Word: rachel
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...anticipation sank with the opening credits: "Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood." That list spelled out the plot: damaged veteran, middle-age girlfriend, young daughter. The Wrestler never rose above fight-movie bromides, never dispelled my gloom. The character stereotyping makes Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa, by comparison, seem as swathed in moral ambiguity as Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers. The movie's serioso sentimentality is doubly strange since the script is by Robert Siegel, an ex-staffer of The Onion and co-writer of The Onion Movie. His old job was puncturing clichés; here...
...behalf of all movie critics, I say: You now have our permission - indeed, the sacred obligation - to see Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, Doubt, Gran Torino and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and to catch up with Rachel Getting Married and Happy-Go-Lucky...
...summer hit WALL-E (which won for Animated film in the other groups). Best directors were David Fincher for Benjamin Button (NBR), Danny Boyle for Slumdog (D.C. and L.A.) and Mike Leigh for Happy-Go-Lucky (New York). Screenplay prizes were allotted to Slumdog, Benjamin Button, Happy-Go-Lucky, Rachel Getting Married and Gran Torino. Art-house habituées may wish to know that Man on Wire was judged best documentary by all four groups (the only clean sweep), and that the best foreign-language films were Mongol (NBR), the Swedish vampire drama Let the Right...
...best actor, New York and L.A. named Sean Penn for Milk; the NBR cited Clint Eastwood for Gran Torino, and D.C. pinned Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler. Best actress: Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky (New York and L.A.), Meryl Streep in Doubt and Anne Hathaway in Rachel. Supporting actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (L.A. and D.C.) and Josh Brolin, Milk (New York and NBR). Supporting actress: Penelope Cruz as the passionate painter in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (NBR, New York, L.A.) and Rosemarie DeWitt as Rachel in Rachel...
...political process, the voting often rewards not the films that appealed to the most people, but the ones that managed to annoy the fewest. At the New York gathering, for example, the tug of wills on early ballots for best film was between Slumdog and Rachel; each had strong adherents and, it turned out, strong detractors. By the fourth ballot, a winner had emerged: Milk, which, for many members, was the least objectionable film in the bunch. Who could cavil at the choice of a quality bio-pic about a slain gay activist...