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I’ve recommended The Lookout so often that I’ve been able to take a straw poll of people who’ve tried it out—and every one of them has thanked me for turning them on to such a terrific movie. I hope it’s just the first of many for Scott Frank.

75. LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND

(1997)

Directed by Richard Kwietniowski

Screenplay by Richard Kwietniowski

Based on the novel by Gilbert Adair

Actors:

JOHN HURT

JASON PRIESTLEY

FIONA LOEWI

SHEILA HANCOCK

MAURY CHAYKIN

GAWN GRANGER

ELIZABETH QUINN

John Hurt is a character actor of exceptional skill, but he isn’t the kind of personality performer one would expect to see carrying a movie. That’s part of what makes Love and Death on Long Island so delightful: it offers Hurt a bravura role that fits him like a fine glove from Alfred Dunhill. Or, to put it another way, if you were casting the part of a dowdy British author/intellectual who lives alone with his books, barely interacting with the modern world, who would you cast in the part? My point precisely.

Giles De’Ath was once married; he’s now a widower, and a housekeeper tends to his basic needs. Left to his own devices, he’s fairly hopeless. One day he locks himself out of his house, so he decides to pass the time by going to a movie…but he can’t even do this right and winds up in the wrong auditorium. Instead of an adaptation of an E. M. Forster novel, he finds himself watching a silly teen comedy called Hot Pants College II. (He doesn’t even realize his mistake right away.) Just as he is about to leave, his eye falls on the film’s handsome star, Ronnie Bostock (played by a well-cast Jason Priestley), and he is transfixed. It is a transformative moment for De’Ath: he is overcome. He begins to obsess about the young heartthrob, acquiring fan magazines and even purchasing a TV set and a VCR in order to watch his other movies. (Among the titles: Skidmarks and Tex Mex.)

De’Ath has never experienced a feeling quite like this; he analyzes (and justifies) it in intellectual terms, but it is in fact a wholly emotional response. In due course he decides he must meet his idol in person. He flies across the Atlantic and makes his way to the Long Island town where he knows Ronnie lives.

Love and Death on Long Island is based on a book by film critic and novelist Gilbert Adair, and marks the feature-film debut of writer-director Richard Kwietniowski. It is a film of wit, nuance, and constant surprise that manages to be just believable enough to work. Hurt makes the leading character arch, amusing, vulnerable, and utterly human. Priestley does a good job as the hunk, and such reliable actors as Sheila Hancock and Maury Chaykin fill in the supporting cast, but this is John Hurt’s showcase and he makes every moment count.

76. MAD MONEY

(2008)

Directed by Callie Khouri

Screenplay by Glen Gers

Adapted from the screenplay Hot Money by Neil McKay and Terry Winsor

Original source material by John Mister

Actors:

DIANE KEATON

QUEEN LATIFAH

KATIE HOLMES

TED DANSON

ADAM ROTHENBERG

ROGER CROSS

STEPHEN ROOT

CHRISTOPHER MCDONALD

FINESSE MITCHELL

MEAGEN FAY

Most January movie releases come from the bottom of the barrel, so I dread going to the movies at the beginning of the year. That’s why I was unprepared for the enjoyment I derived from Mad Money at the beginning of 2008. I watched it with a preview audience and we all laughed continuously, but my fellow critics tore it to shreds. Sometimes, I swear, people make up their minds not to like a movie before it begins…and I stand by my opinion.

Diane Keaton, who’s been in far too many substandard comedies in recent years, gives a delightful performance here as a so-called perfect suburban housewife whose life comes crashing down when her husband (Ted Danson) breaks the news to her that they’re flat broke. The notion of having to work for a living comes as a shock, all the more so when she learns that she has no marketable skills. So she swallows hard and accepts a janitorial job at the