THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR - Three movies. That's all I could manage to squeeze in this holiday season -- 'Adaptation,' 'Antwone Fisher,' and the original 'Planet of the Apes,' which I finally saw from start to finish on DVD. I plan to write about all three movies this week, while hopefully engaging my colleague Sam Hallgren who saw 'Adaptation', among others, and reacted a bit more favorably than I did. But before I get to those movies, and to the CS list of the top ten films since 1978, I have to take some time to plug the 5th Annual Movie Club going on over at Slate with David Edelstein, Roger Ebert, Sarah Kerr (Vogue) and A.O. Scott (NY Times). The critics are sharing their top ten lists and other assorted observations on the year in movies. Edelstein reads this blog on occasion and I'm hoping that if I suck up enough he might invite me to partake in a Movie Club in the future. I can't imagine anything cooler than being able to call A.O. Scott "Tony." But seriously, these folks are all, sadly, out of my league, which you can see for yourself by clicking here. If you have a lot of free time and self-control, I also recommend checking out the vitriolic responses the Movie Club provokes in "The Fray." Since I don't have a lot of free time and even less self-control, I just avoid "The Fray" completely now. Two years ago I entered a few debates and it consumed almost a week of my life. I guarantee there are people in there now complaining about how they've never even heard of most of the movies these critics are discussing, and how if a critic says a movie is good it must mean it sucks, etc... really enlightening stuff. Anyway, here are a few random observations on the entries so far: * Edelstein puts 'Gangs of New York' at #11 on his list with an asterisk -- like Nigel Tufnel's amp, Edelstein's list goes to 11 -- explaining: "The asterisk means I'm hedging my bets pending a look (I hope someday) at Martin Scorsese's preferred three-and-a-half hour cut." What's curious about this is that I saw Scorsese talking about 'Gangs' a few weeks ago on either Conan O'Brien or Inside the Actor's Studio -- how's that for opposite ends of the cultural spectrum? -- and I'm sure I recall him saying that there will be no "director's cut" of the movie, that what you see in the theater is his preferred length. He admitted to some back-and-forth with Harvey Weinstein but said that he wasn't forced to chop his movie up. So, either Scorsese was just playing the good soldier while promoting his movie, or Edelstein's asterisk will be there for awhile. Speaking of chopped up movies and Miramax, I can't think of another movie more bastardized by length considerations than Billy Bob Thornton's 'All The Pretty Horses.' Luscious landscapes and cinematography, Matt Damon's best performance... all for nothing. It takes Thornton almost 90 minutes to get to the plot, which I loved, but Weinstein clearly did not. Thornton's first cut was reportedly almost four hours long and at one point he considered taking his name off the final version. He should have. Watching Damon's character fall in love and then in the next scene get framed and shipped off to jail was laughable and ruined what I think could have been a truly magnificent film. * Roger Ebert puts 'Minority Report' as the #1 movie of 2002. There's been some talk on this blog about Ebert's credibility and this choice certainly seems a dubious one. Edelstein is absolutely correct when he praises "seven-eighths of Minority Report" calling it "a blast until its flat final act." I think "flat" is probably too kind, as I discussed here on 7/31. No movie with an ending that flawed belongs atop any 'best of' list. * After 'Minority Report,' the biggest surprise has to be A.O. Scott's placement of 'Storytelling' at #7. I haven't seen it on any other top ten lists and I know it won't crack mine. Some of the dialogue in the "Fiction" sequence was hilarious, but it was the first time I agreed with all of the Solondz detractors that he seemed to be taking some sort of perverse pleasure in showcasing the vulgarities of his characters. 'Happiness' wasn't much different, but the tone was more consistently ironic and humorous as opposed to angry and condescending.

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