The best flicks going into Oscar season

Going into the fall Oscar season, it’s clear 2011 shaped up to be pretty similar to 2010 – wholly underwhelming as major studios flocked to big-budget tentpoles, product adaptations… anything with pre-existing source material (not including novels). It’s gotten so bad I found myself giving credit to the makers of “Real Steel” the other day because someone invented the story. Who cares if the movie is somewhat tripey and derivative. (I’m not even sure it makes any sense. The only reason boxing – or any sport – is interesting is because fragile, biological, imperfect human beings are forced to compete. Who the hell would be interested in watching robots punch each other? Where’s the triumph and defeat in that?)

CLASSIC REVIEW: ‘Apollo 13′

Part of a continuous series of classic film reviews from some of the most eloquent, hilarious film critics from yesterday and today.

At some point, I’ll do a list of the Top 10 Movies That Celebrate Everything That Was Awesome About the United States, and when I do that, “Apollo 13″ will be on it.

REVIEW: ‘Restrepo’

Since the vast majority of people who see the new war documentary “Restrepo” will never strap on a camouflaged helmet and a flak jacket and whatever other necessary tools of war, its greatest purpose will likely be the way in which it exposes other war movies.

CLASSIC REVIEW: ‘The Wild Angels’ and other biker movies

Part of a continuous series of classic film reviews from some of the most eloquent, hilarious film critics from yesterday and today.

I crossed this mini-review while reading Joan Didion’s fantastic book of essays about the ’60s, “The White Album.” She’s the consummate California writer and analyst, and she’s been involved with film productions. (She wrote with her now-deceased husband the very good drug film, “The Panic in Needle Park,” starring Al Pacino in 1971.) By the time I finished the review, which totals about three pages, I was somewhat blown away even though I thought Didion may have missed the point in her desire to absorb and understand the biker-movie genre of the late ’60s. Most film critics color inside the same lines. Their reviews are organized and shaped the same way, and a film critic’s reputation is based primarily on how well he or she performs within this shared structure. That structure, over the last 50 years or so, has been defined by newspapers.

CLASSIC REVIEW: The work of Stanley Kubrick

Part of a continuous series of classic film reviews from some of the most eloquent, hilarious film critics from yesterday and today.

I am jealous of Andrew Sarris, the dean of American film criticism. Some of you may have read his stuff over the last few decades in The Village Voice and most recently in The New York Observer (until the Observer decided it didn’t have enough money to pay him). But the man has got a pretty insane advantage of every critic out there.