<title>Ebert-may-care
Ebert-may-care
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
   
  Whales Ahoy! That will be the next film I see. But I'll get the rest of my Top 10 out of the way first...

6) The King of Comedy - A dark parody of the politics of show biz, produced at a time when executives at three networks controlled the airwaves. Rupert Pupkin breaks into comedy by holding a corrupt entertainment industry and lazy viewing public hostage, and is later embraced and applauded by them. DeNiro's Pupkin appears to be crazy, but by the end of the film, the audience imagines that others who've made it in show business could only have risen to the top in similar fashion. This is Sandra Bernhardt's breakthrough film, and a scene in which she has dinner with a bound Jerry Lewis is often imitated.

7) Life is Beautiful - Though I am still a childless undergrad, I hope one day to love my child as totally and unselfishly as Benigni's Guido loved his son Joshua. Guido uses comedic elements borrowed from the silent film era to woo his wife Dora, and later, preserve Joshua's innocence while the family are prisoners at a Nazi concentration camp. Joshua's cries of, "We won," from the back of an American tank he thinks is his prize for winning a game invented by Guido to keep him hidden from prison guards, represents the salvation of his family's humanity at a time and place where a plan of unthinkable inhumanity was carried out.

8) Unitl the End of the World - I'll admit that Wim Wenders' vision is sometimes not shared with his audience, but he achieves clarity in this futuristic road film that gives us a day-after-the-bomb worldview that is inspiring rather than disconcerting or tragic. William Hurt's Sam travels the world with a machine that can capture images his blind mother can see, and is spontaneously pursued by a bored jet-setter named Claire. As a nuclear satellite spins toward Earth with consequences no one can predict, Sam has to collect, from friends and family, what images really matter. Claire, on her 30th birthday, finally finds meaning in her life and turns her attention to the most important image, Earth, still in one piece but in need of TLC. Life really does begin anew at 30...

9) Pulp Fiction - Credit Tarantino with the invention of the moebius-strip time line, and with out-gunning his first film, Reservoir Dogs, in every sense. This film's cultural influence rivals another Travolta film, Saturday Night Fever, and captured the 90's zeitgeist without trying to be a zeitgeist film. Pulp Fiction is the Forrest Gump for people who think Abby Hoffman was that Jewish guy who went to their high school in the suburbs. Singling out a favorite scene would be very, very difficult.

10) Fargo - The fact that this story was based on actual events doesn't make it any likelier. North Dakota seems at once close to home and somewhere over the rainbow as we watch Frances McDormand's pregnant Police Chief Marge Gunderson unravel a homocide, and reveal the minds of the poor slobs behind it. Marge, satisfied with herself and her life in a place where it seems the sun rarley shines, is able to rise above the greed and insecurity that have driven others to crime, and, as she tells a survivor of the fumbled plot, not let a beautiful day go to waste. This film is the Coen's best, I hope they can produce its equal in the future.

Well there it is, everything there is to know about me. Now let me get my butcher knife, it's time to review some new films.  
Film criticism...we're pretending to be undergrads from the Ivy League, to get this blog on CNN, or adapted to a made-for-TV movie

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