Movie City News has collected the most comprehensive list of top tens anywhere on the web. No one even bothers competing with them on this because they do it so well. There is another site, too, that is more comprehensive in certain ways and is devoted to the top ten lists, http://criticstop10.com/. Check it out. Here is how it’s shaking down so far. They score them in order of where they are on the lists but include how many times the films are mentioned.
1. Wall-E
2. Milk
3. The Dark Knight
4. Slumdog Millionaire
5. The Wrestler
6. Rachel Getting Married
7. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
8. Happy-Go-Lucky
9. Let the Right One In
10. A Christmas Tale
Curious about last previous years’ standings?
*nominated for Best Pic/+won Best Pic
1. No Country for Old Men+
2. There Will Be Blood*
3. Zodiac
4. Diving Bell and the Butterfly
5. Once
6. Juno*
7. Atonement*
8. Into the Wild
9. Ratatouille
10. Away from Her
Michael Clayton, at number 15, was also nominated for Best Pic.
More after the cut.
2006
1. United 93
2. The Queen*
3. The Departed+
4. Letters from Iwo Jima*
5. Pan’s Labyrinth
6. Borat
7. Little Miss Sunshine*
8. Babel*
9. Little Children
10. Children of Men
2005
1. Brokeback Mountain*
2. A History of Violence
3. Capote*
4. Good Night, and Good Luck*
5. The Squid and the Whale
6. King Kong
7. Crash+
8. Munich*
9. Grizzly Man
10. 2046
2004
1. Sideways*
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Million Dollar Baby+
4. The Aviator*
5. Before Sunset
6. The Incredibles
7. Kinsey
8. Hotel Rwanda
9. House of Flying Daggers
10. Fahrenheit 911
(other Best Pic nominees from that year that didn’t make the top ten: Finding Neverland at 13, Ray at 16)
It’s weird to think of how the critics can sometimes fall ass over elbow for a movie that just so clearly doesn’t belong (Borat, cough).¬† It’s even weirder for me to have followed the films from the cradle to the grave all of these years. There are movies critics fall in love with that make it, there are movies pushed by great publicists that don’t need the critics – but what we can glean from these archived lists are that after 2004 all five Best Pic nominees were in the top ten. While the list might shift in the next two weeks as more top ten lists come out, this is pretty much it, folks, for 2008.
So far, three of the so-called frontrunners are sitting high atop the critics’ list: Milk, Slumdog and Benjamin Button.¬† Two slots remain up for grabs but probably Frost/Nixon, at number 14, takes one of those. Doubt, therefore, is a long shot at number 29. Not impossible, but a long shot if you use the top ten lists as a current trend that might repeat. Both The Dark Knight and Wall-E also have a shot, obviously.
