Top Ten Time

Once again, I’m compiling a master best films of the year list from published top ten lists and the lists friends send me. I’m starting with three lists in this month’s Artforum. Every year the disparity between the list of films critics make and the list of films that have actually screened in Philadelphia gets wider. The list is really a list of Best Films You Might Have A Chance To See In Early 2005 And Otherwise Will Have To Cross Your Fingers That They Will Make It To DVD. 2005 is looking to be a good year, judging from the names already in the list: Kiarostami’s Five, Ming-Liang’s Goodbye Dragon Inn, Ozon’s 5 x 2, Godard’s Notre Musique, and Antonioni’s Michelangelo Eye to Eye. Of course, Almodovar’s newest still hasn’t opened in Philly either. Artforum being Artforum, several experimental films are now on my master list. They probably won’t find a lot of votes from other sources, but I’m crossing my fingers that some of these will find their way to one of the increasingly common experimental & short film compilations on DVD. Particularly intriguing is Bruce Conner’s Luke, “A reworking of super-8 footage the filmmaker shot in 1967, Conner’s study of a day on the set of Cool Hand Luke shows cast and crew both in front of and behind the camera.”