My year end Top Fifteen list is still taking shape, and there are still a couple of movies that I have to see before I make my final decisions, but I feel like the top five has already been set – it’s just a matter of figuring out the order. And one of those five is certainly Little Children, a fantastic movie you have probably not seen. That’s because New Line has all but buried the film, which was released in October, in 37 theaters maximum. The plan, they claim, is to go wider in January, but I fear that is contingent on awards notice, and since they seem to have mishandled the film so badly that it may fall off the radar during award season.
So it’s great news that the San Francisco Film Critics Circle have named Little Children their Best Picture of the year, and they have joined the New York Film Critics Circle in naming Jackie Earl Haley the Best Supporting Actor. Little Children is a great film, and it’s a very enjoyable and accessible one – I don’t know why the early buzz pegged it as difficult or overly dark. I think it’s like American Beauty but not a manipulative piece of shit.
Sadly, the critics group continue to ignore the most groundbreaking and virtuosity-packed picture of the year, Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men. Still, that should be getting a pretty decent release on Christmas Day no matter how many awards groups ignore it.