New Year’s Eve Double-Feature Decided!
We gave our Smackdown readers the chance to vote on a selection of ten top New Year's Eve movies and, given that it's getting to that time, we're ready to cough up the results. The […]
December 2009
Up In The Air (2009) -vs- It’s Complicated (2009)
Finally, it’s awards season again, when the really big guns take aim for our hearts, minds, and pocketbooks. Coming out swinging for the bleachers are two movies made for adults of a certain (middle) age, the demographic that lopes through the rest of the year nearly forgotten, begging for scraps at a table set for callow youth and action figures. George Clooney and Meryl Streep both navigate the rough and increasingly muddied waters of love and commitment, and it’s a thrill to watch them struggle.
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Best New Year’s Eve Movie Smackdown!
New Year’s Eve is just days away now. We know it’s an important night so we want to help you be prepared. Let’s play a “what if?” Â What if your plans to take a Lear […]
Nine (2009) -vs- Crazy Heart (2009)
The Smackdown Movies about show business multiply like rabbits, and here’s a simple explanation. Not only do writers write what they know — everyone in show business finds show business (and himself) endlessly fascinating. That’s why they’re there […]
The Young Victoria (2009) -vs- Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Calling all Anglophiles! England’s longest reigning monarch takes on the cleverest subject of her (fictional) realm in this All-Union-Jack Smackdown. Both repackaged and reimagined for the new millennium’s theatergoing audience — the usually buttoned-up Victoria gets unstuffed and sexed up in a lush period romance/political drama, and Sherlock gets the no-holds-barred no-punches-pulled Guy Ritchie/Joel Silver treatment. Both title characters make formidable contenders for the Smackdown crown; there’s nothing I appreciate more than a really good makeover.
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Happy 2010 from the Smack: Diner (1982) -vs- The Apartment (1960)
Celebrate the Auld Classics! The Smackdown. There are a surprising number of worthwhile New Year’s Eve-themed films to consider watching should other more social-type plans fail to materialize for you. I’m no drinker, no party […]
Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) -vs- When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
The Smackdown I can’t criticize anyone who’s not struck by the party mood as 2009 lurches to a merciful end. Recession, foreclosures, unemployment. Really, what’s to celebrate, so let’s see how a pair of seasonal movies rise above […]
Sherry’s Top Ten of 2009
My List Surprised Even Me I’m fairly certain I’ve forgotten something, and the order shifts every few minutes. Still, at this moment in time, I’m sticking to this list, such as it […]
Beau’s Ten Best Films of the Past Ten Years
The criteria I used is pretty simple: which films are not just good but really impacted the world of film? It’s relatively easy to make a film that entertains. And, in some ways, it’s even easier to make a film that does something “different” and “new.” But to make a film that both entertains and moves you, while advancing the art of filmmaking…that’s pretty hard. So let’s get this ball rolling as we reflect on a most eclectic period of film…
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Love Actually (2003) -vs- It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
 Crowning a Yuletide Smackdown Champ, Christmas 2009 Well, it’s come to this. After three years of polling here at The Smack, our readers have narrowed our field of ten Christmas films in the first season […]