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An Education -vs- A Single Man

An Education (2009) -vs- A Single Man (2009)

January 28, 2010 Sherry Coben 14

It’s 1962, stylishly retro and way cool. TV’s Mad Men have paved the cultural way for two more stellar entries in the Sex And The Sixties pantheon. With the swinging sixties looming right on the horizon, Los Angeles college literature professor George (Colin Firth) and sixteen year old suburban London student Jenny (Carey Mulligan) fumble their un-merry ways through the rough-and-tumble terrain of love, loss, secrets, and sexual experience. Both lead performances have stirred up considerable Academy Award buzz, but they’re unlikely to compete head to head anywhere but right here. Dewy Maiden with Distinct Audrey Hepburn Echoes takes on World-Weary Confirmed Bachelor with a Not-So-Secret Secret. The winner? A grateful arthouse (and beyond) audience.
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Book of Eli -vs- The Road

The Book of Eli (2010) -vs- The Road (2009)

January 27, 2010 Bryce Zabel 14

We men have a default for action. So when the apocalypse arrives, we don’t plan on hunkering down, or trying to plant new crops.

No, we will hit the road, even if we don’t know where we’re going and, believe me, we’re not asking directions. For us, the idea is to keep moving.

My own personal take on the apocalypse is that it won’t be awesome, and it won’t be like a movie. It will be grimy, and personal hygiene will suffer, but the reason it’s called the apocalypse is that life will get cruel, short, and random, leaving precious few lines of witty dialogue to speak, or elegantly-staged action sequences to unfold. […]

Bright Star -vs- Impromptu

Bright Star (2009) -vs- Impromptu (1991)

January 26, 2010 Sherry Coben 4

Ah, consumption. That most romantic and cinematic of slow fades. Think Camille. Two wildly talented love objects with fatally bad lungs compete for this particular smackdown crown. It’s Frederic Chopin versus Bright Star John Keats in a death-baiting battle of ill-fated geniuses, fighting for every breath, playing fast and loose with history, and winning lovely lady hearts as they struggle for ours. I dare you to find two more gorgeous grandees, two saintlier objects of obsession in all filmdom. Go ahead. I’ll wait here.
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Legion -vs- Daybreakers

Legion (2010) -vs- Daybreakers (2010)

January 25, 2010 Mark Sanchez 3

“Legion,” just out, calls out the forces of heaven; in “Daybreakers,” the irresistible force comes from another place. Both strain story logic and borrow from better movies but sputter out the same question: Humans, how do you want to die?
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No Picture

The Hurt Locker Defuses Top Award from the Producers Guild

January 24, 2010 Bryce Zabel 1

If you haven’t seen it, the film is about a bomb-defusing unit in Iraq, a job that comes with a guarantee of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when you go home. Although it won at the Critics’ Choice Awards, it lost ground when the Globes chose “Avatar” as best dramatic film and then SAG gave its film ensemble award to Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds.”
What’s it all mean? Well, for starters, this PGA award always gets looked at as an indicator for which way the wind’s blowing in the race for the Academy Award for best film. During the past two decades, a baker’s dozen (13) of previous PGA winners have gone on to win the best film Oscar. The last time they didn’t connect was when the producers gave “Little Miss Sunshine” the win while the film academy went with “The Departed.”
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Inglorious Basterds -vs- Saving Private Ryan

Inglourious Basterds (2009) -vs- Saving Private Ryan (1998)

January 23, 2010 Bryce Zabel 11

High-profile directors like Tarantino and Spielberg dearly love taking a shot at putting their own brand on a World War II movie, no doubt because of the lure of working with badass villains and ass-kicking good guys.

Both of these films re-defined the genre as it existed when they were released and were considered Oscar-worthy enough to get Best Picture nominations (although both fell short).

Here at the Smack, they’ve each won a first round against a lesser contender: Saving Private Ryan knocked out the intense but difficult The Thin Red Line in our review, and Inglourious Basterds did the same against Spike Lee’s mediocre Miracle at St. Ana. Both of the winners in this Championship Round come with their passionate defenders. You can express yourself in our reader poll embedded in our post. Meantime, here’s how I call the fight… […]

Extraordinary Measures -vs- Lorenzo's Oil

Extraordinary Measures (2010) -vs- Lorenzo’s Oil (1992)

January 21, 2010 Bryce Zabel 1

Both movies are all about overcoming the odds and a parent’s love that allows them to suffer anything to help their children. In “Extraordinary Measures,” this involves the Internet but “Lorenzo’s Oil” takes place in the world before all the answers were at your fingertips and, initially, it seems like a tougher problem. God knows it’s hard for an average guy to find venture capital and start a company but it’s not quite the level of problem as actually becoming a scientist and curing a disease. So, in set-up, “Lorenzo’s Oil” has more obstacles but it’s also way more daring with the characters. Although there are characters in “Extraordinary Measures” who aren’t saints (notably, the prickly scientist played by Ford), the parents sure are. “Lorenzo’s Oil,” in contrast, is daring enough to suggest that in this war to save a child that both parents become sort of, well, unlikeable because the stakes are too high to care about being nice. It’s a bold choice. Both films try to strike a balance in not stereotyping the medical establishment as unfeeling money-grubbers and to see them as scientists who are trying to solve a problem by being unbiased in their approach, something that a desperate parents can never really be.
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Leap Year -vs- Youth in Revolt

Leap Year (2010) -vs- Youth in Revolt (2010)

January 20, 2010 Sherry Coben 6

Cookie cutter romantic comedy satisfies a too-easily edified audience. No matter how formulaic and tepid the sausage, the factories grind out more product to feed the gaping maw; indie films usually attract a more marginal fringe-ier crew, on the hunt for the original, the untold (or even oft-told) story told in fresh new ways. Pitting a humble little indie versus a major studio wide release makes for an inherently unfair fight and one with a foregone conclusion at the box office, but ticket sales won’t sway this Smackdown. As “Leap Year” bounds onto virtually every available screen and Quirky Indie-That-Could “Youth In Revolt” limps onto a fraction of that number, ask yourself: Is bigger necessarily better? Does conventional beat quirky?
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