Okay. It's time to get down to brass tacks. I'm going to get up on my soapbox and hope that the right Academy members read the column this week, because it's time to re-do the rules of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar category. Do you know how long it has been since a great film, a truly great film, won in this category? I'm talking about a film made by a genuinely great artist of the cinema, a film for the ages, and not just a perfectly good film, or a film about one of the great world wars. Here's your answer: twenty-five years ago. Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander (1983) was the last great one. That leaves 25 years of pretty good, just OK, forgettable, or flat-out awful winners (mostly forgettable). This year's winner, The Counterfeiters (41 screens) had to be one of the worst movies I saw all year; at it's center is a perfectly good (true) WWII concentration camp story, but it's warped by an entirely inept director, responsible for one of the worst movies I've ever seen, All the Queen's Men (2001). How did it win? How did it get past all the truly great films of 2007?

When evaluating new movies, sometimes a critic will try to envision their staying power. It goes without saying that most movies have no shelf life; they're designed for one opening weekend, or perhaps a few months of buzz leading to an award, but that's it. A year from now, people will be ignoring them on airplanes and then they'll be on sale in the DVD bargain bin. Only a very few titles enter into the general zeitgeist forever, becoming a "cult film." A cult film can be a resurrected flop, something like The Wizard of Oz or Donnie Darko, or it can be a beloved hit, such as Casablanca or the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings films. The only constant is that it's impossible to predict. When I first reviewed Joel and Ethan Coen's The Big Lebowski (1998), I thought it suffered in comparison to Fargo, but now it has become a cult classic even bigger than its predecessor. Regardless, I thought I'd look at some of the movies currently playing on less than 400 screens and guess their fates.

I'll start with an easy one: Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd (316 screens). This is Burton and Johnny Depp's sixth film together, and they bring out the very best instincts in one another. They remind me of no less than Tod Browning and Lon Chaney's sinister collaborations during the silent era. (Their 1927 film The Unknown needs to be seen by everyone.) Depp gets to indulge in his taste for disguise (and funny voices) while Burton taps into his childlike nightmares for new images and ideas. Sure, they will probably never really make a grown-up movie, but several of their collaborations have already stood the test of time, and at least two: Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Ed Wood (1994) have cracked the edges of cult status. In fact, I'd go so far as to add Burton's Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Depp's Dead Man and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to make a great cult film festival.

Call me an optimist, but I'm always hoping for Oscar reform. I've been rather excited about recent rumblings that the Academy is finally, finally considering changing its rules regarding foreign film consideration. I saw one of the new nominees last week, The Counterfeiters, and I have to say that there were at least 20 or 30 other, better foreign language films last year. In fact, I'd have to say that The Counterfeiters is a contender for my worst list of 2008; it takes on an interesting story, but cinematically it's sheer amateur hour. The only reason it got nominated is because it takes place in a concentration camp. I also need to mention that the director, Stefan Ruzowitzky, made one of the worst films I have ever seen, All the Queen's Men (2002), starring Matt LeBlanc and Eddie Izzard as soldiers who go undercover as drag queens in WWII.

Did anyone notice that though La vie en rose earned three nominations (Best Actress, Costume, Makeup) it didn't get nominated for Foreign Language Film? Likewise, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (205 screens) -- filmed almost entirely in French -- was nominated for four awards (Best Director, Editing, Screenplay, Cinematography), but not Best Foreign Film. Why? Diving Bell doesn't count as foreign because it has an American director. Not to mention that each country is only allowed to submit one film, and France's choice, Persepolis (100 screens) was not nominated either. Instead, it was nominated for Best Animated Film! This type of thing happens all the time. In 2002, the foreign film committee rejected the Brazilian film City of God. It was released in 2003 to great critical acclaim and success, and was nominated the following year for four Oscars in other categories. In 2000, Taiwan chose to submit the hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, rather than arguably the greatest film of the past decade, Edward Yang's Yi Yi. Why couldn't both be nominated?

Cinematical is absolutely stoked after receiving this exclusive one-sheet for Juan Antonio Bayona's The Orphanage (click on the image above for a larger version). Produced (in a very hands-on manner) by the excellent Guillermo del Toro, The Orphanage may, in fact, go down as the spookiest film of the year. Our own resident horror guru Scott Weinberg survived a screening in Toronto earlier this year, and had this to say: "The Orphanage is entirely captivating from start to finish. And if those Spanish movie-makers have a few more 'creepy orphanage' stories to tell, well, I'm definitely not sick of the sub-genre just yet. And whatever Mr. Bayona offers up next, you can bet I'll be first in line to check it out." But he's not the only one; just this week alone, I've had a good five people tell me this film is a gem -- the kind that will have you leaping out of your seat more than once ... if you know what I mean.

The film revolves around a charming married couple, Laura and Carlos, who along with their adopted son Simon decide to purchase and renovate the old orphanage where Laura was raised. Problems arise when Simon makes a few new friends who, well, aren't real. The poster itself is real cool; it's hard to tell from the online version, but the in-theater posters are lenticular, which means those ghoulish-looking kids will disappear and re-appear based on the way you look at the image. Folks, very rarely do we bring out the big guns, but let it be known that The Orphanage is getting the official Cinematical Stamp of Approval. And for those who do not know what that means, it's just another way of saying you're guaranteed to love being spooked-out by this film. Look for The Orphanage to arrive in theaters this December 28.

Despite their great success with Pan's Labyrinth, which did pretty well in the U.S. for a foreign-language film, New Line apparently expects less of a mainstream reception for The Orphanage (El Orfanato). According to Variety, the studio is looking to remake the Spanish film, directed by Juan Antonio Bayona with supervision from Guillermo Del Toro, director of Pan's Labyrinth. Del Toro is actually on board to produce the English-language version, and if he's a good man, he'll make sure Bayona gets to redo his own work for a wider audience. Back when Picturehouse bought the distribution rights to The Orphanage, Del Toro said that Bayona's footage blew him away, so I can't imagine he'd prefer someone else to helm the remake. Of course, I'm shocked that he would be fine with the film being remade in the first place. If the original really is so good, there's no reason for an Americanized take on it. Knowing the way Hollywood works, though, it is more likely that another foreign filmmaker will make his English-language debut with this project, while Bayona will direct a remake of someone else's film (and so on).

Like many popular Spanish horror films, The Orphanage is a ghost story. Well, it features a supernatural imaginary friend, which sounds a lot like a ghost. The original, written by Sergio G. Sánchez, stars Bélen Rueda as a woman who returns to her childhood home with plans to turn it into an orphanage for disabled children. Unfortunately, her son gets a new imaginary friend, who just so happens to be the same imaginary friend that she had when she was a kid. And he terrorized her back then. Yep, sounds like he's actually a ghost. Last month, we shared the trailer with you, and while it didn't show much, it still had the promise of something truly creepy (did you see that scarecrow-faced kid?). Personally, I'd rather check it out as soon as possible than wait for the English-language version. Seriously, what's a few subtitles matter when you're being scared out of your wits? The original Orphanage played at Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals to good reviews, and it screens tonight at the Toronto Film Festival (from where our own Scott Weinberg is raving about it). Picturehouse, a partnership between New Line and HBO, is giving the film a limited release in December.