The Cinéaste's Progress from This List to That Which Is to Come (He Hopes)


Once upon a time, I used to play a coy, rather pointless game w/r/t my annual top ten list -- dramatically "unveiling" it sometime in January, as if most everybody who reads this site didn't already have a pretty good idea of what it was gonna look like. Instead, I now publicly revise the sucker as I go along, so that the whole affair becomes a suspenseful Journey Toward Aesthetic Nirvana. Or something.

Here, then, is what my list would look like if (god forbid) I were forced to make it today:

01. Gerry (Gus Van Sant, USA)
02. Irreversible (Gaspar Noé, France)
03. Dallas 362 (Scott Caan, USA)
04. Bus 174 (José Padilha, Brazil)
05. Bad Santa (Terry Zwigoff, USA)
06. Raising Victor Vargas (Peter Sollett, USA)
07. An Injury to One (Travis Wilkerson, USA)
08. Charlotte Sometimes (Eric Byler, USA)
09. In My Skin (Marina de Van, France)
10. Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki, USA)

(Films marked with an asterisk, if any, have not yet been released commercially in the U.S. but are currently scheduled for release during 2003. Films marked with a caret, if any, currently have no U.S. distributor. Films marked with both an asterisk and a caret, if any, have a U.S. distributor but currently have no set release date and hence may or may not turn up this year, who the hell knows. Lithium is no longer available on credit.)