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 (2019 premiere)

01. Knives Out (Rian Johnson, USA)
02. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt, USA)
03. A White, White Day (Hlynur Pálmason, Denmark/Iceland/Sweden)
04. Light of My Life (Casey Affleck, USA)
05. Fourteen (Dan Sallitt, USA)
06. Uncut Gems (Josh & Benny Safdie, USA)
07. First Love (Takashi Miike, UK/Japan)
08. It Must Be Heaven (Elia Suleiman, Canada/Germany/France/Qatar/Turkey/Palestine)
09. Belonging (Burak Çevik, Turkey/Canada/France)
10. Parasite (Bong Joon Ho, South Korea)

THE "POLLS" LIST (2019 commercial release)

01. Knives Out (Rian Johnson, USA)
02. La flor—Part 1 (Mariano Llinás, Argentina)
03. In My Room (Ulrich Köhler, Germany/Italy)
04. Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell, USA)
05. Light of My Life (Casey Affleck, USA)
06. Uncut Gems (Josh & Benny Safdie, USA)
07. First Love (Takashi Miike, UK/Japan)
08. Sunset (Nemes László, France/Hungary)
09. Parasite (Bong Joon Ho, South Korea)
10. Shadow (Zhang Yimou, China)