Critical Confessions: Part 19 – Top Ten-tative

I’ve been thinking a lot about the end of 2009. It comes with the career territory. In a scant two weeks, the movie year will be officially over, all high profile titles screened and tucked away for the long winter’s nap between release and Best-of reverie (or lack thereof). All the important DVDs will be in your local brick and mortar, hoping to coerce a little additional cash into their coffers. Everyone, from legitimate press heads to basic bloggers will have their own opinions on what ten (or twenty, or fifty) films meet the final tabulation of determined excellence, and with said statements, the arguments will start all over again – mainstream vs. arthouse, trendy indie vs. good old reliable Tinseltown tripe.

But 2009 is also different in two additionally significant ways. First, Oscar has decided to widen the berth for potential nominees, allowing ten Best Picture candidates for the first time since Jolson went talkie. Instead of the standard five, the Academy wants to double your pleasure – and directly, the possible TV ratings – by giving more titles a fighting chance. While this raises a whole series of questions that will be dealt with in a moment, it’s the second circumstance that it even more concerning. 2009 marks the end of the decade, the first ten years of the 21st century. As a result, along with the yearly Best-Of, everyone is also offering their own 120 month wrap-up…and therein lies the bigger problem.

For me, classicism is all about time. We don’t look back at films like The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane, or Casablanca because they walked away with a boatload of accolades come 50, 60, or 70 years ago. We don’t celebrate the Golden Era of Hollywood because it resulted in so many positive artform judgments. Film stands as a symbol, a reflection of time, place, temperament, focus, interest, perspective, and in some cases, an undeniable fluke. And with the passage of time, comes a greater appreciation – and a label of legitimacy. Want proof? Look at the list of Best Picture winners since 2000 and imagine how many will be championed come 2070:

2000 – American Beauty

2001 – Gladiator

2002 – A Beautiful Mind

2003 – Chicago

2004 – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

2005 – Million Dollar Baby

2006 – Crash

2007 – The Departed

2008 – No Country for Old Men

2009 – Slumdog Millionaire

Clearly, this decade started out crappy. While I can defend American Beauty forever, the next three films for me represent the worst kind of studio crafted mediocrity. I can’t see anyone looking at this trio and feeling that, somehow, it represented the best of what the artform has to offer. Now granted, they didn’t beat out any underappreciated classics (a look at the list of 15 nominees for 2001 – 2003 finds slim pickings, to say the least), but as usual, Oscar is about 1000 light years away from accurately reflecting what many consider to be “the best.”

For example, in my opinion, the best film of 2004 may have been Pixar’s The Incredibles, or Ondi Timoner’s brilliant rock doc DiG! . In 2006, I was all about The Prestige. Last year, it was an almost virtual tie between the amazing Let the Right One In and the horribly misunderstood Revolutionary Road. I am by no means a contrarian, but I tend to go with my heart and not my head. I preferred Tim Burton’s take on Sweeney Todd to the Coen’s masterful No Country (if only by a hair), and there are numerous titles I’ve taken on – The Fountain, Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, Zack and Miri Make a Porno – much to the deference of my long suffering credibility.

This year, with the added emphasis on keeping an open mind – what else would adding five more films to the Best Picture consideration mean, when you think about it…aside from the obvious dollar signs involved in tagging your DVD/Blu-ray “2010 Oscar Nominee” – things are much, much worse. While some will argue that 2009 was a great year, I tend to disagree. Looking over the 210 theatrical releases I’ve seen (and this week I will see 12 more), there’s been very few reasons to celebrate. You know you’re in awards season trouble when Star Trek continues to haunt your Top Ten – albeit for reasons I can totally and completely justify (Hell, it’s better than Nine).

True, I haven’t finalized anything, and a recent bout with the standard End-of-the-Year screener pile has produced two gems – Werner Herzog’s The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans, and The Coens latest, A Serious Man. Still, I can guarantee that when I cast my ballot for the first of what will be five group/site/association lists, I will be favoring the recent without remembering what was great about something shown eight months ago. I’ll do what all critics do best – turn my opinion, my flat out flawed judgment about something I’ve seen – and turn it into a testament, a gospel of sorts supporting by nothing more than my love of film and my years immersed in said artform.

But as I go back and look at my selections from past years, I can help but feel there’s been padding – the same kind of pointless additions that Oscar will be offering in less than two months. In a year where I can justify almost anything – from Peter Jackson’s brilliant The Lovely Bones to Lars Van Trier’s uber-audacious Antichrist, I fear Hollywood harkening back to the days when the studio bosses ran everything. Ten nominees gives outside hopefuls like The Blind Side or even New Moon, a shot at getting some ‘one hand washes the other’ payback. Heck, Disney has been pimping Betty White as a Best Supporting Actress candidate for a fart of a performance in the totally forgettable RomCom The Proposal. Now tell me this isn’t part of some “Alan Arkin is dying” determination to get an aging actor some props.

That’s my overall problem with any kind of Top Ten. By the time you get down to eight or nine, you’re dealing with the dregs – the best kind of dregs, but the dregs just the same. While the winner beats out nine others, thus making it look like a more “important” victory, the losers are left wondering where they fit into the mix. Sure, it was the same when it was five, but the bigger the number, the bigger the discrepancy. I’m sure once the weekend arrives, once Sherlock Holmes is deduced and The Princess and the Frog unfurled, once I get through Moon and The White Ribbon and The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, I will be more settled. Still, unlike most years, I’m a lot more Top Ten-tative this time around.