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 (2017 premiere)

01. mother! (Darren Aronofsky, USA)
02. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
03. A Gentle Creature (Sergei Loznitsa, France/Germany/Lithuania/The Netherlands)
04. The Florida Project (Sean Baker, USA)
05. Brawl in Cell Block 99 (S. Craig Zahler, USA)
06. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland/UK)
07. Wormwood (Errol Morris, USA)
08. Thoroughbreds (Cory Finley, USA)
09. Brimstone & Glory (Viktor Jakovleski, USA)
10. Félicité (Alain Gomis,France/Senegal/Belgium/Germany/Lebanon)



THE "POLLS" LIST (2017 commercial release)

01. mother! (Darren Aronofsky, USA)
02. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
03. The Florida Project (Sean Baker, USA)
04. Staying Vertical (Alain Guiraudie, France)
05. Brawl in Cell Block 99 (S. Craig Zahler, USA)
06. Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello,France/Germany/Belgium)
07. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland/UK)
08. Wormwood (Errol Morris, USA)
09. 4 Days in France (Jérôme Reybaud, France)
10. Félicité (Alain Gomis, France/Senegal/Belgium/Germany/Lebanon)