THE TEN BEST FILMS OF THE DECADE

I began the 2010s uncertain of my place in the slipstream of film criticism, and closed it out firmly lodged somewhere between enthusiastic and mystified. Whatever emotion I experienced sitting in a theater, be it involved in something celebratory or a feeling of total despair, the movies never abandoned me; they persisted like stubborn reminders of what is important about the art form, whether it was in a literal sense or in some twisted ironic way, even as some might have represented everything wrong about this strange little industry.

The decade supplied ammunition for both arguments. It was the time of new and exciting voices like Yorgos Lanthimos and Christian Petzold, and of lazy underachievers like Uwe Boll. It was the age of billion-dollar blockbusters, and tiresome trends yielding colossal flops. Established filmmakers plodded along in a career trajectory that allowed for new and exciting ventures. Some promising newcomers like David Robert Mitchell, meanwhile, diversified their portfolio between solid entertainments (“It Follows”) and disastrous aberrations (“Under the Silver Lake”). But all the same we showed up, watched, and responded with our constant passion as moviegoers. A great film was never far from grasp at local art-house movie houses; so, too, was a bad one inevitably playing in the mainstream chains, where it stood a better chance of rising to notoriety, unintentional or otherwise. The common bond among all of them, you could say, was their ability to remind us that there is a bigger world outside of the Walt Disney brand, whose choke-hold on the financial market of moviegoing has cast an impenetrable shadow going into the next decade.

The Best and Worst of 2007

2007, you might say, was the year of revelations at the cinema, a year of surprises, startling discoveries and spectacular achievements. But that is not necessarily a positive prospect, either. Saturated by ambition and ambivalence, the movies that occupied theater screens in the 12 months of the calendar year offered high stylization, great energy and loud explosions, and payoffs too brief and momentary to make many of them deserving of that output. The trend was not one limited to the more prolific of box office competitors, either; like a disease that transcends culture and social divides, no one, including the Indies or the art-house flicks, were safe from the mediocrity that spread through the crops.

The Best and Worst Films of 2003

If there's one thing more rigorous for a movie critic than sifting through piles of films trying to figure out which ones to review, it's composing lists of those select few achievements of a given year that either move us with their brilliance or scar us with their awfulness. The concept itself is restricting because there are usually far too many candidates for both sides of the quality divide for either list to be truly comprehensive. Several journalists (including myself) purposely restrict these lists to ten specific selections (with an occasional mention of those films that barely fell out of the bracket) because it allows some flexibility without stretching the selection too thin; however, particularly in the recent years, it is not uncommon for colleagues to do top 20 or even 30 best and worst lists. Whether there are even 20 or 30 movies worthy of either group in any given year is always up to speculation.

The Best and Worst Films of 2002

The task of ranking the ten best movies of any year, most will gladly tell you, represents the most difficult challenge in the career of a movie journalist. As faithful messengers of the cinema, we spend 12 months slogging our way through countless major theatrical releases, struggling to uphold a degree of professionalism even during periods of bleak outlook, only to have it all thrown back into our face in the final weeks of the year before we have to start the process all over again.The effort is sheer madness on many levels and utterly tiresome on others, sometimes seeming rather pointless in the grand scheme of things. But then again, how else could us writers bring closure to the past before moving on into another pool of releases?

Science Fiction's greatest honored in the OFCS's first top 100 movies list

June 10, 2002

I have usually considered myself a less-than-cooperative participant in the past to vote-ins associated with lists like the "100 best or worst of the century," but when it came to my attention that the Online Film Critics Society, a gathering of more than a hundred professional (and influential) film critics which I happen to be part of, was putting together a list of the greatest Science Fiction movies ever made, something in the darkest corner of my mind jump-started an engine of enthusiasm. Each of us group members were asked to submit a list of our favorite 25 sci-fi endeavors, all of which would be tallied and combined to a final list of 100. A simple request like this might have easily gone over the head of a busy critic, but the society's governing committee persisted in getting everyone's contributions, sending out e-mail reminders at a pace that would only add weight to the importance of participation. For the society as a whole, everyone's involvement would have sent a message about how deeply everyone cared about the group they were affiliated with. But coming through on these requests was only partly about participating as a team; for some of us, like myself, it was more about the opportunity to connect with a specific division of cinema that is often the gateway for the biggest and brightest imaginations.

The Best and Worst Movies of 2001

January 18, 2002

THE BEST MOVIES OF 2001:

1 - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Few times in the recent past has a movie so swiftly shattered the highest expectations of our moviegoers and totally restructured the way we view the cinema. Peter Jackson's first of three installments of J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy of "The Lord of The Rings" is exactly that kind of movie, one that not only tells its story thoroughly and wisely, but also takes us to places more elaborate, lush and vivid than those of the most intimate corners of our imaginations.

The Best and Worst Movies of 2000

THE BEST MOVIES OF 2000:

1 - American Psycho

If the 2000 movie industry had a face, chances are it would resemble something along the lines of Patrick Bateman's, the character who we all learned to despise (but vividly remember) in Mary Harron's "American Psycho." The sadistic creation of author Bret Easton Ellis, he is one of the most colorful incarnations of every human's fears, a man who so effortlessly charms and manipulates the audience that, by the time he is established as a cold-blooded killer, it leaves us feeling almost victimized. Screen personas in this vein would normally hop directly onto the wagon of crime without ever giving us guided tours of their warped hidden agendas. But here was someone who seemed to rewrite every rule that had been laid down before him, literally inviting us in to observe the downward spiral of his crumbling "mask of sanity." No other character in a movie this past year came close to his mesmerizing audacity (that is, if there is such a thing).

The Best and Worst Movies of 1999

THE BEST MOVIES OF 1999:

1 - Eyes Wide Shut
When I saw Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" last summer, I knew I was witnessing not only the last film of a great director's career, but one of the greatest. Every year has its share of ups and downs cinematically, but one significant event that accommodates each is the arrival of a flawless, stirring, unique and haunting masterpiece. After the lights went up on this one, I knew instantly nothing in the remaining year could surpass it.

Kubrick was one of those directors who treated films like paintings, carefully crafting them so that any noticeable flaw could be immediately covered over. His death this early last spring was a sad time for the cinema--t signified the passing of not just a filmmaker, but of an era in moviemaking.