Hope y’all had a good Thanksgiving. I’m back from break and have got a few things to catch up on – luckily I might actually have the time today to make a couple updates. Hooray for procrastination!
Elitist British journal Sight & Sound is probably second only to Cahiers du Cinema in terms of combined prominence and snobbery amongst the major film magazines. American films are generally scarce in their annual top 10 list (the last to gain top honors was “Brokeback Mountain”) and major studio fare is even rarer. So the fact that “The Social Network” has won even this group of high-end experts over means we could be looking at a critical avalanche in the next couple of weeks for Fincher’s film. I believe The New York Critics’ Circle gets the party started on December 13. But for now, here’s the full Sight & Sound list, serving as recommendations for the discerning viewer. Interesting to see “Winter’s Bone” popping up again; keep an eye on that one.
A note: Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet” took first place in last year’s list, but apparently enough of the voting members didn’t catch up with it until this year to give it the votes to make the list again. Go figure. Also, the last 5 entries on the list all tied with the same number of votes, resulting in a top 12 rather than a top 10.
- “The Social Network” (David Fincher)
- “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
- “Another Year” (Mike Leigh)
- “Carlos” (Olivier Assayas)
- “The Arbor” (Clio Barnard)
- “Winter’s Bone” (Debra Granik)
- “I Am Love” (Luca Guadagnino)
- “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu” (Andrei Ujica)
- “Film Socialisme” (Jean-Luc Godard)
- “Nostalgia for the Light” (Patricio Guzman)
- “Poetry” (Lee Chang-dong)
- “A Prophet” (Jacques Audiard)
The Best Films of Our Lives 