A Decade of Lists

I really liked Chris Stangl's first entry in his look back at his favorite movies of the decade. I fully endorse his philosophy towards making top ten lists:

Each citizen in a world of moviegoers builds a little history of film for themselves, complete with private pantheons, household classics, the unjustly dismissed, overpraised or overlooked. These histories are influenced by our selective blind spots, parents and gurus, taste economies, social engineering and pure dumb chance. List-making is an act of criticism all by itself. It winnows and excludes, reveals and conceals, and for the list-maker causes at least cursory examination of critical values and assumptions.

It is not the most insightful critical practice. List-making is also rife with problems and begs a lot of questions, particularly of the apple/orange variety, and can easily slip into attempt to stratify and quantify the unquantifiable. As much as an awards show, the building of lists can transform art appreciation into a sporting event. When it comes to matters of “Greatest” and “Best,” what we’re really talking about is “Favorites” perfumed with false objectivity. We don’t cotton to objectivity at Exploding Kinetoscope. An objective observation on a movie would read something like “the film was projected onto a screen at a rate of 24 frames per second.” Farber also said in interview that the last thing that matters is whether a writer “liked” the movie or not. Point taken to heart, but it is also the inevitable starting point for all that follows, all critical arguments and observations proceed from preference....

The only qualities I am making conscious effort to project are honesty and a degree of eclecticism. The lists were not built with an eye to looking smart, sophisticated, worldly, populist or contrarian. If they end up that way, so be it.

Chris is insightful on all ten of the movies he writes about here, although I especially appreciated his comments on Mission to Mars and Battle Royale, two of my favorites.

Looking at my own revised top ten list for 2000 (see below) I'm surprised by how many of the movies on it remain at the top of my "decade favorite" list. Partly this is a function of time: I've lived with these movies longer, had a chance to return to them over the years, and so my admiration and appreciation for them doesn't feel like it's based on momentary whims or being overpowered by novelty. They've earned their place in my personal pantheon by not letting go of my imagination over the last nine years. That said, perhaps I'm being unfair to those movies whose immediate, visceral effect on me was greater, but has faded over time.

Anyway, here's my 2000 Top Ten retrospective (with the caveat that I still haven't caught up with some likeyly contenders):

1. Yi-Yi
2. The Gleaners & I
3. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
4. Battle Royale
5. Mission to Mars
6. The Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors
7. Cast Away
8. The Claim
9. Unbreakable
10. Dr. T and the Women

Actually, going back on what I wrote up above, there is one fairly "new to me" movie on this list: I didn't start catching up with Hong Sang-soo until earlier this year. The Virgin is probably my least favorites of his movies that I've seen so far, but I still think it is something special. When I first saw it, it reminded me of Jim Jarmusch's early movies, but, as I have gotten more on Hong's wavelength, I've come to see it - and him - as possessing a one-of-a-kind sensibility.