There’s just something clenched and curious in Ben Foster‘s features, and maybe in Foster himself. All kinds of odd currents seem to be running through the guy, like he’s thinking about pulling a gun or something. I know…that’s his selling point, his edge. But I don’t think he can do much else. I don’t think he has it in him to play sedate or easygoing, much less serene.

“The root of the matter lies in the whiff of popular justice that masks everything and transforms the commentators, the bloggers, the citizens, into so many judges sworn in on the great tribunal of Opinion — some weighing the crime, others the punishment,[and [many taking] an evil pleasure in replaying over and over the details of this sordid affair in order then to throw the first stone. This lynching is a disturbance of the public order more serious than Roman Polanski remaining free. This tenacity on the part of the gossips, and this desire to see the head of an artist on a pike, are the very essence of immorality.” — French poet and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy in a 10.5 Huffington Post-ing.

The late Oliver Reed‘s infamous visit to the David Letterman show on 8.25.87.

From 10.23 through 11.9, BAMcinematek is running a series of 1962 films. It’s partially about celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the New York Film Critics Circle, and also about making up for the fact that the NYFCC didn’t present awards that year due to a newspaper strike. NYFCC chairman Armond White, the apparent architect of the series, has written that 1962 “was equal to Hollywood’s fabled 1939 [so] we welcome this great opportunity to learn and revise film history.”

Glynis Johns in George Cukor’s The Chapman Report.

The films being shown are, for the most part, excellent choices — Jacques Demy‘s Lola, John Ford‘s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, David Lean‘s Lawrence of Arabia, Sam Peckinpah‘s Ride The High Country, Robert Aldrich‘s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, George Cukor‘s The Chapman Report, Jerry Lewis‘s The Errand Boy (actually released in the fall of 1961), Howard Hawks‘ Hatari, Francois Truffaut‘s Shoot The Piano Player, Francois Truffaut‘s Jules and Jim, Agnes Varda‘s Cleo From 5 to 7, and Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Il Grido (which opened in Italy in mid ’57 but not in the States until ’62).

But if White and BAM are seriously trying to pay tribute to 1962 (which was an exceptional year) and they’re including mid-level pablum like The Chapman Report, why did they blow off Otto Preminger‘s Advise and Consent, Peter Ustinov‘s Billy Budd (an excellent film), John Frankenheimer‘s Birdman of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate and All Fall Down, J. Lee Thompson‘s Cape Fear, George Seaton‘s The Counterfeit Traitor, Frank Perry‘s David and Lisa, Blake Edwards‘ Days of Wine and Roses, Pietro Germi‘s Divorce, Italian Style, Terence Young‘s Dr. No, John Huston‘s Freud, Don Siegel‘s Hell Is For Heroes, John Schlesinger‘s A Kind of Loving, Roman Polanski‘s Knife in the Water (actually released in the U.S. in ’63), Alain Resnais‘ Last Year at Marienbad, Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’eclisse Stanley Kubrick‘s Lolita, the great Kirk Douglas western Lonely are the Brave, Sidney Lumet‘s version of Eugene O’Neil’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, the internationally-directed The Longest Day, Samuel Fuller‘s Merrill’s Marauders, Arthur Penn‘s The Miracle Worker, Lewis Milestone‘s Mutiny on the Bounty, Jules Dassin‘s Phaedra, George Roy Hilll‘s Period of Adjustment, Ralph Nelson and Rod Serling‘s Requiem for a Heavyweight, Serge Bourguignon‘s Sundays and Cybele (a.k.a., Les dimanches de ville d’Avray), Richard Brooks‘ Sweet Bird of Youth, Robert Mulligan‘s To Kill a Mockingbird, Orson Welles‘ The Trial, Robert Wise‘s Two for the Seesaw, Vincente Minnelli‘s Two Weeks in Another Town, Denis Sanders‘ War Hunt (which costarred Robert Redford and Sydney Pollack) and Philip Leacock‘s The War Lover?

That’s 36 or 37 films released in ’62 — ranging from fairly decent to good to excellent, no pikers in the lot — vs. a mere twelve showing at the BAM/NYFCC series. So the program is showing roughly 25% of the worthy films that opened in the U.S. that year. They couldn’t even manage half! A faux tribute, at best.

Yesterday a nervy idea hit me for an At The Movies type show. I was standing in a hotel room around noon yesterday and listening to critic Marshall Fine talk about having taped a pilot for one of these things, and it came to me in a flash. At The Movies hosted by critics under the influence.

I’m basically talking about a mixture of At The Movies and the Dean Martin variety hour that ran in the mid ’60s to mid ’70s. Martin always pretended to be slightly bombed on that show, and I don’t think viewers cared if he actually was or not. The point is that the show was loose and friendly and convivial, and there’s obviously one way to usher in that kind of vibe.

I don’t know what substance would work better, alcohol or marijuana. But if there was a weekly movie-reviewing show featuring fizzy-headed or moderately stoned critics, people would watch it like they watched Howard Beale in Network. Because they’d know going in that the critics wouldn’t be dispensing the usual-usual. It’s a catchy gimmick — you have to admit that.

Nobody wants to see respected critics make fools of themselves, so the trio we’re speaking of would need to be very careful with the intake. But they’d be just irreverent enough to loosen up and say what they really think about this or that film due to reduced inhibitions and being slightly more prone to using colorful language and…you know, not seeming overly poised and regimented, which is what every movie-critic show tends to feel like. Cold-sober people obviously have stirring discussions every day, but the liveliest ones — admit it — do seem to happen in the evening among friends after a drink or two. Or after passing a joint around.

I realize there are laws prohibiting on-camera imbibing, so such a show would have to be launched online. But you’d probably want your critics doing the show while sitting at a bar on stools. And the show would have to be lighted semi-darkly, like Charlie Rose.

Obviously a thing like this would send an unhealthy retrograde message to viewers, and there would be, I agree, a certain flirtation with public humiliation right around the edges of such a concept. I’m only saying that the numbers for such a show would almost certainly be exceptional because it would be something really different. I’m sure most people reading this think it’s a silly adolescent idea that challenges the already-tarnished dignity of film criticism. But I know something else — the best ideas for new forms of entertainment are often ones that conventional-minded types dismiss at the outset.

This is one of the better monologue kickoffs that David Letterman has ever delivered. That first line is perfect, and what a laugh it gets! And his facial expressions — his eyes especially — before he says the first word are brilliant.

I could write a small book about my selection of the 70 best films of the first 21st Century decade (i.e., 2000 to 2009), especially if I explain my reasons for listing each one. But this is just an article so let’s forego the whys and wherefores and get down to brass tacks, understanding, of course, that this is just a 10.5.09 moving-train assessment and 2009 obviously hasn’t played out yet.

(l. to r.) Elias Koteas, Anthony Edwards, Mark Ruffalo and John Carroll Lynch during a pivotal second-act scene in Zodiac.

And the brassiest tack of all is David Fincher’s Zodiac — my choice for the best film of the last ten years. (I’m speaking, of course, of the DVD/Blu-ray director’s cut.) Because it plays its game of obsession so exactingly and meticulously and with such staggering confidence, and with nothing but superb performances top to bottom. And because the film takes all this and amplifies it into a kind of infinite hall-of-mirrors equation by being as obsessive as Jake Gyllenhaal‘s Robert Grayson character, if not more so.

But that’s it — I don’t have all day to do this and I can’t and won’t provide summaries of my reasons for choosing all 68 films. Some other time.

I decided I had to include 37 films in my final best-of-the-best list. Here they are in order of preference: (1) Zodiac, (2) Memento, (3) Traffic, (4) Amores perros, (5) United 93, (6) Children of Men, (7) Adaptation, (8) City of God, (9) The Pianist, (10) The Lives of Others, (11) Sexy Beast, (12) No Country for Old Men, (12) There Will Be Blood, (13) Michael Clayton, (14) Almost Famous ( the “Untitled” DVD director’s cut), (15) 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, (16) Dancer in the Dark, (17) Girlfight, (18) The Departed, (19) Babel, (20) Ghost World, (21) In the Bedroom, (22) Talk to Her, (23) Bloody Sunday, (24) The Quiet American, (25) Whale Rider, (26) Road to Perdition, (27) Open Range, (28) Touching the Void, (29) Maria Full of Grace, (30) Up In The Air, (31) The Hurt Locker, (32) Million Dollar Baby, (33) The Motorcycle Diaries, (34) An Education, (35) Man on Wire, (36) Revolutionary Road, and (37) Che.

The two strongest years of the last decade were 2000 and 2004, with 15 films of a great or near-great stature coming from the former and 14 from the latter. The weakest year of the decade, I feel, was 2008 with only three making the cut. Here’s the rundown, but understand that the films listed for each year are just tossed in and not listed in order of preference:

2000 (15 films): Sexy Beast, You Can Count On Me, Wonder Boys, Before Night Falls, Almost Famous (“Untitled” DVD director’s cut), Erin Brockovich, Amores perros, Dancer in the Dark, Girlfight, Gone in 60 Seconds (guilty pleasure), High Fidelity, In the Mood for Love, Memento, The Tao of Steve (2nd guilty pleasure), Traffic.

2001 (5 films): A Beautiful Mind, Ghost World, In the Bedroom, The Royal Tenenbaums, Y tu mama tambien.

2002 (11 films): 24 Hour Party People, Talk to Her , Bloody Sunday, 8 Mile, Adaptation, Bowling for Columbine, Changing Lanes, City of God, The Pianist , The Quiet American, Whale Rider, Road to Perdition.

2003 ( 8 films): Los Angeles Plays Itself, Bad Santa, The Fog of War, Master and Commander, Shattered Glass, 21 Grams, Open Range, Touching the Void.

2004 (15 films): Sideways, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, The Incredibles, Fahrenheit 9/11, Bad Education, After Sunset, Man on Fire, Collateral, Downfall, Man on Fire, Mar adentro (The Sea Inside), Maria Full of Grace Million Dollar Baby, The Motorcycle Diaries, Napoleon Dynamite.

2005 (7 films): Grizzly Man, The Aristocrats, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, A History of Violence, Match Point.

2006 (5 films): United 93, The Departed, Babel, Children of Men, Notes on a Scandal.

2007 ( 8 films): Zodiac, Michael Clayton, I’m Not There, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, The Lives of Others ], 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Orphanage.

2008 (4 films): Man on Wire, Revolutionary Road, Che, WALL*E

2009 (3 films so far merit best-of-decade status): Up In The Air, An Education, The Hurt Locker.

We’re coming to the end of the first decade of the 21st Century. I’m going to post a list of…oh, 25 films, I suppose, that I consider the best among the last ten years. I could tap out a list of the best 100 without breaking a sweat, but we may as well be tough about this. There are two ways to assemble such a list. One is to deliberately exclude excellent films that were commercially popular, and the other, obviously, is to only choose films that were great but which the mob ignored. I may make a list of both kinds. In any case, I’m asking for lists from the readership as a way of starting the process.

This account of a guy having some kind of seizure during a recent New York Film Festival screening of Lars von Trier‘s Antichrist is another in a long line of of overly susceptible “weak sister” reactions to disturbing films. Among adults, I mean. We’re all impacted big-time by heavy films in early youth, but then you get older and begin to figure how things work and how to take films in stride.

There were similar reactions to screenings of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho in 1960 and to William Friedkin‘s The Exorcist in ’72. I remember sitting close to a revolting girlyman during a repertory screening of Roman Polanski ‘s Macbeth back in the ’80s, and how he couldn’t stop flinching, twitching and groaning during the violent scenes. A woman threw up at a screening of the second Bourne film (the one Paul Greengrass directed) that I attended. It happens.

The only thing wrong with this analogy is that Antichrist doesn’t come close to being in the same pulverizing realm as Psycho, The Exorcist and the last act of Macbeth.

Have any serious film hounds ever had physically convulsive reactions to any films? I never have but maybe it’s more common than I realize. I’m asking.

The key phrase in Michael Fleming‘s report about Michael Mann‘s next film, a period war romance based on Susana Fortes‘ “Waiting for Robert Capa,” says that Mann “intends to make a gritty, low-budget film.” In other words, I’m surmising, Columbia has told him “yes for but for a price.” I think that creatively this will prove an excellent thing. Good filmmakers are always inspired by financial limitations.

It’s also interesting that there are strong similarities between the story, largely set during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s and dealing with a hot-and-heavy affair between war photographers Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, and Ernest Hemingway‘s For Whom The Bell Tolls. Mann wanted to make an adaptation of the classic novel a couple of years ago with Leonardo DiCaprio in the Gary Cooper role.