The Onion AV Club is unquestionably my favorite entertainment-focused website (other than Cinematical, of course!). Their outstanding coverage of all things pop culture suggests an indie-leaning Entertainment Weekly, and I consider that a very good thing. They always do a great weekly list, and one of their recent offerings is no exception. Check out "Not Again: 24 Great Films Too Painful to Watch Twice." The first movie I thought of when I saw that title was Requiem for a Dream, so it's fitting that they put it in the #1 spot (not sure if these are in order of "most painful" or not). I saw Requiem for a Dream in college -- on a double date! So imagine not only suffering through one of the toughest movies of all time in a theater, but suffering through it with a hyperventilating girl you're trying to get to first base with! Needless to say, it didn't work out.

Though I don't think it's a "great film" by any stretch of the imagination, I can certainly see why Irreversible (#13 on the list) was included. I don't know if I physically could stomach that one a second time. I remember convincing my friends to come see it with me by telling them "It's supposed to be just like Memento!" It was not just like Memento. I still shudder when I walk past a fire extinguisher. I must be a masochist, because I either would watch or have watched several of the movies on their list more than once -- United 93, Million Dollar Baby, Audition, Leaving Las Vegas, etc. There's a lot of good rental ideas for those with a taste for challenging fare, so fire up your Netflix queue and head on over to the link. Just don't plan any parties around these flicks! How about you guys, what is a great film you could never sit through a second time?

In a summer laden with big-budget, CGI-heavy action movies, there is only one film whose protagonist can say, "I beat the crap out of a man using a rolled-up magazine." As you may have guessed, that man is Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), the impossible-to-kill hero of this August's The Bourne Ultimatum. We have an exclusive first look at the brand-new poster below (click on the image for a larger version).

Directed by Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Supremacy), this is likely to be the last chapter in the already legendary Bourne saga. This time around, expect another kickass car chase (the franchise is known for them) and a whole lot more of the visceral, gritty, realistic action that sets the Bourne movies apart from so many other films in the genre. As the poster's tag line suggests, Ultimatum will also see everyone's favorite amnesiac spy experience a little something known as "total recall." And from the looks of the trailer, that is not going to be a good thing for the bad guys.

Now that Paul Greengrass has won the hearts of American audiences and critics with United 93, he could easily keep hidden his political criticisms of the U.S. and hope for a prolific career in Hollywood. But he doesn't seem to want the easy life. Once the director finishes post-production on The Bourne Ultimatum, he is set to begin work on a film about the aftermath of the Iraq War. He will write a script based on Rajiv Chandrasekaran's non-fiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, and then direct the film for Universal.

Greengrass is no stranger to Iraq. Ten years ago he made a movie for British television called The One That Got Away, about an operation during Desert Storm. His hand-held documentary style is perfectly suited for the discord of the region and its post-invasion events, though he will probably bring something original to the project that hasn't yet been seen in the actual documentaries coming out of the Iraq War.

Despite his putting out mostly apolitical work since arriving in Hollywood, he is typically a political filmmaker and we can probably expect a very critical position from him here. Chandrasekaran's book apparently reveals the failures of the U.S. occupation and presents the whole thing as a major historical disaster. The Washington Post journalist does depict some involved individuals in a good light, though. If Greengrass can keep it as honest and balanced, he might be able to keep some of his patriotic audience.

Even if you consider Borat (full title not necessary) to be primarily a scripted work, it is still a film that works best in its unscripted sequences. This is debatable, sure, but I would like someone at the Writers Guild to tell me what was so great about the actual screenplay used. Personally, I think the scripted parts, as well as the adherence to the plot, are the weakest elements.

Nonetheless, Sacha Baron Cohen and his five collaborators are nominated for a Writers Guild Award for Adapted Screenplay. And despite my questioning of this recognition, I don't really prefer any of its competition. The other titles in the adapted category are Little Children, The Departed, The Devil Wears Prada and Thank You for Smoking. If I had to choose, I'd go with the last of these, but I think the prize will go to the overrated Little Children.

I also don't think the Original Screenplay category is that great, either. The nominees for that award are Little Miss Sunshine, Babel, United 93, Stranger Than Fiction and The Queen. Again, I'd have to go with the last of these, but predict the overrated first.

Hopefully, unlike with other guild awards, the WGA's honors will not reflect the Oscar nominations, which may recognize foreign films Volver and Pan's Labyrinth, which were ineligible here.

The Online Film Critics Society (of which Cinematical's own Scott Weinberg is a member) have spoken, and named their picks for the best films, performances and more of 2006. A recent arrival to the critic's boards awards season, the OFCS has been known for slightly off-center picks that often speak to very different sensibility than print and broadcast critics. As if to demonstrate this very point, a brief persual of the nominees and winners (designated in bold) after the jump will reveal that the OFCS has recognized a broad and fascinating slate of films in 2006 -- including Best Picture honors for United 93, plus individual wins for Oscar dark-horses like Borat, The Fountain, A Scanner Darkly and Children of Men. ...

According to John Horn of the L.A. Times, the film critics of Dallas/Ft. Worth are the best at predicting the Oscars. Yes, the DFA Film Critics Association frequently chooses as its own pick for best picture the same film that goes on to win best picture at the Academy Awards. And when I say frequently, I mean that the group has done this in four of the past five years. Last year they didn't pick Crash (not that anybody saw that coming save for Chicago, right?). Horn doesn't mention that they also didn't match in 2000.

This year, the DFAFCA has picked United 93 as their favorite film of 2006, so as long as Crash was just a fluke, it probably should get the Oscar. Horn doesn't analyze any of the other categories nor how Dallas/Ft. Worth correlates with the Oscars in them, so I took a look myself. In the major categories the group is as scattered with the hits and misses as any group. The actress has matched only twice in six years; the actor three times.

But it is a good bet this time the group's picks for actor and actress will be honored in February. Like nearly every other group in the country, it went with Mirren and Whitaker. Supporting actor and actress were a bit more interesting, going to Jackie Earle Haley and Cate Blanchett (for Notes on a Scandal), respectively. Though the comeback kid Haley did well with NY and SF critics, I'm pretty sure that this is Blanchett's first critic group mention (she is nominated for the Satellite and the Golden Globe). As far as how the DFWFCA rates compared to the supporting Oscars, it has matched only one actor and one actress in six years.

The group does fairly well with best director, picking four of the last six Oscar-winners. Their pick this year is Martin Scorsese (as it was in '04).

The rest of the awards, which are more or less with the majority, can be read here.

In case you haven't been paying attention, today is filled with Critics Circle Awards news. There are still a few major cities, Chicago for example, who haven't yet announced their picks, but so far, with the New York Film Critics Circle picks added in, it looks like a complete sweep for the King (Forest Whitaker of The Last King of Scotland) and the Queen (Helen Mirren of The Queen) in the lead acting categories. It isn't quite, though, if you take into account that Whitaker tied with Sacha Baron Cohen (for Borat) for the Los Angeles best actor spot. Otherwise, can we assume that these will be our Oscar winners? Hey, you never know -- Philip Seymour Hoffman almost swept last year's critics awards (NY and SF went with Heath Ledger) and he was a lock.

The rest of the NYFCC awards were like a snatch and grab of the rest we've seen so far. United 93, Half Nelson, Martin Scorsese and Jennifer Hudson were represented yet again. The group had a few surprises, however. Best supporting actor went to former child actor Jackie Earle Haley for Little Children and the foreign language pick was Army of Shadows, which Jean-Pierre Melville made more than 35 years ago.

The Screengrab has an interesting inside story on the voting process Monday morning (held at a conference room at Star Magazine). Some of the juiciest revelations are that the best picture category was nearly a tie (it was 12-10, United 93 over The Queen); that technically A Scanner Darkly might have won best animated film had Andrew Sarris not been in the bathroom during the category's vote; that Army of Shadows won only because of a tight battle between The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Volver. This really goes to show how a group's awards don't necessarily reflect the choices of all of its critics.

Anyway, to keep up with all the Awards season winners, check out the Movie City News scoreboard.

Check out the full list of NYFCC winners after the jump.

Last year, AFI dove eagerly into a sea of drama and politics. They cuddled with Brokeback Mountain and got whiplash with Crash. With only an old virgin to keep them afloat, it seems that the AFI powers-that-be started to sink into the drama, and were happy to be rescued by the smiling lifesaver of 2006. Unlike the heaviness of the groups previous choices, this year's choices are ... different to say the least.

First comes the familiar -- the films that aren't surprising. There's some overseas drama with Letters from Iwo Jima and Babel. For home flavor, there's the indie teacher drama, Half Nelson, Spike Lee's Inside Man, United 93, and some music with Dreamgirls. So far, so not surprising. It's a decent range of dramatic choices, although by no means complete.

Then comes the smiling life saver. There's a penguin with Happy Feet, for starters. Top that off with two huge indie hits -- Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan and Little Miss Sunshine, and you hit some mainstream, some satire, and one hell of a Miss Sunshine performance. But then -- and this is where I get really confused -- there is The Devil Wears Prada. When I wiped away the eye-rolling feelings of superiority from her friends, the fat comments (which may be accurate, but are still scary), and a few other too-cheery moments, I liked the film. I wasn't sad to have seen it, or to have even spent the extra coin to see it in a cushy theatre with seat service. However, that being said, is AFI so desperate for relief from last year that they went a little too far in the other direction?

So, the Los Angeles film critics have chimed in with their early-season (yet year-end) movie picks for the year of 2006, and the results are, meh, not bad / not great (If it's me you're asking). There were a few surprise picks, most notably Sacha "Borat" Baron Cohen's mention for Best Actor, although the comedian must be content to share the award with co-recipient Forest Whitaker for his work in The Last King of Scotland. Most of the other picks are fairly standard (Eastwood, Frears, Greengrass, etc.) but certainly solid choices across the board.

Plus I'm thrilled they gave two pieces of praise to Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, because it's my very favorite movie of 2006. Here's the big list:

Picture: Letters From Iwo Jima // Runner-Up: The Queen

Director: Paul Greengrass, United 93 // Runner-Up: Clint Eastwood, Flags of Our Fathers & Letters From Iwo Jima

Actor: Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat & Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland (tie)

Actress: Helen Mirren, The Queen // Runner-Up: Penelope Cruz, Volver

Supporting Actor: Michael Sheen, The Queen // Runner-Up: Sergi Lopez, Pan's Labyrinth (ooh, good pick!)

Supporting Actress: Luminita Gheorghiu, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu // Runner-Up: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls

Screenplay: Peter Morgan, The Queen // Runner-Up: Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine

Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, Children of Men // Runner-Up: Tom Stern, Flags of Our Fathers & Letters From Iwo Jima

Production Design: Eugenio Caballero, Pan's Labyrinth // Runner-Up: Jim Clay & Geoffrey Kirkland, Children of Men

For the rest of the winners -- music, foreign language, documentary, animation, etc. -- check out Variety's Award Central 2007 blog. I figure they're the ones who first published the list, so they deserve the traffic. (Expect a lot more critics' list as December trudges on!)

On the night of September 11, 2001, I got online and shared a few conversations with pals from around the world. I'm sure those discussions were a lot like the ones you had with your friends and family: The shock, the fury, the overwhelming helplessness, the heart-wrenching sympathy for the victims and their families. But since I'll often use humor as a defense mechanism (yes, even in the very bleakest moments), I remember asking a few of my film critic colleagues: "Hey, how long do you think it'll be before Hollywood decides to make a few biopics about what happened today?"

And now here we are, just over five years later, and 2006 has yielded not one but two rather distinctive takes on what went down during the blackest day in our nation's history. Universal's United 93 was the first one out of the gate, focusing on the final hours of some stunningly heroic "average Joes" who chose to fight back -- even as they knew it was probably the last thing they'd ever do. Fortunately, it was every bit the sobering and respectful film we all hoped it would be. A few months later came Paramount's World Trade Center, which told the tale from the perspective of two NYC Port Authority police officers who became trapped under tons of concrete rubble. Again, the filmmakers took a heartfelt and admirably sincere approach to the story, giving us a look at a massive tragedy through the eyes of two normal American families.

Aside from the events that inspired their creation, the two films couldn't possibly be more different -- and now that Oscar season has rolled around yet again, the experts are extra-busy handicapping which movie should win what and which movie doesn't deserve squat. So I thought it might be interesting to do a little "compare & contrast" on the films, focusing mainly on which sections might be considered most Oscar-worthy ...

Recent Theatricals

Dead Man's Shoes (Magnolia) -- A fantastic revenge thriller from British director Shane Meadows. (audio commentary, featurette, deleted scene, alternate ending)

District B13 (Magnolia) -- One of the craziest action flicks in years, and a whole lot of fun. (mini-doco, extended fight scene, blooper reel)

Kinky Boots (Miramax) -- Yet another drag queen shoe store musical comedy from the UK. (audio commentary, two deleted scenes, two featurettes)

United 93 (Universal) -- A fine film (with an inevitably harrowing finalé), but not one that screams out for repeat viewings. (director's commentary, featurette, memorial pages)

Unknown White Male (Wellspring) -- The validity of this documentary has been questioned, but either way it's a fascinating look at the horrors of amnesia. (six featurettes)

Catalog Titles

Blade Runner (Warner Bros.) -- Be aware: This is the same DVD as the current BR release, only with a new anamorphic transfer. The mega-swanky Special Editions arrive next year!

Brazil (Criterion) -- A one-disc (and now-anamorphic) version of Criterion's superlative three-disc set. (director's commentary)

Frankenstein Unbound (Fox) -- From director Roger Corman, starring John Hurt, Bridget Fonda, Raul Julia and Jason Patric. Yep, it's a weird one. (no extras)

Gojira (Sony) -- Includes the U.S. version and (for the first time) the original uncut Japanese version of the classic monster movie. (audio commentaries, documentaries, featurettes, etc.)

Seven Samurai (Criterion) -- 'Nuff said. (two audio commentaries, three documentaries, featurettes, etc.)

Direct-to-Video

Broken Trail (Sony) -- Technically this Robert Duvall oater was made for cable, but I think it's one of the best Westerns in years. (featurette)

Dorm Daze 2 (Lionsgate) -- If there's anything better than a National Lampoon "comedy," it's the sequel. (extras tbd)

The Plague (Sony) -- Earth's children fall into a coma, only to awaken years later with unpleasant things on their collective mind. (audio commentary, eight deleted scenes)

Population 436 (Sony) -- How does a town maintain the exact same population for 100 years? (alternate ending)

"I had expected to find the annihilating economy of [9/11] ... being explored, made legible. On the contrary, I found what had happened was being processed, obscured, systematically leached of history and so of meaning ... As if overnight, the irreconcilable event had been made manageable, reduced to the sentimental, to protective talismans, totems, garlands of garlic, repeated pieties that would come to seem in some ways as destructive as the event itself. We now had 'the loved ones,' we had 'the families,' we had 'the heroes.'"

-- Joan Didion, Fixed Ideas: American After 9/11

Oliver Stone's World Trade Center is well-made and well-intentioned. It is the story of two Port Authority Policemen who went, as part of a band of brothers, down to the World Trade Center the morning of 9/11 to help rescue survivors. Wounded and trapped when the buildings collapsed, officers John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Peña) tried to keep each other conscious and alert in the hope that someone, anyone, might be able to find them.

Stone's film -- and Andrea Berloff's script -- work with Jimeno and McLoughlin's real-life stories, and an opening title explains how the film is taken from the stories and recollections of surviving participants. In other words, this is not the crazy, careening, wild-eyed Stone of JFK attempting to re-write history. Stone's approach here has the careful, measured step of an altar boy bringing the Body of Christ up to the priest, terrified he might trip on his vestments. And films about the events of 9/11 certainly don't need the flash and dazzle of invented conspiracy; the question is if they one day might be offered the cool, considered illumination of reality.

With only six months until the 2007 Academy Award nominees are officially announced, it is obviously time to get the Oscar race started already. Movie City News has begun its Pre-Oscar Preview early this year with its The Gurus of Gold feature. Typically the real Oscar watch doesn't begin until the really good movies (or the award-hungry movies, anyway) start showing in Toronto. But just because none of the Gurus (critics and writers from different outlets) have actually seen most of the expected contenders for Best Picture, that doesn't mean they can't make predictions based on film trailers, buzz, etc. So, each Guru picked 10 movies, which they rated from 1 to 10, that they think have the potential to be nominated (and which also serve as a premature top-ten of 2006 for each Guru).

Based on the picks, or votes, it looks like the probable five nominees will be Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, Bill Condon's Dreamgirls, Steven Soderbergh's The Good German, Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel (which screened at Cannes) and Oliver Stone's World Trade Center (which some critics have seen). Dark horses include United 93, The Departed, All the King's Men and The Queen (These may change as more Gurus come aboard).

You know the Oscars are getting to be a waste of time when it starts being this easy.

I went to a café without wireless to write this column, because I'm finding that the communications options offered by the internet have turned my attention span into a twitching, wretched thing. And I wanted to think. This column is going to be all about what I've learned in two months as Cinematical's Editor-in-Chief, and one of the things I've learned is that my column turned out to be bi-weekly. It's verging on tri-weekly. And I try, weakly, to get it in on a regular basis, but who knows and/or cares if that's going to happen? So I retreat to a lead-lined café in a part of the city I don't get to that often before the press screening of Poseidon, trying to run through what I laughingly call my thought process about this job so far. And here are some things I've learned.

1) "Feed Me, Krelborn! Feed Me Now!"

Anyone who runs a blog of any kind will tell you that frequency of updates translates into traffic, visits and comments. And yet, this has taken a while to sink in with me. But the ravenous hunger of the blog essentially devours all sense -- watching update after update come from our news gatherers and commentators, posted to the site by Kim or Martha or rarely myself. I frankly don't know how a reader keeps up with it. But when you slow it down, you see the effect ... and that's, to quote Michael Franti, "as real as rent." So you step back; you look hard, and you start by kicking you own ass to make more news posts, more reviews, more columns, while recognizing that you are but one part of a much larger, spread-out network of busy, busy people, each of whom you owe about eight e-mails. And meanwhile the hunger of the blog -- what ink-and-print people call 'the news hole" -- demands feeding.

Director Paul Greengrass has taken the story of the fourth plane hijacked on 9/11 and made it into United 93. Departing from Newark, New Jersey and bound for San Francisco, California, this was the plane where a flight delay gave the passengers enough time to hear about the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, realize what was happening and rise up to fight back until the plane crashed short of its intended target in Washington, D.C.. From the moment United 93 was announced, the question that was most often asked was "Is it too soon?" Walking out of United 93 -- and even now -- I couldn't answer whether it was too soon or not. Another question I couldn't answer stuck with me much more intensely: What is a film like United 93 for? What's its purpose? Greengrass himself has suggested that the film is a tribute of remembrance, and perhaps that's enough.
 
It's certainly hard to not admire the technical skill brought to bear in making United 93; director Greengrass may be best-known for The Bourne Supremacy, but he's also crafted a series of rich, gripping films like Bloody Sunday and Omagh. Those films sprang out of a very British style of filmmaking, one you could call fiction documentary -- a tradition best practiced by Peter Watkins, whose Culloden, The War Game and Punishment Park are well-known in England and almost totally unknown in America. United 93 is in that tradition; the camera itself shakes like it has an adrenaline-jacked pulse, the pans and rotations and zooms of the lens fluid and unceasing, as if a thin sheen of sweat oiled every move. The actors are mostly unknown; many of the real military and aviation officials who witnessed terror and still made decisions on that tragic, chaotic day play themselves.