Two More Lists . . . and These are British

One of the London Times best movies of 2008

The London Times has just come out with lists of their top 1oo films and worst 100 films of 2008.  This seems a little excessive to me:  with a hundred to choose from for each list, it seems that they might be tempted to include some movies on the best-of list that are only so-so, and on the worst-of list that aren’t so bad.  I mean, a hundred films either way is a lot of celluloid.

According to Anne Thompson at Variety, there were 674 movies released in the U.S. in 2008.  Assuming that the number was about the same in the U.K.  (that might be a big assumption), about15%  of them are on each list.  I wonder if that’s accurate:  in any given year, are there 15% that are good and 15% that are stinkers, with everything else in the muddy middle?  That might be about right . . .

Anyway, here’s a look at the Top Hundred list; they’re arranged alphabetically by star rating, beginning with five five-star films:

1. The Dark Knight, a small film about some caped guy running around Chicago, er, Gotham City
2. Gomorrah, a Neapolitan gangster film
3. Man on A Wire, a doc about wire-walking between the twin-towers
4. There Will Be Blood, P.T. Anderson’s oil-can masterpiece
5. Time and Winds, a Turkish coming of age story

Here’s my first problem with this list:  they give no criteria for its choosing.  Were there only five five-star movies released in 2008?  If not, why were only five chosen and by what criteria?  If there were only five of them, then it should be stated right up front.  Grrr.

One of the London Times worst movies of 2008

Although I could quibble with the top five — The Dark Knight? Puhleeeze! — the real fun lies in the next ninety five: all are all four-star films, again arranged alphabetically. And the first one up shows how absolutely bizarre the list is.  How can any sane person rank 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days lower than The Dark Knight? Apparently, James Christopher can, because he’s the one who originally reviewed them both.

And what about the boring The Changeling? (“This mature and thoughtful film is a many-layered triumph for Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie,” says Kevin Maher) or Cloverfield, for God’s sake, about which Christopher says

An hour in I started to sweat. And I nearly threw up trying to make sense of the increasingly chaotic and frightening scenes of the gripping climax.

Nausea: the first thing I look for in a movie experience. Other four-star movies, and thus part of the 100 Best, are  High School Musical 3,  Mamma Mia! The Musical, Quantum of Solace and No Country for Old Men.

Another problem with a list like this — other than no discernible criteria — is the inconsistency:  in a list by a single critic, you can at least get some idea of why No Country would be ranked lower than The Dark Knight, for example, or Mamma Mia before anything. But I counted twelve different critics, including the likes of Tom Charity, Cosmo Landesman and Hugo Rifkind (their critcs have cooler names than ours).

Come to think of it, that’s probably why there are no criteria given for their choices:  each critic has their own idea of what’s a good movie, and these synthetic lists fill column inches, but offer no real insight.  Discerning a critical point of view in the 100 Best Movies of the Year is like trying to pin Jello to a mat:  it’s easy to get the pin through, but falls apart in the end.

[Just for yucks, go over and look at the worst 100 films, numbered consecutively and with even less visible rhyme or reason.  The list includes My Blueberry Nights, The Bank Job, and the umpteenth remake of Brideshead Revisited.  I swear, there are even more critics represented on this list than the first.]