"United 93" cowards

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Movie City News has assembled 164 Top Ten lists from 164 film critics and calibrated the standings based on a point system, and the #1 film is Paul Greengrass's United 93 with 590 points, compared to 533 for The Queen, 524 for The Departed, 402 for Pan's Labyrinth and 392 for Letters From Iwo Jima.

That's it -- there's no excuse any more for any Academy member who refuses to see United 93. None. at. all. If you, an Academy member, see United 93 and don't care for it, fine. But if you flat-out refuse to see it, you're bringing dishonor upon yourself and the Academy and the entire process. If the United 93 cowards had the smallest shred of character they'd resign, but of course they won't do that. Say it loud and clear: these people are despicable.

comment #1

cjKennedy says ...

Who is this phantom block of United 93 denying Academy voters you keep grousing about? Do you know any or are these like the Latino Apocalypto fans? Is anyone still even talking about United 93 being 'too soon'?

comment #2

gruver1 says ...

Wells to cjkennedy: Sniff around, listen up...read Pete Hammond's column on Hollywood Wiretap...listen to Horn and Goldtsein talk about "united 93's" chances with the Academy....when you've done that, write back and apologize.

comment #3

cjKennedy says ...

So the answer is 'no' you don't know any anti United 93 Academy voters. I took your bait though. I sniffed around. I stuck my nose farther up Oscar punditry's ass than I ever wanted to and I took a big wiff. I read some Hollywood Wiretap. On December 14, Pete Hammond mentioned one voter he talked to who wouldn't see the movie. One guy. Goldstein and Horn talk about how United 93 doesn't have a chance, but they don't offer any evidence that it's being rejected by Academy voters because they resist the subject matter. They theorize why critics and Academy voters don't agree, but that's all. One of them says "I don't think United 93 will be a movie the Academy ends up embracing, but I could be wrong". That's about it.

I don't believe United 93 will be nominated, but I was asking for your evidence that there was some kind of voter conspiracy against it based on the feeling it was too soon to make a 9/11 movie. You haven't provided any and I couldn't find any in my own limited search so I'll withhold my apology for now.

Who's going to apologize for the 30 minutes of my life I waisted listening to Patrick Goldstein?

comment #4

gruver1 says ...

Wells to cjKennedy: My, I am impressed. You're so thorough and exacting and meticulous!

comment #5

corey3rd says ...

JWW
I buy the idea that there are a lot of Academy voters who won't be cracking the screener box of United 93. It's going to get the Sweet Hereafter treatment. I encountered five big time Oscar voters and none of them wanted to watch a film about kids drowning in a school bus. I can believe that these same people will avoid United 93 because they just don't want to deal with it. In the case of the Sweet Hereafter, it was up for best director and they still wouldn't watch it (even though they had no problem watching Titanic with its drowning kids).

comment #6

Todd says ...

For all the praise everyone is giving United 93 the reality is, is that it a rip off of the Discovery Channels own docudrama United 93 which was also very good but seems to get no mention. I reference this as a reminder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93.

comment #7

Todd says ...

Excuse my reference this for the docudrama http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05199/539586.stm that was on the discovery channel.

comment #8

cjKennedy says ...

Jeff, I'm not the journalist here. I simply wanted to know if you had evidence to support your claim or if it was just more unsubstantiated, pre-Oscar speculation. Why should I be expected to research your posts?

comment #9

cjKennedy says ...

Here's my apology: I apologize for making a snarky, unresearched comment about something it turns out I actually didn't have all that much interest in in the first place.

comment #10

Matthew Lucas says ...

I think it's sad that there are so many out there who refuse to see it (and yes, they exist...even more so than those that refused to see "Brokeback" last year).

I don't think it will be nominated, but not just for that reason. I don't think it's worthy. It's a good film, but not a great one. I may be one of the few critics saying that, but it's how I feel. I find the movie overrated, and "Flags of Our Fathers" severely underrated right now (it remains the best film I have seen this year).

comment #11

jeffmcm says ...

I'm a huge United 93 fan, but Wells's comments in this thread do not help the movie out. Rather, they serve no purpose except to make him look like a dick.

comment #12

dobbsy says ...

While we are on the subject of films that can't/won't get a fair shake from the Academy, Apocalypto is opening all across Europe and the reviews are rolling in.

Cosmo Landesman in the London Sunday Times said it's "done with such visual power and emotional intensity, it’s in a class of its own."

Philip French, another one of the U.K.'s most respected critics said "One thinks of Ernest Schoedsack's The Most Dangerous Game (at least thrice remade), where sadistic aristocrat Leslie Banks hunts human victims lured to his island in the Malayan archipelago; Cornel Wilde in The Naked Prey, given the chance to run for his life by his native captors in early-19th-century Africa; Rod Steiger given a similar opportunity to escape from a tribe of hostile Sioux in Run of the Arrow; and, more briefly, the Nazis playing nasty games with French resistants facing a firing squad in The Army in the Shadows. But this one is not just a bid for survival. It's at once a visceral, moral and spiritual experience in which Jaguar Paw earns the name his tribe have bestowed on him. It concludes with a coda that combines the chilling and the beautiful, the tragic and the hopeful and which, without being either forced or spelled out, has a deep meaning for our own times.

And another reviewer opined

"...A meticulous reconstruction of a lost empire, a ripping boy's own adventure, and an eschatological allegory, the film has something for everyone (except the very young, owing to its violent content). Though by no means entirely free of flaws, in cinematic terms it is Gibson's finest film to date..."

comment #13

gruver1 says ...

Wells to jeffmcm: "Wells's comments in this thread do not help the movie out. Rather, they serve no purpose except to make him look like a dick." I point out that it's intolerable and unacceptable for certain Academy members to NOT EVEN WATCH the most highly admired film of the year among critics (from an MCN statistical basis) and I'm a dick for saying so in blunt terms? The "United 93" avoiders should be what...coddled and caressed?

comment #14

mitch says ...

The Sweet Hereafter remains one of my favorite films. Good call on that, Corey.

comment #15

bents75 says ...

Am i missing something here, or is someone else posting comments by Wells? Who is this "gruver1", and why has he begun two comments with the response "Wells to ____"? Pretty weak attemtp gruver1 to validate your argument, regardless of how right you may or may not be.

comment #16

vansmith says ...

As someone who was enroute to the world trade that day and knew four people who died i have no interest in seeing 93, i think its a disservice to even make movies about that day. see that documentary that those guys did, see those people jumping out of those windows, that shit was real and hollywood shouldn't jerk off the emotional vulnerability of people regarding that day. that being said i heard that 93 really shows the inability of the FAA and the military to make decisions about which planes were hijacked and the doubt they had about shooting down a plane full of american citizens, no one would want that on their conscience..

comment #17

WKeane says ...

Hey vansmith, if filmmakers shared your sentiments, films concerning violent days in history would never be made. Are you suggesting it's always inappropriate to make films about human tragedy, such as any war, slavery, all of the world's holocausts etc.? Artists have a license to comment on reality, without falling over into exploitation, as all good art should refelct the real world. Therefore, all historical events, such as 9/11 are fair game. What makes that day a more sensitive subject than any other violent day in the very violent history of mankind?

comment #18

WKeane says ...

Hey vansmith, if filmmakers shared your sentiments, films concerning violent days in history would never be made. Are you suggesting it's always inappropriate to make films about human tragedy, such as any war, slavery, all of the world's holocausts etc.? Artists have a license to comment on reality, without falling over into exploitation, as all good art should refelct the real world. Therefore, all historical events, such as 9/11 are fair game. What makes that day a more sensitive subject than any other violent day in the very violent history of mankind?

comment #19

dre says ...

Wells point, which I think is valid, is that there is a significant number of people that refuse to see the movie because of the feelings it may evoke about 9/11; that it is "too soon". You had to of had your head in the sand when the movie was released earlier in the year to not hear that battle cry. The Academy is not necessarily the responsible party you may consider it. Year after year I read interviews from "anonymous" Academy voters who say they didn't see a movie because they thought it was going to be to heart-wrenching, they saw Cinderella Man but didn't vote for the movie or Crowe because "he's an asshole", they didn't think X,Y,Z were the best performances of the year but are giving X,Y,Z the award because they're nice people etc.

Vansmith, United 93 will make you proud of the passengers on board and it will make you proud - yes - to be an American. If it was the shameless sentinmental sham manipulating film coasting on our emotions you feared...I would have hated every moment of it. But it is one of the classiest and most realistic depictions of heroism I have ever seen. It not only deserves to be seen, it NEEDS to be seen. We should never forget these heroes and we should all know what exactly went wrong that day. I learned 10 times more from that film than the Discover Channel documentary on the same subject. The amount of information is extraordinary.

comment #20

vansmith says ...

WKeane, your right, its just that...i dont know..one day i will see it. Maybe seeing it does honor them, its just that that whole thing still incenses me, unlike anything else really. there's a detachment that comes from viewing in film the other violent historical acts that man has committed because they were'nt in my lifetime maybe, not making them any less devastating, but this 9/11 thing..im sure those academy members knew people on those flights which could make it harder to judge as a film in its own right...

comment #21

gruver1 says ...

Wells to bents75: "gruver1" is my handle because I got a new computer and for some reason I couldn't reactivate my name on the message board....jeez.

comment #22

cjKennedy says ...

9/11 quickly became an abstraction. It became shorthand for "We're Not Safe" and it has been exploited time and time again by the current administration as a way of counteracting dissent.

One of the great things about United 93 for me was that it reclaimed the human story. It showed regular people coping with this horror as it unfolded. Strangely, the most powerful moments for me were not the more intense climactic scenes on the plane, but the scenes on the ground among the flight controllers as they grappled to understand what was going on.

The movie also helped me revisit what that day was like in a healing way. I think I'd sort of buried it and let it fester.

I remember the cries of 'too soon' leading up to the movie's release. I worried myself that it would be exploitative...it wasn't...and I couldn't decide afterward whether it was a great film or if it was a just a good film about a great horror; a film that got its impact from my built in personal feelings about the day. I still haven't completely decided that point.

Anyway, my impression was that a lot of people saw the film and that fewer and fewer people were saying it was too soon, especially once the Stone film came out. If they are, well it's a personal thing and I can't argue with it. Everyone deals with grief and loss and tragedy in their own way and in their own time. It's sad, not despicable.

comment #23

KeithNYC says ...

Well said Dre and CJ. United 93 is the best film of the year (by the way I just saw "letters" which is also fantastic). I think all this talk is for nothing as the academy cannot ignore this movie. It is basically the most acclaimed film of 06. It will get nominated for best pic. It will then gain more momentum and I predict WILL win Best picture. After all, who saw "Crash" winning best pic? (and that movie sucked). "Dreamgirls" is going downhill w/ the critics and may not even get nominated. I cant imagine such light fare as "Queen" winning. "Babel" has major backlash. "Children of Men" is not going to get nominated (and Jeff keeping it as the first movie in your Best pic Oscar balloon is a joke). "Departed" will get nominated but it is too violent and jokey to win Best picture (not to mention the horrible ending). "Letters from Iwo Jima" is fantastic and has a good chance but will the Academy go to the Eastwood well again?? Trust me, United 93 will be there at the very end.

comment #24

bents75 says ...

My bad, I wasn't aware of that. Fair enough.

comment #25

Hallick says ...

Since there was a well documented resistance to "United 93" at the time of its theatrical release because it was "too soon", unless all of those people meant "too soon, but December sounds great!", then the concern seems to be a reasonable one.

And on an anecdotal note, A.O. Scott just said on "Filler & Roeper" that he avoided it for a few months himself because of the subject matter.

comment #26

dixiedugan says ...

I did my bit for United 93 last night at a party, hammered though I was (hey, turned four oh today, very reasonable) and am loaning my copy out to three or four people. They may not be Academy voters but every little bit helps.

Hopefully with the film getting the critic groups awards that it has will light a fire under a few asses at the Academy.

comment #27

bellepoitrine says ...

What makes you think Academy voters give a shit what critics think?

comment #28

Mike K says ...

The supplementary material on the United 93 DVD makes it clear that the film received the blessing of all the victims' families before principal photography was begun. Director Greengrass said that if even one family was against the film being made, he would not have done it.

Perhaps if Academy voters were aware of this, they would be more apt to screen this excellent film. Then again, we are talking about the same dipshits that gave a Best Picture award to Crash, so there you go.

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