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 (2012 premiere)

01. Holy Motors (Leos Carax, France/Germany)
02. The Imposter (Bart Layton, USA)
03. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, USA)
04. First Cousin Once Removed (Alan Berliner, USA)
05. Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (Alexey Fedorchenko, Russia)
06. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, USA)
07. Amour (Michael Haneke, France/Germany/Austria)
08. Eat Sleep Die (Gabriela Pichler, Sweden)
09. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet! (Alain Resnais, France/Germany)
10. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel, France/UK/USA)


THE "POLLS" LIST (2012 commercial release)

01. Holy Motors (Leos Carax, France/Germany)
02. The Imposter (Bart Layton, USA)
03. The Loneliest Planet (Julia Loktev, USA/Germany)
04. Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico)
05. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, USA)
06. Amour (Michael Haneke, France/Germany/Austria)
07. The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies, UK)
08. Only the Young (Jason Tippet & Elizabeth Mims, USA)
09. Looper (Rian Johnson, USA)
10. This Must Be the Place (Paolo Sorrentino, Italy/France/Ireland)