Reviewer: Jonthan Poritsky
Rating (out of 5): ****

Even in an artform as ever-changing as cinema, the best films from what many consider one of Hollywood's strongest, richest periods -- the late 60s/early 70s -- still feel remarkably fresh. And it's not just the famous examples, from The Graduate to The Parallax View, Chinatown to The Godfather, it's some of the lesser but still important films from that period that make it such a deep and endlessly fascinating era to study. And in that group I'd add Michael Ritchie's Downhill Racer, which is now out in a sparkling new Criterion DVD. Featuring some of the most innovative sports photography for its day and remarkable performances from Gene Hackman and Robert Redford, it's a wonder that this film isn't more well known. Thankfully, Criterion has reminded us to give it another look.

On its surface, Downhill Racer is a simple story about a man whose only life goal is to win for the sake of winning. Redford plays David Chappellet, a Colorado-born farm boy who quickly rises through the ranks on the U.S. ski team. He is a man-child in many ways, dealing with his daddy issues while chasing after women without any regard for his own (or anyone else's) well being. But because Redford is Redford, he doesn't come off as a complete schmuck. Even as he takes the woman off the arm of one of his teammates, he is suave and genuine. Eyes deep enough to drown in, it's no wonder he has made generations swoon.

Coraline
Directed by Henry Selick
2009, 100 minutes, U.S.A.

Review from Aaron Hillis; originally posted on GreenCine Daily on Feb 6, 2009, after a few initial negative reviews (fortunately many subsequent ones were far more positive -ed.)

Stop-motion animation wunderkind Henry Selick told me himself this week that he felt betrayed when studio honchos gave writer/producer Tim Burton an above-the-title credit for The Nightmare Before Christmas, which should be shared with Selick as it's his most durable directorial effort to date. But now the tables have turned with the wonderfully eccentric Coraline, as Selick is not only getting the lion's share of acclaim for his stereoscopic 3D adaptation of goth-hero Neil Gaiman's fantasy novella, but his dazzlingly meticulous production is so ahead of the industry curve that a couple critics have unfairly rejected the rest of the film for not being able to compare. It's obviously all subjective, that's the nature of our gig, but rather than reviewing a widely-released gem like Coraline, I'd only like to make a tiny case for why you should check out the most sophisticated and touching family film since Wall-E.

As both Jeffrey and James note here, critics in general got pretty animated about The Spirit, and not in a good way. Occasional GreenCine contributor Scott Weinberg wrote on Fearnet: "If, however, you like your films to include stuff like good sense, character development, internal logic, and a smooth-flowing story ... well, all I can say is that someone should have gotten Robert Rodriguez on the phone." But hold the phone! say Jeffrey and Jim, in their, er, spirited defenses of the film, enjoying it for what it is.

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ***

Due to holiday pressures and deadlines, I missed the press screening for The Spirit, as well as its Christmas Day opening. (One of my colleagues informed me that he "was willing, but The Spirit wasn't.") I didn't catch up to it until it was all but pronounced dead a couple of weeks later.

And as it began, I found myself grumbling at the stupid dialogue right off the bat.

But as the film went on, I discovered that it had a kind of appealingly dumb, playful quality. Indeed, it's far more low-key and purely enjoyable than either the amazing but grim Sin City (2005), which Frank Miller co-directed, or the aggressively stupid 300 (2007), on which he's only credited as the creator of the source material. It moves in a similarly artificial, elastic way, but without the fetishistic need for excessive violence. Here Miller is paying tribute to the great comics pioneer Will Eisner, a man whose work any comics nut worth his newsprint should know. (Eisner's work has often been rightly described as the Citizen Kane of comics. I definitely recommend them to potential viewers.) To that end, Miller effectively combines his own style with Eisner's style, which was starkly visual, but also humorous.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
To Iraq. And back. Followed by torture, terrorism, genocide--and history.

The films under consideration and their ratings (out of five):
Redacted (* * *½)
In the Valley of Elah (* * *½)
Rendition (* * * *)
Terror's Advocate (* * *)
Screamers (* * *)
Goya's Ghosts (* * * *½)

One of the beauties of DVDs is that you can rent a batch of similarly-themed movies and--over a weekend or a week--expand your knowledge and appreciation of our world due to the opportunity to see these films (along with their "Special Feature" extras) as a group in which one enriches the next and/or harks back to its predecessor. A single day in February saw the release of four such movies (Redacted, Rendition, In the Valley of Elah and Terror's Advocate) preceded one week earlier by Screamers and followed the week after by Goya's Ghosts, a film that surprised me by unexpectedly bringing many of the themes of the former five together under the panoply of history.