The cinetrix must lack the gene for best-of list-making--it's never come easy. Still, when the indieWIRE Critics Poll came a-calling I resolved to sack up and take a whack at evaluating the small fraction of the year's movies I managed to catch. My top 10 and comments follow; the rest of the lists can be found here.
N.B. Any flick with award aspirations and a post-Thanksgiving limited release that doesn't appear here I probably haven't seen yet, and if you ask me later it might well unseat one of the 10. Or not.
Best Film
1 - Encounters at the End of the World
2 - The Exiles
3 - Happy-Go-Lucky
4 - JCVD
5 - Man on Wire
6 - Momma's Man
7 - My Winnipeg
8 - Reprise
9 - Synecdoche, New York
10 - Trouble the Water
Note: NOT RANKED
1 - Encounters at the End of the World
2 - The Exiles
3 - Happy-Go-Lucky
4 - JCVD
5 - Man on Wire
6 - Momma's Man
7 - My Winnipeg
8 - Reprise
9 - Synecdoche, New York
10 - Trouble the Water
Note: NOT RANKED
Comments
Call it the cinevore's dilemma. As I pulled together these lists, I realized just how many movie miles I've clocked this year. I saw only two of the films cited here in the state in which I live--one at a theater two hours distant and another projected on a wall in my home. Everything else involved hitting the road. And so, surveying the pins on my personal map of the lost continent of cinephilia, I salute the tireless souls at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the Independent Film Festival of Boston, the New York Film Festival, the Flaherty Seminar, the Nickelodeon in Columbia, SC, Cine Athens, the Coolidge Corner, the Brattle Theatre, the Somerville Theatre, the Harvard Film Archive, BAM, and Film Forum for giving me homes away from home in the welcoming darkness.
Call it the cinevore's dilemma. As I pulled together these lists, I realized just how many movie miles I've clocked this year. I saw only two of the films cited here in the state in which I live--one at a theater two hours distant and another projected on a wall in my home. Everything else involved hitting the road. And so, surveying the pins on my personal map of the lost continent of cinephilia, I salute the tireless souls at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the Independent Film Festival of Boston, the New York Film Festival, the Flaherty Seminar, the Nickelodeon in Columbia, SC, Cine Athens, the Coolidge Corner, the Brattle Theatre, the Somerville Theatre, the Harvard Film Archive, BAM, and Film Forum for giving me homes away from home in the welcoming darkness.
UPDATE: The complete results have been tabulated and may be found here. Perhaps appropriately, an excerpt from my comments was made into a pullquote in the Critics Defend Their Picks section.
