Feature Articles

12/31/08:  "Wow, is this really my 4th Annual Ten Best List?  You bet it is!  And what a great year for movies it was, with me handing out four stars on no fewer than 26 occasions and finding 18 movies I REALLY wanted to get onto my Top Ten List.  Yes, the year was short on Utter Greatness, and no movie I saw this year could challenge the previous three Best Movie Champs Stranger than Fiction, The Mist or The Dark Knight.  But the year did have a deep bench, and I found nice surprises in all kinds of genres.  Of course, these lists are just for fun, and the difference between movies #5 and 18 is really no greater than a question of what kind of mood I'm in on any given day.  But I really tried to rank these titles based not on an objective standard of greatness (you know how I feel about that), but rather how totally buzzed about their awesomeness I was upon coming out of the theater.  No self-respecting list should be without at least a movie or two that's generally regarded as crap and a couple more most people have never heard of and, as always, my picks deliver the goods!  Without further ado, I give you The Best Movies of 2009 (Lamar Kukuk Edition):" MORE

2/20/09:  "Longtime readers know I'm a bitter guy on this subject:  the Academy Awards were never perfect, but once we had a system through which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sifted through the many different positions both mainstream and critical as to the year's best movies and tried to select a consensus best Picture everyone could kinda agree on.  What we have now is a system with no more validity than, say, my own Top 10 List.  Contemptuous of mainstream hits and hard-edged Art House fare alike (not to mention anything about politics more recent than 30 years ago), the Academy now seems to put its' Best Picture stamp only on the Best Movie Made For the Academy.  As such, the bitterness.

Luckily, despite producing an utterly myopic and pointless list of Best Picture contenders, the Academy hasn't missed the boat in the acting categories, and it's there that my attention will be primarily focused Sunday night." MORE

Without further ado, offered with the caveat that as an unpaid citizen, I have not yet seen many of the movies on the pros' Top 10 Lists, placed there only to tease us mortals who'll have to create a separate list for them next year should they live up to the hype:" MORE

I also offer good news on two fronts.  First and most important, this was a GREAT summer movie season.  Loads of great movies, lots more good ones.  In fact, between the opening week counterprograming dud Made of Honor and August 15th's Star Wars:  The Clone Wars, I didn't see a single movie I gave less than 2 1/2 stars.  Of course, I did hand out 2 stars or less four times in the season's last two weeks, but we're emphasizing the positive here, folks!" MORE

I did it last year, so if I do it again this year it's bound to become a tradition:  a Preseason Poll of the 15 movies I expect to drive me craziest with excitement over the next four months.  Let the hype begin!" MORE

2/20/08:  "With the writers strike finally over, the veil of uncertainty that had threatened to disrupt or entirely scuttle the 80th Annual Academy Awards has been lifted.  While I'd have actually preferred a settlement a few days before the awards, giving all the nominees time to make travel arrangements but not giving the actual Oscar writers time to cobble together more rancid banter between presenters who'd be better off winging it (I know they don't believe this, but TRUST me when I say you'd rather be dull than idiotic), it's great to have the show back on at all.  We'll need a good one, because this year's round of nominees is one of the least interesting I can recall.  But good or bad, they ARE the Oscars, and as such predictions must be made.  Last year I went 8-for-10 in my first official shot at this:  once more into the breach!" MORE

12/31/07:  "Has it already been a year since I started this website with my 2006 Ten Best List?  Indeed it has, and it's time to add the 2nd Annual List!  I'd have to say 2007 was a bit of a come-down from the previous year, with fewer titles pushing hard for their spot on the list, but that doesn't mean there were no highlights.  In 2007, music was alive and well in the movies, with not just two Broadway musicals in my top 10, but a third film positively awash in the language and performance of it.  And while a wave of movies directly addressing the War in Iraq may have disappointed, the unease in the air generated some unforgettable visions of the destructive power of fear, highlighted by the year's best film, an old-fashioned horror meat grinder that left me literally shaking as its' credits rolled:" MORE

9/3/07:  "Oh, man, here we are at Labor Day again, and I didn't get half my Summer projects finished!  Plus, I've got that nagging feeling that I have to go back to high school even though I graduated in 1990.  And, most frightening of all, now I've got to answer for those predictions I made back in April about which would be the 15 best Summer movies!  Overall, it was a pretty good Summer season, laced with only a few true turkeys.  As always, there was a lot of that “well, I enjoyed that, but I really came in expecting Citizen Kane with explosions, so I can't say I'm happy” feeling, and a general sinking feeling that if you have to add “threequel” to your dictionary because you're using it so often, Hollywood is in trouble.  But there were pleasant surprises as well (granted, none of them were threequels), and a few of the uber-blockbusters managed to deliver the goods." MORE

4/25/07:  "Here we are again, days away from one of the great rituals of moviegoing:  the Summer Movie Season.  It's appropriate that on the summer that will mark the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars, the blockbuster machine it perfected will be running louder and harder than ever, with an unprecedented number of mega-sequels and mega-tie-ins hitting screens between May 4 and Labor Day.  I thought it would be fun to put together a kind of “pre-season poll” of these Coming Things, handicapping sight unseen what the 15 best movies of the season will be simply on the noise and quality of their hype.  Never fear, I will be back on Labor Day to face the music on these picks..." MORE

2/20/07:  "February 25 is the big night:  names will be written in stone for all time as Academy Award Winners, while others will become trivia questions and footnotes.  Who will win?  Who am I rooting for?  Let's find out:

BEST PICTURE
Who's Nominated: Babel, The Departed, Letters From Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen
My Preference:  It's a tough call between the powerfully mournful Letters From Iwo Jima and the spirited, fascinating The Queen.  They're such different movies, but I'll give it to Letters From Iwo Jima by a nose." MORE

1/4/07:  "Here we are at the beginning of a new year and a new site, and what better way for you, my new readers, to get to know about my moviegoing tastes and preferences than for us to start out by putting last year's flicks to bed?  2006 was a great movie year, starting with two top-shelf releases (Glory Road and Last Holiday) on Martin Luther King Jr. Day Weekend in January all the way through to the two four-star titles (Rocky Balboa and We Are Marshall) that came out days before Christmas.  Sure, there were bumps in the road, but in the end, I wound up with over 20 titles competing for spots on my inaugural Lamar's Movie Palace 10 Best List:" MORE