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:


THE "PURE" LIST (2007 premiere)

01. Silent Light [Cannes cut] (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/Netherlands)
02. Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, USA)
03. My Kid Could Paint That (Amir Bar-Lev, USA)
04. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, USA)
05. Joshua (George Ratliff, USA)
06. Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez/Rob Zombie/Edgar Wright/Eli Roth/Quentin Tarantino, USA)
07. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
08. No Country for Old Men (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, USA)
09. Funny Games U.S.A. (Michael Haneke, USA)
10. The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette, France/Italy)


THE "POLLS" LIST (2007 commercial release)

01. My Kid Could Paint That (Amir Bar-Lev, USA)
02. Time (Kim Ki-duk, South Korea/Japan)
03. Joshua (George Ratliff, USA)
04. Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez/Rob Zombie/Edgar Wright/Eli Roth/Quentin Tarantino, USA)
05. The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-liang, France/Taiwan)
06. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
07. No Country for Old Men (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, USA)
08. The Host (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea)
09. Day Night Day Night (Julia Loktev, USA)
10. Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck, USA)