Charles Petzold

Partially because so many new movies premiere at the New York Film Festival, this time of the year often brings massive inflation to my "must see" movie list. Right now the "must see" list of recent and upcoming releases looks like this. (Each movie is followed by a brief explanation why it's on the list.)

The Queen (Helen Mirren. 'Nuff said!)

Infamous (Truman Capote Redux. Trailer looks great!)

The U.S. vs. John Lennon (Nixon demonstrates how to really hunt down America's enemies)

The Science of Sleep (dir. Michel Gondry of Human Nature and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)

Pan's Labyrinth (dir. Guillermo del Toro, and seems to be much the same territory as his The Devil's Backbone)

Babel (dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu of Amores perros and 21 Grams)

Volver (dir. Almodovar. 'Nuff said!)

Little Children (Good reviews. A movie for grown-ups, apparently)

Catch a Fire (A true story of radicalization in apartheid South Africa that's certainly going to annoy people)

Marie Antoinette (dir. Sofia Coppola, whose idiosyncratic vision signs brightly through everything she does)

The Last King of Scotland (Gotta love that Forest Whitaker)

Running with Scissors (based on a modern classic memoir of familial dysfunction)

Despite the fact that there are something like 10 movie theaters with a total of something like 50 screens within a 15-minute walk from my apartment, there is no way we're going to see all these movies in the theater. I'm shooting for 50%, and the rest will probably be transferred to the Netflix queue.

Attentive readers might wonder why The Departed isn't on the list, and that's because we saw it yesterday. It's directed by Martin Scorsese (whose career is the most conclusive proof that the Academy Awards are total crap) but based on some Hong Kong gangster movies I haven't seen. The setting is Boston and the characters are mostly Irish. Matt Damon is a cop who's actually a mole for Jack Nicholson's deliciously evil gangster Frank Costello. Leonardo DiCaprio is a cop who's working undercover infiltrating the Costello organization. There's certainly a lot of tension and cell phones, and through a Goodfellas-like accelerated pacing, Scorsese even manages to get in a lot about families and Irish-American social classes.

Ultimately, however, The Departed didn't strike me as something Scorsese's heart was truly in. Amazingly, the box office (Scorsese's best opening weekend) and the powerful performances (all great) are seemingly making this movie an Oscar standout, proving once again that the Academy Awards are total crap.