This list has already appeared on indieWIRE, but I’m cross-posting it here as an excuse to do some last-day-of-the-year lazy linkage back to some of our past coverage. In the name of keeping this short and sweet, where there was no past coverage to link to (as is the case with the several films that I saw before becoming a SpoutBlogger), clicking the title will take you to the film’s Spout page. Feel free to post your own lists, or links to them, in the comments. We’ll be back on Wednesday.
1. Silent Light
3. My Winnipeg
4. Control
5. The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford
The rest of the top ten, plus runners-up and special prizes, after the jump.
7. Quiet City
8. Red Road9. This is England
Runners-up, any of which might have made the Top Ten had I been in a different mood: Low and Behold, Frownland, The Boss of it All, 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Day Night Day Night, Starting Out in the Evening, 2 Days in Paris.
Didn’t see, but wish I had: Lust, Caution, Zodiac, Syndromes and a Century, Romance and Cigarettes, Black Book, Shotgun Stories
Most Underrated Feature: Broken English
Most Underrated Doc: Strange Culture
Most Overrated: No Country For Old Men
Very close runner-up: Juno
The First Annual Boxing Helena Award, For A Flash of Brilliance That I Wish I Could Amputate From The Fatally Flawed Film Surrounding It (three-way tie):
- The first 40 minutes of Atonement
- Justin Timberlake lipsyncs The Killers, Southland Tales
- The last 20 minutes of Michael Clayton
2 Comments
Great list! I also nominate the middle section of The Darjeeling Limited, from where they get thrown off the train to after the funeral(s), for the Boxing Helena Award.
Regarding Atonement, I felt the same way about McEwan’s novel (the first part of which makes up the film’s first 40 minutes), which I read right before seeing the movie (whose entirety, in comparison, struck me as lavishly faithful and uniformly flat).