Ten Best Films

Ten Best Films' 2011 Mini-Poll

2012-01-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

1. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
164.5 points (AZ, GW, JS, KW, MA, MH, ML, RS, SB)
2. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)
101.5 points (AZ, LB, MA, ML, PK, SB)
3. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
85 points (KW, MA, ML, MS, PK)
4. The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky)
82 points (MA, LB, MC, ML, RS)
5. Hugo [3-D] (Martin Scorsese)
63 points (LB, MA, PK, RS)
6. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
60 points (LB, MA, MC)
7. Pina [3-D] (Wim Wenders)
59 points (KW, LB, ML, PK)
8. The Kid with a Bike (Jean Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)
56 points (JS, MA, MC, RS)
9. Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)
50.5 points (ML, PK, SB)
10. This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)
49 points (LB, MA, RS)

Other Films Receiving Multiple Citations: Cave of Forgotten Dreams [3-D] (Werner Herzog, 2010) - 48 points (AZ, MH, PK), Melancholia (Lars von Trier) - 46 points (AZ, JS, ML), House of Pleasures (Bertrand Bonello) - 42 points (KW, LB, RS), Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press, 2010) - 37.5 points (AZ, PK, SB), Insidious (James Wan, 2010) - 34.5 points (PK, SB), The Trip (Michael Winterbottom, 2010) - 34 points (AZ, MS), Cedar Rapids (Miguel Arteta) - 33.5 points, Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010) - 33 points (GW, JS), We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay) - 33 points (MC, ML), I Saw the Devil (Kim Jee-woon, 2010) - 32 points (JS, MS), Bridesmaids (Paul Feig) - 31.5 points (MH, SB), Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, 2010) - 31 points (AZ, GW), Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010) - 29 points (MS, PK)*, Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki) - 30 points (LB, MA), Margin Call (J. C. Chandor) - 29.5 points (KW, SB), Win Win (Thomas McCarthy) - 28.5 points (MS, SB), Poetry (Lee Chang-dong, 2010) - 26 points (MS, PK)*, TRON: Legacy (Joseph Kosinski) - 23 points (AZ, GW)

The 2011 Mini-Poll, the fourth consecutive survey of a small sample of current graduate students and alumni of New York University and Yale University, came to the same predictable result as every other group poll in 2011: The Tree of Life was our runaway winner. More than two-thirds of this year's respondents cited Malick's film, with four (Matt Hauske, Mike Lyon, R. Emmet Sweeney and Alberto Zambenedetti) listing it as the year's best film. In fact, The Tree of Life became our all-time leading points-getter, blowing past Summer Hour's monster two-year running total (listed below). In second place, Drive found its way onto nearly half of this year's lists, though in its case it finished no higher than second (on Pamela Kerpius's ballot). Both The Tree of Life and Drive are precisely the sorts of films that the Mini-Poll favors: American titles, on the art end of the spectrum, which receive large enough releases to insure that most of our respondents saw the films.

Other than The Tree of Life, the film that generated the most passion this year seems to have been Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, which tied for fifth place and nearly equaled Malick's achievement by placing first on three lists (Michael J. Anderson, Lisa K. Broad, Michael Cramer) - the only three lists that cited the January 4th New York release. The Turkish auteur's latest is as must-see as films get. Among the remaining five picks for the top position (Soren Bailey listed his titles in no particular order, though the first film he did list was also Pamela's #1, Insidious), there were five different films, with the remaining four not even managing to make a second list: Oscar front-runner The Artist (Karen Wang), Indie favorite Take Shelter (Matt Singer), art installation juggernaut The Clock (Jeremi Szaniawski), and View From the Avant-Garde Forms Are Not Self-Subsistent Substances (Grant Wiedenfeld). A year without too much consensus, in other words - beyond Malick's unstoppable Palme d'Or.

Combined Mini-Poll Results: 2008-2011
1. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011) - 164.5 points
2. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas, 2008) - 147
3. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008; pictured) - 139
4. The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010) - 136
5. Two Lovers (James Gray, 2008) - 129
6. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, 2008) - 126
7. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011) - 101.5
8. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009) - 101
9. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010) - 99
10. Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008) - 97.5

Note [*]: Films marked with an asterisk received at least one vote in last year's poll.

Scoring: Each citation receives ten points with an additional ten for a first place citation, nine for second, and so on, on down to one for tenth. This method of scoring is intended to give appropriate weight to those films that have been cited most frequently by this year's participants. For those participants who have not specified an order for their choices, 5.5 points have been assigned to each of their choices.

Key: AZ - Alberto Zambenedetti (Ten Best Films), GW - Grant Wiedenfeld (Ten Best Films), JS - Jeremi Szaniawski (Ten Best Films), KW - Karen Wang (You're Making a Scene), LB - Lisa K. Broad (Tativille), MA - Michael J. Anderson (Tativille), MC - Michael Cramer, MH - Matt Hauske, ML - Mike Lyon (Tits & Gore), MS - Matt Singer (IFC), PK - Pamela Kerpius (Scarlett Cinema), RS - R. Emmet Sweeney (Termite Art), SB - Soren Bailey (Ten Best Films).

Ten Best Films of 2011

2011-12-31T06:05:00.000-08:00

1. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey/
Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Ceylan synthetically constructs his portrait of bi-continental Turkish national identity from the tissues of high-modernist European and Middle Eastern masters, from the metaphysical phantasmagoria of Tarkovsky to the cosmological landscapes of Kiarostami. With the sun setting on the autumnal latter, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia descends into an endless digital expanse of sensual blacks, cut by glowing high-beams, which in turn will give way to an unforgettable gas-lit interlude. Ceylan's latest, easily his best, is 2011's most inexhaustible work of cinema.

2. The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, Hungary/
France/Germany/Switzerland/United States)
Purportedly Hungarian master Tarr's final film, The Turin Horse provides the most distilled expression of the director's style to date: Tarr's heavily choreographed, phenomenological long-takes bleakly inscribe a series of quotidian gestures on a perpetually windswept Central European plane. No less signature is Tarr's Nietzschean take on a European civilization that has already collapsed. This is Tarr bringing both his corpus and Europe's fin de siècle late modernism - in form and in content - to a highly masterful conclusion.

3. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, Iran)
A sign of life in an increasingly endangered corner of world cinema, Farhadi builds one of the art's more comprehensive portraits of human relations under theocratic rule, constructing a private social sphere in which virtually nothing exists outside the sight of fundamentalist Islam's invisible monitors. A Separation's consistently transparent architectural spaces fulfill an especially crucial role in enabling the the surveillance that provides the film with its inherently critical subject. A masterpiece of Iran's latest filmic wave.

4. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, United States)
A rare example of a genuinely American art cinema - and easily the year's most ambitious work - The Tree of Life reproduces God's Book of Job answer to his human interrogators, combining the beauty of divine creation that provides this response with a form of confessional autobiography that looks to the director's adolescent origins. The latter sequences showcase the exceptional impressionistic power of Malick's subjective film craft, which ultimately outweighs Malick's reliance on New Age cliché.

5. This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Iran)
A home movie of unparalleled personal courage, festival auteur Panahi (under house-arrest and a twenty year ban from filmmaking at the time of production) and documentarian Mirtahmasb combine a series of tangential forms - surveillance, the reading and blocking of a screenplay, the scouting of a location - that stand outside Panahi's prevailing narrative practice. Constructed out of the medium's remainders, few works have ever made what is forbidden to Panahi any more meaningful.

6. Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki, Finland/France/Germany)
Espousing the virtue of humanistic resistance in the face of punitive immigration-law enforcement, leading Finnish auteur Kaurismäki's first French-set film in almost two decades finds the director in his default deadpan comedic style and preferred proletarian milieu. The level of Kaurismäki's filmmaking however exceeds his standard high quality, with the the director employing a thematically significant, metronomic economy of primary colors that offers a parallel source of formal interest.

7. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, United States)

Reviving the mid-level American action filmmaking of Michael Mann and Walter Hill at a time when both have made the transition to long-form cable television, the Danish-born Refn borrows his carefully mapped nocturnal cityscapes from the former's Collateral and almost everything else from the latter's The Driver, including Drive's no less deep professionalism, its late 70s consciousness and even its nameless protagonist. A very welcome revival - not to mention 2011's best cast film.

8. The Kid with a Bike (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium/
France/Italy)
A profoundly humanistic companion-piece to Le Havre, The Kid with a Bike similarly features an at-risk youth who finds his savior in a charitable adult stranger. Where Kaurismäki engages with contemporary politics, the Dardenne brothers opt for a more archetypal, though no less personally urgent narrative treating the appeal of adolescent gang life. Breathlessly rendering their on-the-move young subject with equally mobile camera work, The Kid with a Bike is boundlessly cinematic.

9. Hugo (Martin Scorsese, United States)

A categorical improvement in 3-D aesthetics, Scorsese treats the revived form as an entirely new medium, wracking focus as he subtly guides his spectators' attention across a series of interior planes - when he is not skillfully propelling his viewers through Hugo's immersive environs. No less adeptly, Scorsese gracefully re-imagines the work of the film's subject, Georges Méliès, stereoscopically. The preservationist Scorsese's latest is consummately a work of film history.

10. J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood, United States)
Conceivably 2011's most pleasant surprise given the scathing early notices, Eastwood's latest, socially libertarian reevaluation of his Dirty Harry legacy takes the unexpected (displaced) form of a Dustin Lance Black-scripted J. Edgar Hoover biopic, with latter-day Scorsese axiom DiCaprio giving the finest performance of his adult career. Eastwood's work is both self-centered in the very best sense and also heavily reliant on the process of collaboration, with Tom Horner's low-key work among the other highlights.

2011: Grant Wiedenfeld

2011-12-31T06:03:00.000-08:00

1. Forms Are Not Self-Subsistent Substances (Samantha Rebello, 2010)
2. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
3. Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, 2010)
4. Case Départ (Lionel Steketee, Thomas Ngijol & Fabrice Eboué)
5. Our Idiot Brother (Jesse Peretz)
6. Mysterium Cosmographicum (Brent Coughenour)
7. Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
8. Empty Quarter (Alain LeTourneau & Pam Minty, 2010)
9. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)
10. TRON: Legacy (Joseph Kosinski, 2010)

Grant is a PhD Candidate in Film Studies & Comparative Literature at Yale University.

2011: Jeremi Szaniawski

2011-12-31T06:02:00.000-08:00

2011: Annus (Quasi) Horribilis*

Perhaps 2011 is analogous to 1928's awkward conversion from silent to sound cinema, which would account for the generally weak output at a moment of uncertainty and transition. One can only hope that a new generation of filmmakers will be able to exploit the new aesthetic resources offered not only by digital filming, but also by digital projection, and reinvent the medium. In the meantime, the end of 35mm is, at least in my eyes, a tremendous catastrophe. Digital projection, be it 2 or 4K, is only appropriate for 3D animation films such as Steven Spielberg's and Peter Jackson's grotesque desecration of Tintin.

In general, with the economic crisis causing a dearth of quantity but also quality in cinematic production (ultra conservative studio executives placing all their money on 'safe' lowbrow hyper-marketed blockbusters, even more so than in the past), a spirit of scavenging has characterized commercial cinema of late, with strings of redundant remakes or nauseating celebrations of cinema's former glories (Hugo, The Artist). But the ghoul's spawns are hardly more than cinematic zombies, or vaguely charming bric-a-brac, and the glorious wind that once swept the hills of Southern California cannot shake the ideological cesspool that the wavering capital of world cinema has become.

In this dark context, no traditional feature film produced this year has managed to truly capture my imagination. The latest films by established American auteurs (Scorsese, Eastwood, Cronenberg) are disappointing, if earnest, at best; and formerly cutting-edge Hollywood filmmakers (Fincher and Soderbergh) have produced arguably their worst films in 2011. As in the 30s, it is a European import who has delivered Hollywood's best film (the slick Drive), while European (Moretti or Polanski hitting all time lows, for instance) and Asian art cinemas have been found lacking as well, by and large.

For all these reasons, my favorite films seen in 2011 don't actually qualify as 'feature films' or were released theatrically in 2010.

1. The most stimulating place for audiovisual experiences in 2011, far more even than the scores of celebrated shows that inundate public and private TV networks, has been the internet. Sites such as Youtube and its ilk have offered wonderfully creative 'mash-ups', in a reflection of our nostalgic, exhausted times and accelerated, disjointed global capitalist culture gone 'tidbits, soundbites and little else.' Acknowledging the cultural relevance of the 'genre', the talentless but shrewd journeyman Ridley Scott has produced the theatrically released mash-up, Life in a Day, which is alas way inferior to the sum of its parts. Conversely (and while only on view in selected galleries or museums, currently at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) Christian Marclay's The Clock (2010), the crowning audiovisual achievement of 2011, is an endlessly stimulating, playful and gigantic 'film of films', an ode to cinema and time, which need not be viewed in its 24 hours entirety to be experienced, understood and enjoyed fully.

2. With her painterly celebration of femininity, the old West and the Oregon trail's perils, Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff (2010) proves once again that the director's understated, humanist cinema is by far the best alternative to Hollywood's current desperate and pathetic race for remakes and 'in your face' sensationalism. Michelle Williams shines once again in front of Reichardt's camera, miles away from her horrifying (if impressive) incarnation of Marilyn Monroe.

3. Essential Killing (2010) may be the purest film I saw this year, an almost dialogue-free, incredibly intense and compelling cinematic experience. Vincent Gallo seems to be a perfect interpreter for Jerzy Skolimowski's instinctual, physical and slightly psychotic approach of life and cinema.

4. If the theatrical version of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is at times superb, there's hope that, much like with The New World, a director's cut, more controlled formally and structurally, will emerge on the home video market and offer us Malick's truly complete vision. At present, and even if it is unquestionably one of the year's best films, The Tree of Life remains somewhat unsatisfactory.

5. Conversely, Lars von Trier's Melancholia is almost perfect structurally, but loses what it gains in such symmetrical construction to the darker, more powerful and genuine impulses of 'Antichrist', for which it serves, in many ways, as the acceptable, bourgeois remake.

6. Hors Satan, Bruno Dumont's latest film, is inferior to Hadejwich but still compels one by its rendition of a completely bleak existence. If not a masterpiece, the film is another building block to the director's unflinching quest to become France's most important cinematic auteur since Robert Bresson.

7. In a context of global cinematic mediocrity, the minor Dardenne Brothers' The Kid with a Bike comes across as a nice surprise, and their most overtly Christian film - their own alternative to the Life of Jesus they never made, in Luc Dardenne's own words.

8. For its sheer cinematic energy and the opposition of two wonderful actors (Oldboy's Min-Sink Choi and the angel-faced Byung-hun Lee), Kim Jee-woon's I Saw the Devil (2010) is the good, if harrowing and protracted, surprise of South Korean cinema - definitely the current capital of dark romantic narratives of sadism and revenge.

9. Faust, Alexander Sokurov's Mephisto Waltz is the Russian director's weirdest, most kinetic film. Perhaps this dynamic nature contributes to a sense of disorder and makes the film an unnecessarily difficult audiovisual experience at times. Still Faust contains more artistic power and dedication per frame (if the word still applies in the digital age) than most other films, and cannot fail to inspire the viewer, albeit in meandering, unexpected ways.

10. Pater, Alain Cavalier's daring, powerful and minimal piece of meta-cinema blurs the boundaries between fiction and documentary, and proves at once to be one of the most intellectually robust and energetic efforts of the year, a true young man's film about the wariness of power and the contradictions of contemporary French politics, from a filmmaker who turned 80 in 2011.

Honorable Mentions: Drive, A Separation, Warrior

* I have not had a chance to see the critically acclaimed The Turin Horse or Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Jeremi is the author of "Sokurov Waltz: Faust (2011)" on affiliate site Tativille.

2011: Alberto Zambenedetti

2011-12-31T06:01:00.000-08:00

As far as movie watching is concerned, 2011 was an unusual year for me. For various reasons I had to forgo all international travel, I was not able to attend any major film festivals, and getting myself to a movie theater was a luxury I could afford only sporadically. My film viewership dropped from my usual three hundred titles per year to a square one hundred, which is a very low average for a film scholar, let alone one that dabbles in online and print criticism. The titles in this list reflect the uncommon set of circumstances that kept me away from my favorite activity. I limited my choices to the films I watched in a theater during the solar year (which were not repertoire). Some of them were released in 2010 but played in New York throughout the first few weeks of 2011.

1. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
2. Melancholia (Lars von Trier)
3. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)
4. The Trip (Michael Winterbottom, 2010)
5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher)
6. Another Earth (Mike Cahill)
7. Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog, 2010)
8. Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, 2010)
9. TRON: Legacy (Joseph Kosinski, 2010)
10. Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press, 2010)

Alberto is a PhD candidate at New York University.

2011: Soren Bailey

2011-12-31T06:00:00.001-08:00

Insidious (James Wan, 2010)
Super 8 (J. J. Abrams)
Bridesmaids (Paul Feig)
Cedar Rapids (Miguel Arteta)
Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)
Win Win (Thomas McCarthy)
Margin Call (J. C. Chandor)
The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
Bill Cunningham: New York (Richard Press, 2010)
Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)

Listed in no particular order.

Soren holds an M. A. in Cinema Studies from New York University.

Ten Best Alfred Hitchcock Directed Films

2011-10-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

Notorious

1. Rear Window (1954)
2. Vertigo (1958)
3. Notorious (1946)
4. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
5. Psycho (1960)
6. The 39 Steps (1935)
7. North By Northwest (1959)
8. The Birds (1963)
9. Rebecca (1940)
10. The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Runners-up: Marnie (1964), Sabotage (1936), I Confess (1953), The Lodger (1927), Young and Innocent (1937), Frenzy (1972), Strangers on a Train (1951), The Farmer's Wife (1928), Family Plot (1976), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

Ten Best Kenji Mizoguchi Directed Films

2011-07-30T17:14:00.000-07:00

Ugetsu Monogatari

1. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939)
2. Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
3. Ugetsu Monogatari (1953)
4. Sisters of the Gion (1936)
5. The Straights of Love and Hate (1937)
6. The Life of Oharu (1952)
7. Chikamatsu Monogatari (1954)
8. Street of Shame (1956)
9. The Love of Sumako the Actress (1947)
10. Osaka Elegy (1936)

Runners-up: Utamaro and His Five Women (1946), Tokyo March (1929), Shin Heike Monogatari (1955), The Downfall of Osen (1935)

Ten Best John Ford Directed Films

2011-07-28T12:04:00.000-07:00

How Green Was My Valley

1. The Searchers (1956)

2. My Darling Clementine (1946)

3. Stagecoach (1939)

4. The Sun Shines Bright (1953)

5. How Green Was My Valley (1941)

6. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

7. Judge Priest (1934)

8. 7 Women (1966)

9. Steamboat 'Round the Bend (1935)

10. Fort Apache (1948)

Runners-up: Wagon Master (1950), They Were Expendable (1945), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), 3 Bad Men (1926), Pilgrimage (1933), The Iron Horse (1924), Two Rode Together (1961)

Ten Best Films of 2010

2011-01-04T06:10:00.000-08:00

1. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/United Kingdom/France/Germany/
Spain/Netherlands/United States)
In what is likely the Thai auteur's greatest achievement to date, Apichatpong explores not only the past lives and origins of his terminal lead, but also those of his own cinematic career - and even of his chosen medium (down to a Platonic shadow-play) - constructing a dense web of self-reference that transforms the filmmaker's reincarnation narrative into a comprehensive career reexamination. Uncle Boonmee is the best new film in years.

2. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, France/Italy/Iran)
For Kiarostami's first fiction feature shot outside his native Iran, the director makes explicit the European sources (especially Rossellini and Resnais) of his half-neorealist, half-modernist idiom, while adding a new dimension to his art: a heretofore forbidden sensuality that as always relies upon spectator participation. A major return to narrative form for Kiarostami, and the best of the recent spate of Asian-made European art films.

3. Mysteries of Lisbon (Raoul Ruiz, Portugal/France/Brazil)
Staging the Chinese box narrative structure of stories-within-stories-within-stories of the director's masterpiece Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983), within gracefully circular sequence-shots that call to mind (without conceptually replicating) the temporally unstable spaces of his very fine Time Regained (1999), Mysteries of Lisbon emerges as a summarizing achievement for the Chilean-born polyglot. Ruiz's career in 272-minute micro form.

4. Tuesday, After Christmas (Radu Muntean, Romania)
A small masterpiece of the new Romanian cinema, Tuesday, After Christmas discovers a formal means of working through its love-triangle subject - physical exclusion - following an extraordinary one-shot, one-take open that maximizes bodily presence. That it is the 'other woman' who remains off-screen in Muntean's final act, after one of the year's more unsettling exchanges, insures that Tuesday, After Christmas registers as a profoundly moral work.

5. Aurora (Cristi Puiu, Romania/France/Switzerland/Germany)
By virtue of one of the year's more comprehensive reinventions of film language, where a series of unmarked events - including a pair of double homicides - unfold within visually occluded beehive spaces, without the aid of narrative exposition, Puiu's essentially experimental Aurora pushes the default realism of the new Romanian cinema into truly novel (minimalist) territory. Puiu's Crime and Punishment has almost unparalleled staying power.

6. The Social Network (David Fincher, United States)
Justifiably anointed an instant classic of the American cinema, even if it is not quite to the level of Zodiac (2007), Fincher has again built his narrative around a film historical source - here no less than Citizen Kane - while employing a narrational strategy that generates meaning less from the distribution of bodies in spaces than from the film's lighting strategies and its mimetic scoring; that is, as a top music video artist would.

7. Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino, Italy/Germany/
Switzerland)
Echoing Uncle Boonmee's transmigration-of-the-soul theme, Le Quattro Volte charts the interconnections of the Calabrian life-cycle from man to goat to tree to charcoal. In so doing, Frammartino introduces the sense of an economy to the fiction-documentary hybrid, while also reducing man's cardinality to the cinema. With its avowedly "Pythagorean" perspective, Le Quattro Volte qualifies as one of 2010's true originals.

8. The Strange Case of Angélica (Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal/

Spain/France/Brazil)

From a screenplay that centenarian Oliveira wrote in the early 1950s, The Strange Case of Angélica returns not only to the filmmaker's Oporto origins, but to the naissance of the cinema itself (in the documentation of Lumière and the magic Méliès). Emphasizing both poles, Oliveira introduces notable anachronism into his latest - though, of course, his screenplay dates to a moment closer to the art's origins than to the present.

9. Ha Ha Ha (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
In much the same manner as Uncle Boonmee, Ha Ha Ha abandons its filmmaker's signature, Structuralist-inspired two-part narrative construction, in favor of a series of alternating, intercut episodes narrated by a pair of conversing friends. In this way, Hong makes new his "twice-told" aesthetic in the very funny Ha Ha Ha, while maintaining his multiple, presumably objective points-of-view. This is the director's best since Woman on the Beach (2006).

10. Unstoppable (Tony Scott, United States)
Scott has stealthily become one of Hollywood's most timely filmmakers, producing work since Déjà Vu (2006) that has registered the contemporary American mood with unparalleled acuity. Unstoppable proves to be another work in the same vein, commemorating post-9/11 heroism within a more exclusively immersive, classical diegetic world than his partially viewer-activated 2006 career peak. Superior action-hack filmmaking.

Ten Best Films' 2010 Mini-Poll

2011-01-03T06:35:00.000-08:00

1. The Social Network (David Fincher)
136 points (AZ, KW, LB, MA, ML, MS, PK, RSu, RSw)

2. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

99 points (LB, MA, PK, RSu, RSw)

3. Mysteries of Lisbon (Raoul Ruiz)

86 points (LB, MA, PK, RSu, RSw)

4. I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino, 2009)

84 points (LB, MA, ML, PK, SB)

5. Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky)

66 points (KW, MS, PK, SB)

6. Winter's Bone (Debra Granik)

54 points (ML, MS, PK, SB)

7. Everyone Else (Maren Ade, 2009)
49 points (AZ, LB, MA)

8. Alamar (Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio, 2009)

48 points (ML, MS, RSw)
9. The Strange Case of Angélica (Manoel de Oliveira)
47 points (JS, RSu, RSw)
10. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
46 points (LB, MA, RSu)

Other Films Receiving Multiple Citations: Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino) - 45 points (AZ, MA, PK), Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé, 2009) - 40 points (JS, ML), Ha Ha Ha (Hong Sang-soo) - 40 points (LB, MA, ML), Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy) - 35 points (MS, SB), Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard) - 35 points (AZ, RSu), Carlos (Olivier Assayas) - 34 points (ML, RSu), The Robber (Benjamin Heisenberg) - 31 points (AZ, KW), White Material (Claire Denis, 2009) - 31 points (JS, ML)*, The Fighter (David O. Russell) - 29 points (PK, SB), Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois) - 29 points (KW, RSu), A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, 2009) - 29 points (AZ, LB), Sweetgrass (Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 2009) - 29 points (MS, RSw), Aurora (Cristi Puiu) - 27 points (MA, RSw), Inception (Christopher Nolan) - 27 points (AZ, LB).

If I may be permitted, let me offer a few comments and observations on this year's Mini-Poll, conducted over New Year's weekend 2011, with a group of eleven New York University and Yale University graduate cinema and film studies alumni participating. First, let me commend the respondents on organically forging what I personally believe is the finest consensus of any of this year's on-line group polls, be it Sight and Sound's exciting year-end review, or those of American outlets such as indieWIRE and The Village Voice. Of course, the Mini-Poll benefited from the advantages of a small group of respondents, many of whom routinely discuss the films they care about most with one another - not that the critics of the aforesaid fail to do the same - and even more, from not limiting itself to 2010 commercial releases. Indeed, three of the Mini-Poll's top ten (Uncle Boonmee, Mysteries of Lisbon, Certified Copy), including two of its marvelous top three, have in fact yet to receive US theatrical premieres. With six more cited among the runners-up by multiple respondents, this should suggest the very high caliber of 2010's festival premieres, while also providing a preview of next year's 'best of' choices for critics both inside and outside the poll. Let me also underline the value of choosing non-distributed films as it proves proscriptive - we all need recommendations; I still need to see four of our runners-up - rather than simply reflective and in some sense (needlessly for the readers) affirmative for the critics.

Let me further offer a word or two on the choices themselves. It should come as no surprise that The Social Network finished first, as it has in nearly every survey and critics' group vote this year. It is certainly the film that almost everyone can agree upon. To this end, nine of the Mini-Poll's eleven respondents selected the film, though, quite significantly, the majority did not place in their personal top five. Compare this to Uncle Boonmee, our number two, which appeared on five ballots, with four of those five ranking it as their number one - and the fifth, his number two; thus, all five ranked it higher than The Social Network, which failed to score a single number one. What this suggests is a rather substantial enthusiasm gap between the top two (though not also, as you might except, numerous dissenters for the second). The fact is that a number of our respondents will not see the film until 2011, making it an early favorite to add to its total should this poll make it to year four. Among the other films selected as the best of 2010, Enter the Void is particularly notable as it received two first places with no additional citations. (Here, and I am only speculating, there may be dissenters.) Other selections for the year's best included The White Ribbon, a popular hold-over from 2009; Black Swan, this year's number five; Alamar, our number eight; runner-up Film Socialisme; and most obscurely of all, Tokyo International Film Festival prize-winner and out-of-competition Cannes selection, the Korean A Brand New Life. As I said, polls at least in part should be about directing readers to new films. Thank you to this respondent for this unexpected selection.

Lastly, I have tabulated the on-going totals four our first three years of selections below, with 2010's top two moving into our all-time top ten. Namely, The Social Network moved into third position, where it will have to stay being theoretically ineligible after this year, while Uncle Boonmee ranks in seventh place, with upward mobility a definite possibility.

Combined Mini-Poll Results: 2008-2010
1. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas, 2008) - 147 points
2. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008) - 139
3. The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010) - 136
4. Two Lovers (James Gray, 2008) - 129
5. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, 2008) - 126

6. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009) - 101

7. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010) - 99
8. Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008) - 97.5
9. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, 2009) - 96
10. (tie) Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009) - 93
10. (tie) White Material (Claire Denis, 2009) - 93

Note [*]: Films marked with an asterisk received at least one vote in last year's poll.

Scoring: Each citation receives ten points with an additional ten for a first place citation, nine for second, and so on, on down to one for tenth. This method of scoring is intended to give appropriate weight to those films that have been cited most frequently by this year's participants.

Key: AZ - Alberto Zambenedetti (Ten Best Films), JS - Jeremi Szaniawski (Ten Best Films), KW - Karen Wang (You're Making a Scene), LB - Lisa K. Broad (Tativille), MA - Michael J. Anderson, ML - Mike Lyon (Tits & Gore), MS - Matt Singer (Termite Art), RSu - Richard Suchenski (Ten Best Films), RSw - R. Emmet Sweeney (Ten Best Films), PK - Pamela L. Kerpius (Scarlett Cinema), SB - Soren Bailey (Ten Best Films).

2010: Richard Suchenski

2011-01-03T05:29:00.000-08:00

Conditions: With one exception, I restricted myself exclusively to films that were first screened publicly somewhere in the world in 2010.

1. Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard; pictured)
2. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
3. The Strange Case of Angélica (Manoel de Oliveira)
4. Compline (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2009)*
5. Carlos (Olivier Assayas)
6. Mysteries of Lisbon (Raoul Ruiz)
7. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
8. I Wish I Knew (Jia Zhangke)
9. Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois)
10. The Social Network (David Fincher)

*Also for Dorsky’s Pastourelle (2010) and Aubade (2010)

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical): The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Andrei Ujica), The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski), Ha Ha Ha (Hong Sang-soo), O somma luce (Jean-Marie Straub), Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese).

There were many excellent films released in 2010 – including another glorious, unpredictable masterpiece by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and essential works by Manoel de Oliveira, Nathaniel Dorsky, and Olivier Assayas – but, for me, the richest was Film Socialisme. Nothing has given me more hope for the future of digital cinema – and especially for the development of new forms of montage – than this vital, adventurous, and uncompromising work, the latest (hopefully not the last) “first film” by a director who never stops redefining his art.

Richard Suchenski is Assistant Professor of Film and Electronic Arts at Bard College.

Lisa K. Broad's 2010 Mix-Tape

2011-01-02T21:18:00.000-08:00

I really miss making mix-tapes. So instead of composing a 2010 best song list, I put a few of my favorites into the most aesthetically pleasing arrangement I could muster. Theoretically they should be listened to from top to bottom in order to produce what I imagine to be a revelatory sonic experience. In practice, please feel free to sample at your leisure.

“Walk in the Park,” Beach House

“Don’t Cry,” Deerhunter

“Chinatown,” Wild Nothing

“Numb,” Marina and the Diamonds

“Funnel of Love,” The Fall

“I’m Not the One,” The Black Keys

“Monster,” Kanye West

“Twenty Miles,” Deer Tick

“Anyone’s Ghost,” The National

“Bright Lit Blue Skies,” Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti

“She Rode Me Down,” Tindersticks

“1977,” Ana Tijoux

“Taxi Cab,” Vampire Weekend

“Mansions of Los Feliz,” Eels

2010: Jeremi Szaniawski

2011-01-02T08:50:00.000-08:00

0. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
I have yet to see this most acclaimed film by Thai maestro Apichatpong Weerasethakul. But considering the admiration I have for all his previous features, especially Tropical Malady and Syndromes and a Century, there is very little doubt that it will be featured in my top in 2011 (if I live that long), and should be acknowledged here as the 'grand absent.'

1. Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé, 2009; pictured)
Noe's magnum opus, an incredibly daring and innovative epic of garishness, represents all the obsessions that the filmmaker has carefully sketched out in his two previous features, Seul contre tous and Irreversible. Part homage and recreation of the notion of 'ultimate trip' of Kubrick's 2001; part descent into the gutter of mankind under psychedelic neon lights, the film's hubris is bound to irritate but it must win one over in the ultimate account. In this sense, one of the most amazing features of Enter the Void is how the bad-taste of each consecutive scene makes one cringe, before gradually imposing its aesthetics and earning its full artistic integrity. Blending the basest and the loftiest in a somatic bouquet superbe, Noe has delivered just about the pen-ultimate trip, falling only a little short of his 1968 model - but then again, he never really aimed that high, embodying all that's great about the degraded postmodern culture and ethos suddenly transcending itself, reaching the top by going down to the bottom, as it were.

2. Amer (Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani, 2009)
One of the greatest first films ever made, this surprising giallo pastiche and homage from Belgium, by French filmmakers Cattet and Forzani, is an hymn to the senses. See my review of the film here.

3. World on Wire (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973)
Long in the ZDF's vaults, Fassbinder's miniseries hit MoMA this Spring in a fabulously restored copy, followed by a DVD release. The German enfant terrible unleashes some of his zaniest sense of humor and the epic duration of this sci-fi cum philosophical allegory never feels long at all. A splendor of creativity, it also references just about every single canonical film one can think of, from Metropolis to Citizen Kane, from melodrama to film noir, from political activism to slapstick comedy. A hidden gem, to be ranked among Fassbinder's revered masterpieces.

4. The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet)
Chomet yields a cinephile's wet dream by adapting Jacques Tati's script, preserving his specific rhythm and poetry. The result is a loving, respectful, beautiful and nostalgic evocation of a bygone era as well as a recreation of a whole cinematic universe, hardly altered by a 21st century lens. A rare feat, The Illusionist is as much Chomet's as it is the great master's - and the way it reflects on Tati's misunderstood genius and the sad end of his career is bound to move one deeply.

5. Hadewijch (Bruno Dumont, 2009)
It is better not to say anything about Hadewijch, Dumont's most Bressonian effort, a momentous effort about extremely timely issues in present-day Western Europe, which uses the ellipsis in a more masterful manner than any of the French trans-modern provocateur's film to date. While the second half of the film is slightly inferior to the first one (which is quite perfect in its controlled austerity), and paradoxically less relevant on the socio-philosophical plane, it is also the part in which Julie Sokolowski's titular performance shines through most compellingly - her flat, somewhat chubby face blessed with beautiful and sensitive eyes, a germane canvas for madness and Grace.

6. The Strange Case of Angélica (Manoel De Oliveira)
Still going at 100+, Oliveira graces us with this carefully crafted jewel of a film, based on what would look like a short film's argument, but developing and flowering in unexpected and seductive avenues throughout. Based on a script he wrote in the 50s, Oliveira seems particularly at ease in this Bunuel meets Max Ernst tale of a Sephardic re-immigrant in a not-so present day Portugal, still heavily anti-Semitic and insufferably bourgeois. Among its many enchanting aspects, the film marries an inescapably cinematic metaphor (cinema as mode of embalming reality and bringing it back from the dead, sometimes to a dangerous degree) with a subtle-and essential-investigation of Jewish culture's oft-overlooked role in Western European culture, especially as regards esoterism. It is a bit disheartening, however, to think that one of the year's finest films is the product of the medium's eldest practitioner...

7. White Material (Claire Denis, 2009)
Denis' superb and earnest evocation of the chaos in a generic Central-to-Western African country torn by civil war is particularly poignant, as it features more than a few autobiographical elements for its author, who grew up there. The result is a cross-breed between a dark fairy tale (the massacre of the children being the most obvious example) and a quasi-documentary assessment on the huge socio-political mess that the black continent has tragically become. While Isabelle Huppert is her customary brilliant self, her dry physicality and faded beauty a perfect analog for the ravaged African country's predicament, Christophe Lambert's grotesque performance as her former husband, sadly, prevents the film from achieving an even higher degree of success overall. Amateurish or bad acting had already marred Denis's previous films,including last year's 35 Shots of Rum. But the French filmmaker's earnestness and love of Africa shines in each shot, each one filled with another layer of despair.

8. Cargo 200 (Alexey Balabanov, 2007)
Balabanov's film came out a few years ago in Russia, but deserves to be featured in any a top ten list. A fantastic combination of the horror genre and the dark social satire, it investigates an 1980s Soviet Russia in shambles (a few weeks prior to Gorbachev's coming to power and initiating the much needed reforms of Perestroyka and Glasnost) and rotten to the bone; Cargo 200 also points out the fact that it is the shrewd, selfish (and cowardly) golden youth of the 80s that now runs the show in the present-day Russia of oligarchs and Czar Vladimir P.

9. The Reverse (Borys Lankosz, 2009)

Surely Lankosz's film can only be fully appreciated by a Polish (or Polish culture and history savvy) audience, rife as it is with socio-historic references that will be lost on anyone who did not have a few family members suffer, be incarcerated, or die during Stalin's rule of terror - that other darkest hour which prolonged the horror of WWII in Eastern Europe for a good 8 more years. Andrzej Bart's fabulously witty dialogues and the film's gorgeous black and white cinematography constantly positing the demons of history in a dark and cruel ironic light. And indeed, when one thinks that Warsaw's most iconic present-day monument remains the once infamous Palace of Culture (Stalin's late gift to the ravaged city), whose building serves as an important plot point in this film (again, lost on anyone without the socio-historic background), it seems like Lankosz's caustic treatment has become a better way for Poles to look at their martyrdom than the recent score of not-so-successful straight-faced hagiographies (which do, however, serve a didactic purpose of some sort, no doubt, shedding some new light on a few of the many dark corners of Polish history).

10. The King's Speech (Tom Hooper)

This obvious Oscar-candidate won me over, in spite of its co-opted nature, by its production values and deft screenwriting, making it one of the least dull efforts in the period piece/biopic genre in years, thanks in no small part to the extraordinary cast. As an added guilty pleasure, one will note the delightful obscenity of focusing on a man's speech impediment as millions of people were getting ready for the slaughter of World War II. But this parapraxis only makes it all the more pithy, as it will no doubt will be lost on the thousands of elderly bourgeois citizens who will swarm to see the film in this holiday season, and relish every second of it -while, unbeknownst to them, digital projection replaces 35mm and cinema dies its slow and tragic death.

Honorable mentions: Black Swan, True Grit, Piranha 3D, Kick-Ass

2010: Alberto Zambenedetti

2010-12-31T16:10:00.000-08:00

My list derives from films I saw in a theater in 2010, including titles that have not yet been released in the United States. Some I had the fortune to see at the New York Film Festival (and will hit the theaters in 2011), while some others I viewed in Italy (and may never make it across the Atlantic). Re-releases and repertory screenings were obviously excluded from the run. Enjoy!

1. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)
2. Le quattro volte (Michelangelo Frammartino)
3. The Robber (Benjamin Heisenberg; pictured)
4. A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, 2009)
5. The Social Network (David Fincher)
6. Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard)
7. Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese)
8. Everyone Else (Maren Ade, 2009)
9. Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek)
10. Inception (Chris Nolan)

Alberto is a PhD candidate in Italian Studies at New York University.

2010: R. Emmet Sweeney (Films + Music)

2010-12-31T13:16:00.000-08:00

1. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apitchatpong Weerasethakul)
2. Mysteries of Lisbon (Raoul Ruiz)
3. Ruhr (James Benning, 2009; pictured)
4. Alamar (Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio, 2009)
5. The Social Network (David Fincher)
6. Sweetgrass (Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 2009)
7. The Strange Case of Angélica (Manoel de Oliveira)
8. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Andrei Ujica)
9. Erie (Kevin Jerome Everson)
10. Aurora (Cristi Puiu)
11. Agrarian Utopia (Uruphong Raksasad, 2009)

Short Films of the Year: Future So Bright (Matt McCormick), Shadow Cuts (Matthew Arnold)

Albums of the Year:
1. Saturn Sings, Mary Halvorson Quintet
2. Marrow of the Spirit, Agalloch
3. Ten, Jason Moran and the Bandwagon

4. Apex, Rudresh Mahanthappa & Bunky Green
5. Spiral Shadow, Kylesa
6. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West
7. Speak Now, Taylor Swift
8. Grinderman 2, Grinderman
9. This Brings Us To, Vol. 2, Henry Threadgill Zooid
10. Welder, Elizabeth Cook
11. Throat, Little Women

Songs of the Year:

1. "MC Hammer," Rick Ross

2. "Runaway," Kanye West

3. "Don't Look Back," Kylesa

4. "Dear John," Taylor Swift

5. "General Patton," Big Boi

2010: Soren Bailey

2010-12-31T07:01:00.000-08:00

1. Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky)
2. Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)
3. Terribly Happy (Henrik Ruben Genz, 2008)
4. The Fighter (David O. Russell)
5. The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski)
6. I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino, 2009)
7. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Edgar Wright)
8. True Grit (Joel and Ethan Coen)
9. Winter's Bone (Debra Granik)
10. 127 Hours (Danny Boyle)

Runners-up: A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, 2009), Splice (Vincenzo Natali, 2009), Inception (Christopher Nolan), Greenberg (Noah Baumbach), The Town (Ben Affleck).

Soren holds an M.A. in Cinema Studies from New York University.

Ten Best Abbas Kiarostami Directed Films

2010-10-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

The Wind Will Carry Us

1. Through the Olive Trees / Zire darakhatan zeyton (1994)

2. The Wind Will Carry Us / Bad ma ra khahad bord (1999)

3. Life and Nothing More... / And Life Goes On... / Zendegi va digar hich (1992)

4. Close-Up / Nema-ye Nazdik (1990)

5. Taste of Cherry / Ta'm e guilass (1997)

6. Ten / 10 (2002)
7. Where is the Friend's House? / Zire darakhatan zeyton? (1987)

8. Certified Copy / Copie conforme (2010)

9. Shirin (2008)

10. Orderly or Disorderly / Be Tartib ya Bedoun-e Tartib (1981)

Runners-up: The Traveler / Mossafer (1974), Two Solutions for One Problem / Dow Rahehal Baraye yek Massaleh (1975).

Ten Best Films of 2009

2010-06-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

1. Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania)
Joining Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) at the pinnacle of the much-hyped 'Romanian New Wave,' and sharing the aforesaid film's wry critique of its nation's bureaucratic institutions, Police, Adjective organically refashions its movement's signature long-take aesthetic to stimulate viewer unease with the on-screen police investigation of a hash-smoking teenager. While Porumboiu's masterwork is in this sense exceedingly cinematic, as it is likewise for its activation of off-camera space through its use of sound cues, the film's eponymous interest in language, featured not only in its notably verbose denouement, but in a set of inserted, hand-written reports, insures that Police, Adjective also qualifies as mixed cinema of the highest order.

2. Everyone Else (Maren Ade, Germany)
Remarkable foremost for young thirty-something writer-director Ade's precise and very authentic lead and supporting characterizations, and for her rendering of a specific, and infrequently depicted moment in the life of a young couple, namely the end of their twenties, before either has experienced parenthood or has achieved unqualified professional success or failure, Everyone Else emerges as a rare form of realist cinema capable of mirroring its spectators' lives - as uncomfortably as it may do so. In its uttermost perspicacity and its subtly inhabited feminine point-of-view, Ade's film earns a place beside countrywoman Valeska Grisebach's outstanding Longing (2006) as one of the very best examples of the new "Berlin School."

3. White Material (Claire Denis, France/Cameroon)
Seizing upon a personal idiom that combines tightly-framed, medium-length compositions and lyrical, contextualizing landscapes (through a distinctively rhythmic editing pattern), Denis' White Material ranks with the director's foremost achievements (i.e. Beau Travail and Friday Night). Sharing the decidedly subjective orientation of these earlier recreations of film form, White Material filters its narrative through a shifting interiority and shuffled temporality that affects its nightmarish portrait of post-colonial Africa, where DJ's call for revolt against the continent's remaining whites and child-soldiers sport firearms and machetes. As impressionistic a picture as Denis provides of this hell, White Material remains one of 2009's most vital works.

4. I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino, Italy)
2009's biggest surprise, Guadagnino's I Am Love reclaims the very best of Italy's post-neorealismo golden age - Antonioni and especially Visconti - for its treatment of the dissolution of an aristocratic Milanese family. Utilizing long, fluid camera movements that recall both directors, Guadagnino's camera work nonetheless does not simply refer to its sources, but rather manages a degree of expressionism that has all-but-disappeared from contemporary art cinema. Add to this the director's impressionistic montage passages and John Adam's handsome score and I Am Love approaches an operatic ideal of total art. It is also the year's most sensual work, featuring strings of spittle in the midst of a passionate kiss and some truly haute cuisine.

5. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson, United States)

Though its stop-motion form might suggest otherwise, Fantastic Mr. Fox underscores the singularity and consistency of Anderson's oeuvre: in both respects, the director's work remains without parallel for an American filmmaker of his generation. Once again, Anderson articulates his fiction in reference to another medium - here, the children's book, which Anderson manages to make adult without losing his younger audience - with a narrative constructed around George Clooney's charismatic patriarch (cf. Royal Tenenbaum). Anderson's frontal framings, sense of style frozen in his early 1980s adolescence and expressions of the virtues of non-conformity and familial perseverance all reveal the filmmaker's unmistakable signature.

6. Around a Small Mountain (Jacques Rivette, France/Italy)
A small film in much more than its English-language name, Rivette's 84-minute feature nonetheless rises to the level of the director's major works thanks to the very scope that might otherwise suggest its slightness. Here, Rivette recasts the essence of his cinema as belonging not to the duration that marked his legendary, long-form L'amour fou (1969), Out One (1971/4) and Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), but rather to the principle of repetition shared by these and his latest. Around a Small Mountain accordingly proves a fundamentally auteurist pleasure, expanding as it does our understanding of Rivette's towering art, while renewing the primacy of fictional worlds (which spill out from underneath an Eastwoodian big-top) for his work.

7. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, United States/Japan)
Jarmusch's best film in a decade was also his most indifferently received, earning not only anemic box office receipts, but also undeservedly middling to negative reviews. As a work of cinematic art, however, The Limits of Control is both a major achievement and a departure for Jarmusch, replacing the director's arch-postmodernism with a surrealist form of modernism - inspired by Rivette - where fiction continuously bleeds into the film's reality; in this respect, The Limits of Control provides a bookend for the decade with David Lynch's similarly-influenced Mulholland Drive (2001). Abounding with careful references from the Spanish modernist canon, the Spain-set feature sides with the holders of bohemian values against American hegemony.

8. Bright Star (Jane Campion, United Kingdom/Australia/France)

Representing a major comeback for one of the signature directors of the 1990s - and not coincidentally to the previous decade's art-for-art's-sake aesthetic ethos - Campion's Bright Star articulates its maker's artistic program as an amalgamation of its two creator-leads: Campion works in a commercially viable form analogous to Fanny Brawne's (Abbie Cornish) dress-making, while producing lyrical art not unlike John Keats' (Ben Whishaw) poetry. As a highly characteristic example of her oeuvre, moreover, Bright Star again revises the gendered subject-object relationship to grant the film's female lead with maximal agency and subject-hood, whereas, atypical for an artistic biopic, the film's more famous male remains the work's cipher.

9. Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin, China)
In contradistinction to Oxhide, Liu's sly comedic sequel presents a single facsimile of real-time across its minimal quantity of breathlessly long, stationary takes. The set-ups themselves extend the earlier work's visual restrictions, with bodies again frequently cropped both above the image and below. In the latter film especially, Liu's compositions rely on a very subtle choreography of movement, with the logic behind particular shot locations often revealed well after Liu's semi-analytic edits. Oxhide II ultimately inaugurates its own presentational metaphor to stand beside the under-lit, constricted framings of Oxhide, with the film's found proscenium underscoring the presentational nature of the food preparation narrative.

10. Hadewijch (Bruno Dumont, France)
Offering a humanist variation on the iconography of Robert Bresson - particularly in its reinterpretation of Mouchette's (1967) concluding gesture - Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch suggests that humankind has only itself as it faces a very dangerous world. The reality that humanity must confront in Hadewijch is Europe's Islamification, which provides the continent's last remnants of religious devotion, save for the Catholic heroine of the film's title, along the real threat of jihad. Dumont's film, which betters Jacques Audiard's similarly concerned Cannes favorite A Prophet, is filled with moments of visually symbolism whether it is the rise of a crane or a sudden rain, while ultimately exploring Hadewijch's near-romantic devotion to the Christian God.

2009: Lisa K. Broad

2010-06-28T06:30:00.000-07:00

Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl

1. Everyone Else (Maren Ade, Germany)
2. I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino, Italy)
3. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, United States/Japan)
4. Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin, China)
5. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson, United States)
6. Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl (Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal/Spain/France)
7. A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, France/Italy)
8. Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania)
9. Vengeance (Johnnie To, Hong Kong/France)
10. Bright Star (Jane Campion, United Kingdom/Australia/
France)

Ten Best Films' 2009 Mini-Poll

2010-06-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

1. Two Lovers (James Gray, 2008)
129 points (AZ, EC, LB, MA, ML, MS, PK)
2. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas, 2008)
113 points (AZ, EC, LB, MA, MS, PK)*
3. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
96 points (AZ, JS, LB, MA, MC, ML)
4. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
93 points (EC, JS, KW, LB, ML, PK)
5. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
81 points (KW, JS, MS, RSu, SB)
6. Antichrist (Lars von Trier)
78 points (AZ, JS, LB, ML, RSu)
7. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
76 points (EC, KW, LB, MA, ML)
8. White Material (Claire Denis)
62 points (LB, MA, MC, RSu)
9. Up (Pete Docter and Bob Peterson)
59 points (AZ, EC, MS, SB)
10. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
52 points (MC, MS, RSw)*

11. 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis, 2008)
51 points (MA, MC, RSw)
12. Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu)
50 points (LB, MA, RSu)
13. Moon (Duncan Jones)
44 points (AZ, KW,SB)
14. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008)
43 points (KW, MC, MS)
15. You, the Living (Roy Andersson, 2007)
39 points (EC, RSw)*
16. (tie) Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi)
38 points (MS, SB)
16. (tie) Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl (Manoel de Oliveira)
38 points (LB, MC, RSu)
18. Around a Small Mountain (Jacques Rivette)
37 points (MA, RSu)
19. (tie) Avatar (James Cameron)
30 points (PK, SB)
19. (tie) Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, 2007)
30 points (JS, MC)*

Other Films Receiving Multiple Citations: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Warner Herzog) - 29 points (PK, SB), Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008) - 29 points (AZ, RSw)*, Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasi, 2008) - 27 points (MS, SB), Bright Star (Jane Campion) - 27 points (LB, SB), Mother (Bong Joon-ho) - 25 points (MC, ML), Vincere (Marco Bellocchio) - 25 points (MC, RSu), In the Loop (Armando Iannucci) - 25 points (MS, PK), Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze) - 23 points (EC, PK), Crank: High Voltage (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor) - 22 points (AZ, MS)

Note: Films marked with an asterisk [*] received at least one vote in last year's poll, or with list-makers two years ago (as in the case of Silent Light). Combining last year's results with this year's, Summer Hours' tally increases to 147 points, The Headless Woman's to 139, Tokyo Sonata's to 97.5 and You, the Living's to 50. Last year's top vote-getter was A Christmas Tale with 126 points.

Scoring: Each citation receives ten points with an additional ten for a first place citation, nine for second, and so on, on down to one for tenth. This method of scoring is intended (per Paul Martin's very astute insights in the comments section) to give appropriate weight to those films included on the most lists.

Key: AZ - Alberto Zambenedetti (Ten Best Films), EC - Emily Condon, JS - Jeremi Szaniawski (Ten Best Films), KW - Karen Wang (Scarlett Cinema), LB - Lisa K. Broad (Tativille), MA - Michael J. Anderson (Tativille), MC - Michael Cramer, ML - Mike Lyon (Tits and Gore), MS - Matt Singer (Termite Art), PK - P. L. Kerpius (Scarlett Cinema), RSu - Richard Suchenski (Ten Best Films), RSw - R. Emmet Sweeney (Termite Art), SB - Soren Bailey

Michael J. Anderson's Retrospective and Older Favorites of 2009

2010-04-03T11:57:00.000-07:00

Born to Be Bad

Silent & Classical Hollywood: All I Desire (Douglas Sirk, 1953), Bachelor Flat (Frank Tashlin, 1962), Back Street (John M. Stahl, 1932), The Blackboard Jungle (Richard Brooks, 1955), Blonde Crazy (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), The Blue Bird (Maurice Tourneur, 1918), Bombshell (Victor Fleming, 1933), Born to Be Bad (Nicholas Ray, 1950), By Candlelight (James Whale, 1933), City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931), The Cobweb (Vincente Minnelli, 1955), Crime and Punishment (Josef von Sternberg, 1935), The Devil and Daniel Webster (William Dieterle, 1941), Elmer Gantry (Richard Brooks, 1960), Female (Michael Curtiz, William Dieterle & William A. Wellman, 1933), Forbidden (Frank R. Capra, 1932), Four Daughters (Michael Curtiz, 1938), The Gunfighter (Henry King, 1950), Hallelujah, I'm a Bum! (Lewis Milestone, 1933), Home from the Hill (Vincente Minnelli, 1960), Hot Saturday (William A. Seiter, 1932), Human Desire (Fritz Lang, 1954), If Only You Could Cook (William A. Seiter, 1935), The Impatient Maiden (James Whale, 1932), The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933), The Killer is Loose (Budd Boetticher, 1956), Lazybones (Frank Borzage, 1925), The Man I Killed (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932), Mantrap (Victor Fleming, 1926), Me and My Gal (Raoul Walsh, 1932), Meet John Doe (Frank Capra, 1941), Nightfall (Jacques Tourneur, 1957), The Old Dark House (James Whale, 1932), Other Men's Women (William A. Wellman, 1931), Party Girl (Nicholas Ray, 1958), The Petrified Forest (Archie L. Mayo, 1936), The Phenix City Story (Phil Karlson, 1955), Regeneration (Raoul Walsh, 1915), The River (Frank Borzage, 1929), The Savage Innocents (Nicholas Ray, 1960), The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927), Susan Slept Here (Frank Tashlin, 1954), There's Always Tomorrow (Douglas Sirk, 1956), These Three (William Wyler, 1936), Two Weeks in Another Town (Vincente Minnelli, 1962), The Unsuspected (Michael Curtiz, 1947), Western Union (Fritz Lang, 1941), Wichita (Jacques Tourneur, 1955), Wild Boys of the Road (William A. Wellman, 1933), Wild River (Elia Kazan, 1960)

Used Cars

New Hollywood: Breezy (Clint Eastwood, 1973), Bronco Billy (Clint Eastwood, 1980), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Billy Wilder, 1970), Thief (Michael Mann, 1981), Used Cars (Robert Zemeckis, 1980)

World Cinema: L'Argent (Marcel L'Herbier, 1928), Dry Summer (Metin Erksan, 1964), Intentions of Murder (Shohei Imamura, 1964), The President (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1919), A Swedish Love Story (Roy Andersson, 1970)

Indian Cinema: The Big City (Satyajit Ray, 1963), Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray, 1970), Guide (Vijay Anand, 1965), Kanchenjungha (Satyajit Ray, 1962), Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (Abrar Alvi, 1962)

Jeremi Szaniawski's Ten Best Films of 2009

2010-04-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

The White Ribbon

1. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
2. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
3. Antichrist (Lars von Trier)
4. Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)
5. Oxygen/Kislorod (Ivan Vyrypaev)
6. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, 2007)
7. A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen)
8. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, 2008)
9. Mr. Nobody (Jaco Van Dormael)
10. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)

Jeremi is a PhD candidate in Film Studies and Slavic Languages and Literature at Yale University.

Alberto Zambenedetti's Ten Best Films of 2009

2010-04-03T11:50:00.000-07:00

The Hangover

1. Two Lovers (James Gray, 2008)
2. The Hangover (Todd Phillips)
3. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
4. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas, 2008)
5. The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh)
6. Up (Pete Docter and Bob Peterson)
7. Moon (Duncan Jones)
8. Antichrist (Lars von Trier)
9. Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008)
10. Crank: High Voltage (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor)

Alberto is a PhD candidate at New York University.

Richard Suchenski's Best of 2009 & the Decade

2010-04-03T11:45:00.000-07:00

Around a Small Mountain

Best of 2009

1. Around a Small Mountain (Jacques Rivette, France/Italy)
2. Wild Grass (Alain Resnais, France/Italy)
3. Le streghe, femmes entre elles (Jean-Marie Straub, France/Italy)
4. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, Austria/Germany/France/Italy)
5. Antichrist (Lars von Trier, Denmark/Germany/France/Sweden/Italy/Poland)
6. White Material (Claire Denis, France)
7. Vincere (Marco Bellocchio, Italy/France)
8. Villa Amalia (Benoît Jacquot, France/Switzerland)
9. Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania)
10. Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl (Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal/Spain/France)

Runners-Up (Alphabetical): The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? (Werner Herzog) [Diptych], Bright Star (Jane Campion), La danse: Le ballet de l’Opéra de Paris (Frederick Wiseman), Everyone Else (Maren Ade), Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson), In Comparison (Harun Farocki), Journal and Remarks (David Gatten), A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (Apichatpong Weerasethakul

), The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch), Ne Change Rien (Pedro Costa)

In Praise of Love

Best of the Decade

1. Eniaios [Orders 1-5] (Gregory Markopoulos, 1947-2004/2008, USA/Greece)*
2. The God of Day Had Gone Down Upon Him (Stan Brakhage, 2000, USA)
3. In Praise of Love (Jean-Luc Godard, 2001, France/Switzerland)
4. My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure (Robert Beavers, 1966-2002/2005, Greece/Switzerland/Italy/USA)*
5. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000, Hong Kong/France)
6. Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000, Taiwan/Japan)
7. Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, 2000, Hungary/Italy/Germany/France)
8. Platform (Jia Zhang-ke, 2000, China)
9. Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006, Portugal/France/Switzerland)
10. [Three-way tie] Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006, Thailand/France/Austria) / These Encounters of Theirs (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet (2006, Italy/France) / Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002, Russia/Germany)

*These are cycles rather than individual films, but since they were first screened publicly this decade, I think they deserve their place on this list even if they were started many years ago. To balance the list out, I have provided a three-way tie for the bottom slot.

Richard is a joint PhD candidate in Film Studies and History of Art at Yale University