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 (2018 premiere)

01. La flor—Part 1 (Mariano Llinás, Argentina)
02. Burning (Lee Chang-dong, South Korea)
03. In My Room (Ulrich Köhler, Germany/Italy)
04. Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell, USA)
05. Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski, USA)
06. The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack, USA)
07. The Last Race (Michael Dweck, USA)
08. Private Life (Tamara Jenkins, USA)
09. Game Night (John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein, USA)
10. Sunset (László Nemes, France/Hungary)

THE "POLLS" LIST (2018 commercial release)

01. Burning (Lee Chang-dong, South Korea)
02. Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski, USA)
03. The Last Race (Michael Dweck, USA)
04. Private Life (Tamara Jenkins, USA)
05. Game Night (John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein, USA)
06. Thoroughbreds (Cory Finley, USA)
07. Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley, USA)
08. Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland)
09. Lean On Pete (Andrew Haigh, USA/UK)
10. 24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran/France)