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 (2014 premiere)

01. The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland, UK)
02. Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France/Italy)
03. Bird People (Pascale Ferran, France)
04. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, UK/Germany)
05. Boyhood (Richard Linklater, USA)
06. Last Days in Vietnam (Rory Kennedy, USA)
07. It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, USA)
08. Breathe (Mélanie Laurent, France)
09. Tu dors Nicole (Stéphane Lafleur, Canada)
10. Approaching the Elephant (Amanda Rose Wilder, USA)


THE "POLLS" LIST (2014 commercial release)

01. Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France/Italy)
02. Coherence (James Ward Byrkit, USA)
03. Bird People (Pascale Ferran, France)
04. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, UK)
05. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, UK/Germany)
06. Boyhood (Richard Linklater, USA)
07. Last Days in Vietnam (Rory Kennedy, USA)
08. Proxy (Zack Parker, USA)
09. The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh, Cambodia/France)
10. Snowpiercer (Bong Joon Ho, South Korea/USA/France)