Lists

The top ten films of all time? The best films? The most popular films? The films you watch over and over again? How do you make those determinations? When people ask my favorite films, despite the fact that I consider myself something of a film buff, and I've seen a lot of movies and spent plenty of time seeking out classics, and I can name both American directors who wore eyepatches, and I really do think Citizen Kane is amazing, I am reluctant to offer an answer. It would take a lot of time to compose a list of my "favorite" films. What do I recommend? It depends on you. If you've seen a lot of movies, including the complete Ozu, I might suggest something different than if you've never even seen The Wizard of Oz.

Roger Ebert has his own take on lists:

Long-suffering readers will have read many times about my dislike of lists, especially lists of the best or worst movies in this or that category. For years they had value only in the minds of feature editors fretting that their movie critics had too much free time. ("For Thursday's food section, can you list the 10 funniest movies about pumpkin pie?") Now their value has shot way up with the use of slide shows, a diabolical time-waster designed to boost a web site's page visits.

I'm with him there. Lord, save us from slide shows! I've seldom made it to the end of one, even if I like the content, because I don't want to reward the greed of the webmaster who wants to artificially increase the number of "eyeballs." I mean, really. If Grinwout's touts a slideshow, it is an unusual event (and more often than not, slides on a page rather than multiple pages). I just don't like playing their silly game.

Ebert's remarks are from The best damned film list of them all, which is a good starting point for the business at hand, the top ten movies of all time. Sight & Sound publishes this list every decade, and Ebert is about to embark on submitting his picks for the 2012 list. He talks about the whys and wherefores, and that's interesting enough. But then you can go to S&S and take a look at all the different lists from 2002. This is the sort of thing to do with a group, because it will give you something to fight about.