No Country has a HUGE tonal shift. It's been following this cat-and-mouse game between Brolin and Bardem for two acts, then it does a time jump that skips beyond the resolution of the main plot and becomes a sombre introspective piece for a secondary character!

As required by law, I will again use the mention of Body Double to nominate it for an entry in My Year of Absolutely Insanely Awful/Brilliant Movies.

I don't think Hard Candy (and my love of that movie is a matter of record these here boards) qualifies. I don't think you can call something a gearshift movie when it's shift is Act1 climax (point of incident; whatever you want to call it). I don't think a movie has really established itself enough at that point.

THE POSTER
Maybe the US artwork is different, but the UK poster for this film is as ugly as sin. It looks like the cover of a really bad PS2 game.

The UK trailer features about 0.4 seconds of Mitra; just enough for people who aren't paying attention to mistake her for Beckinsale.

I'm glad Hamburglar beat me to it… I was gonna say something sarky as well.

"Contains Mild Peril" is a common one in the UK.

@ Flex
Not seen this, but UK film critic Mark Kermode went nuts over this (he's seen it a bunch of times now), but whenever anyone e-mails his radio show about it, it's usually to say how much they loathed it.

Edked, bizarrely enough, award winning novel Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow actually features an act of "buttoning". I'm assuming it didn't make it into the film adaptation.

The film got pretty favourable reviews in the UK… although we can't really be trusted; we have a habit of being kind to our own (unless they're really terrible, where we mercilessly shred them to bits).

I've always had a region free player, just for those occassional things (usually quickly cancelled TV shows like Wonderfalls or Freaks & Geeks) that have no chance of ever being released in the UK.
I got mine from Amazon a few years back. I don't know if the Amazon US players are region free or not.

Hasn't "pretentiousness" by now pretty much been reduced to just a code word for "contains a lot of symbolism".

Grrr, I lasted all of 10 minutes before having to give up on Bringing Up Baby. I just found it insanely annoying.

My favourite bit of Look Around You was always the continuity bits at the start, with all the frighteningly plausable made-up shows that were on after Look Around You.

So, no fat, slobbering peeping toms or unstoppable genocidal robots then?

I think people get too hung up on the number of nominations.
My interest in Button is at best luke-warm (I like Fincher, but was left irritated by Gump), but it seems the sort of film that would be vying in a lot of categories. It's got dramatic performances, a unique challenge for effects and make-up, epic scope and…

They're so floppy, they weren't screened for the press… or anywhere.

@ Venkman,

And hey, since when was Frankenheimer's Manchurian Candidate not funny?!

I've still to see Southland Tales, but like that big candy-like "history erase" button from Ren & Stimpy, it just keeps beckoning me and slapping me in the head with its buttocks.