Ask Mick LaSalle:
How to see the better movies.
Good morning Mick: If a person could only see a dozen movies a year (new releases and DVDs combined), what would be a good way of insuring that the better, higher-quality films would be seen? A particular critic’s Top 10 List? The winners of the Oscars and Golden Globes? The 12 top-rated films on Rotten Tomatoes?
Paul Sheinfeld, San Rafael Good morning Paul: I wouldn’t do the top 12 on Rotten Tomatoes, because that’s a consensus, and whenever you have a consensus, you’re heaping together the astute and the obtuse and averaging them all together. (Consensuses are great for figuring out what people are thinking, but not for finding out what you should be thinking.) Forget the Oscars and the Golden Globes. There are good movies to be found there, but bad ones get in, too. I’m not going to be a wise guy and tell you to see my Top 10, first of all because I don’t know if our tastes coincide, but also because trusting 10 whole movies to one person is a serious risk.
However, I would tell you to see my Top Three, because I can be wrong about No. 8, but my first three are always solid, and also because in most years there are only three potential classics, anyway. Then I’d forget the current year and devote the other nine slots to masterpieces, domestic and foreign. A good onestop source for great old films, in all genres and from all countries, is Gerald Mast’s and Bruce Kawin’s 1971 book, “A Short History of the Movies.” But don’t just watch oldies, and in all cases, be guided by pleasure. No system of study lasts more than a week unless you’re enjoying yourself. Dear Mick: Regarding the controversy over the absence of blacks in the Oscar nominations, do you think any of the cast members in “Selma” deserved to be nominated, or did the academy get it sort of right?
Linda Ericson, Atherton Dear Linda: It’s a little of both. David Oyelowo deserved to be nominated for best actor, only in the sense that he was better than Steve Carell in “Foxcatcher,” especially as Carell wasn’t even the lead actor in his movie. Channing Tatum was. Still, the actor who really got robbed this year was not Oyelowo but Oscar Isaac (“A Most Violent Year”). For supporting actress, I would have preferred Carmen Ejogo over Meryl Streep (“Into the Woods”) — does she really have to be nominated for everything? — but Ejogo had a small role, and my deeper reason for wishing her nominated is that her performance in “Sparkle” (2012) was extraordinary, and completely ignored.
As for the director category, Ava DuVernay created fine moments, but the movie suffered from weird casting and off-key performances, and the whole staging of the last scene, which should have packed a wallop, fell flat. “Selma” is a good movie, not a great one, and when you add in the nagging historical inaccuracies — you could almost call them distortions — it’s hardly a scandal that it wasn’t greeted as a masterpiece. Still, a couple of nominations in the acting categories would have fine. Dear Mr. LaSalle: Does your irreverent assertion that vomiting in movies gained in frequency and reached its peak coinciding with George W. Bush’s second term send a signal that you are abandoning movie commentary and descending into tabloid journalism?
Howard Hunsecker, Moraga Dear Mr. Hunsecker: No, if that were even remotely intended as a political comment, I’d have said that women in movies started looking queasy during the 2000 recount, that they had a funny taste in the back of their throats at the start of the Iraq War, that they got the dry heaves when there were no weapons of mass destruction and that they finally blew their groceries in the second term, during Hurricane Katrina. But what I said was meant only in a helpful spirit, as a chronological reference. Have a question? Ask Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com. Include your name and city for publication, and a phone number for verification. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.