From: Sam Hallgren
To: Adam Kempenaar; Eric Baker
Subject: The Best
Having fairly exhausted the subject of "8 Mile," which has proven to be a great first subject of our nascent movie club, I want to raise another subject with you guys. It was one of Eric's comments that got me thinking: that he doesn't rush out to see movies on the opening night. It got me thinking about my favorite movies of the year (which really has nothing to do with expectations or Eric's original comment). Since this past year's Oscars, I've been keeping a running tally of the films (released this year) that I've seen, and trying to keep them in a top-10 format. I've never done this before, and the more time that passes between the films I saw earlier in the year and the films I've seen recently, the more arbitrary my list seems. In order to be fair, I feel like I should see at least my top ten films all over again. Was "Roger Dodger" better than "The Dancer Upstairs" or "Punch Drunk Love"? Why was it better than "The Bourne Identity," which I enjoyed so much (and which is currently sitting at #5)? And what does it say about me that, of the two films I saw this weekend that were released in 2002 ("8 Mile" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"), I actually enjoyed myself more in the latter, but ranked the former three places higher (a fact I could easily, and without hypocrisy, defend)? The best explanation I've heard describing the logic that goes into creating top-ten lists was written by Salon film contributor Andrew O'Hehir. When he assembles his year-end ten-best list, he asks himself which movies would he most want to see again. He used this reasoning to defend his omission last year of "In the Bedroom" from his top-ten. I love this explanation. It may have flaws, but I have yet to hear a better one. There are 21 movies on my list. Eight of them I consider worth seeing again. I expect to see several more Oscar-eligible films before the end of February, more than enough to fill out my own top-ten. You have both assembled your own top-10 lists. Any insight on how you went about it?
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