduced fire of cancerAIDS.