
Is there any activity more onanistic for a critic than compiling the year-end 10-best list? True, it's a service to readers who want a handy checklist. But the number 10 means nothing: As the late Stephen Jay Gould pointed out at the turn of the millennium, it has no correlative in nature. And a critic's naked opinion (thumbs up or thumbs down) is the least interesting thing about him or her. You'll learn much more from a lively writer you think is nuts (c.f., Manohla on In the Cut or Elvis Mitchell on the execrable 21 Grams) than from the 10-best list of someone with whom you agree.
But my colleagues and I do this every year because it's fun and makes us feel important. We play high-schoolish games with each other: "You guess my list, and I'll guess yours." We catch up on movies we should have seen nine months earlier. We give our lists to publicists and to columnists—there are more and more of them, it seems—who care less about individual critical voices than about statistics and consensus. We vote for our little awards and hold our breath for the Oscar nominations, which we'll invariably find dumb.
The 34 Best Movies of 2003 - Child spellers, hobbits, and the year in cinema. By David?Edelstein









Recent Comments