Top ten lists can be very useful in pointing out films you should consider seeing as well as reminding you of films that you missed when they first came out (like Everlasting Moments and Coraline or me). This is especially important for screenwriters since my number one piece of advice is to see a movie outside your comfort zone at least once or twice a week. And there's no place like finding movies outside one's comfort zone than in artsy
fartsy, nose in the air, I know better than you do when it comes to films, top ten lists.
John Waters reveals his best films of 2009, a very intelligent and insightful listing. Very exciting choices, mainly foreign language films, though what John Waters list would be complete with something like Bruno being included.
http://www.artforum.com/inprint/id=24234
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times divided his into ten best mainstream and ten best independent. I didn't fully understand this division. Only one foreign language film is in the top ten, The White Ribbon, but such films as Departures (kudos for putting this on the list) and Everlasting Moments were in the independent. Ebert's list seems a bit safe to me, but still intelligent.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/12/the_best_films_of_2009.html
Brad Schreiber of the
Huffington Post has a somewhat discordant list of both popular mainstream fare and art house movies; it's this discordant feeling that gives his list its strength, though, putting Duplicity and The Hangover on the same list as Hunger and The
Baader Meinhoff Complex. Kudos for including
O'Horten and giving Sleep Dealer and honorable mention.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-schreiber/top-ten-films-of-2009_b_398868.html
and just for the heck of it, the top ten worst movies of the year as listed by
Scott Mendelson, also of the
Huffington Post (Bride Wars anyone?).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-mendelson/2009-in-review---worst-mo_b_401843.html
