Wren Abbott, an editorial intern at New York magazine and freelance writer, reviewed the New York Film Critics talk at Makor for the 92Y Blog.
According to the critics in Wednesday night’s panel discussion on the Best & Worst Movies of 2006—David Edelstein of New York magazine, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com with TheReeler.com’s Stu Van Airsdale as moderator—there is an increasing fragmentation of movies into two categories: big budget studio films and “small movies that critics like that are about death,” as Gleiberman put it. Hence his favorite movie of the year is Casino Royale, which he says was successful because it filled moviegoers’ hunger for “mainstream movies that don’t insult your soul.” Hailed by some as the best Bond movie ever, Casino Royale was a surprise standout this year in a movie franchise not previously noted for garnering critical acclaim.
Gleiberman, along with Zacharek and Edelstein, disagreed on many points, but were united in their disdain for some of this year’s entries in the “small movies about death” category. Zacharek got the biggest laugh of the evening for her rant against The Good German, Steven Soderbergh’s attempt to demystify old Hollywood glamour using historical realism. Filmed in Technicolor processed to look like black and white, the shadowy faux-noir was “full of great-looking actors...and you’re peering at them going ‘I think that’s George Clooney’” Zachareck said. “It was such a nasty-spirited, angry little picture.” “A dead, appalling movie,” Gleiberman joined in, “like Casablanca made by Hannah Arendt.”
It might seem that Little Miss Sunshine—the $8 million dollar indie film that got a standing ovation at Sundance and earned $60 million at the box office—would get the thumbs-up from this group for its transcendence of the highbrow and lowbrow categories. But Gleiberman takes issue with the Hoovers’ condescension toward everyone outside their oddball group, such as the other beauty pageant participants in the climax scene of the film. It’s undeniable that Little Miss Sunshine, like Napoleon Dynamite, succeeds partly by dressing lovable characters up as losers so that the audience can feel a sense of discovery in finding them appealing. In the movie’s defense, Gleiberman seems to be objecting to what he perceives as its “art-film” pretenses rather than taking it for the mainstream crowd-pleaser it turned out to be. And in a year “short on masterpieces, and long on interesting movies that didn’t really work,” as Edelstein put it, even Gleiberman thinks Little Miss Sunshine is poised to win Best Picture.
