News

Jan. 28
Lambasting the critics: Why most top 10 movie lists are just a big, sloppy kiss to studio -- and Oscar -- hype.

By Christopher Kelly
Star-Telegram Film Critic
Around the middle of December each year, I begin scouring the newsstands and surfing the Web a bit more often than usual. The reason? It's top-10-list season -- and I can't wait to find out which films my movie critic colleagues are going to cite as the year's best. Will I agree with them? Will I think they've lost their marbles? Will I learn of a movie or two that might have slipped beneath my radar?
In the past few years, however, my annual ritual has started to lose some of its charm. The lists all look the same. A widespread laziness seems to be infecting the trade -- wherein the Hollywood studios tell critics which movies they should consider important, and the critics respond by saying, "Yes, those movies are important." The quirky vitality of our film culture -- the mixture of high and low art, the fact that one man's Citizen Kane can be another man's Howard the Duck -- is starting to seem, well, a lot less vital.
Take a look at the top 10 lists of some of the nation's so-called top critics. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone is so bold as to declare a tie for best movie . . . between Crouching Tiger and Almost Famous ; (Gladiator and Traffic have to settle for second and third place, respectively). Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter starts his list with, yup, Crouching Tiger, Almost Famous, and Traffic (Gladiator has to settle for No. 6). Richard Roeper, Roger Ebert's new partner, gives us Crouching Tiger (No. 1), Traffic (No. 2), and Almost Famous (No. 10). Philip Wuntch, my competition at the Dallas Morning News (you know, the guy who seems to like every movie I hate), manages to squeeze in Crouching Tiger, Traffic, Cast Away, Almost Famous, and Wonder Boys in his top 5 alone.
Here's my question: Do we have a group of robots reviewing movies in America? Because, honestly, I don't see how anyone but a robot could respond with such equanimity to the movies everyone has liked. Forget offbeat titles, or even guilty pleasures; the middlebrow epic Sunshine is about as edgy a selection as you'll find here.
But wait a minute, you are no doubt saying: Aren't Traffic, Almost Famous, Gladiator, Crouching Tiger and these other titles good films? Isn't that why they appeared on so many top 10 lists? Well, perhaps. But that's not my point. The thing is: an entire list of 10 such studio-hyped, universally embraced films tells me nothing I probably don't already know; it certainly doesn't direct me to a movie I might not have heard of or haven't already seen.
A list of consensus choices implies, well, consensus -- compromise, a watered-down approach, no strong opinions. Might these critics simply have liked 10 particularly obvious and perfectly respectable movies more than any others? Sure. But if that's the case, it probably means they don't have very interesting tastes. And that they're failing at one of the most important parts of their jobs. When done right, top 10 lists should be about beginning a conversation -- one that will continue for many years, as long as there are revival houses, college film courses and cable television movie channels -- by which a film's reputation is shaped and defined. In the hands of too many practitioners, however, top 10 lists have become another meaningless part of the studio Oscar campaigns.
There are, of course, exceptions. Take a look at Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman's list: In the top two places are films I pretty much despised, Chuck & Buck and Requiem for a Dream. Further on there is an underappreciated gem (Bamboozled ), a documentary that too few filmgoers saw (The Filth and the Fury ), a handful of predictable choices (Traffic, Almost Famous, Before Night Falls ) and one utterly mystifying pick (What Lies Beneath -- my choice for the year's worst film).
In short, it's an eccentric, eclectic group of movies -- and a list that makes you rethink some of your own responses to the films at hand. Reading Gleiberman's take on Chuck & Buck, I wonder if maybe I should give it a second chance. His case for Requiem, however, only emboldens my negative feelings toward the film. But the point is this: Gleiberman's list gets me thinking and talking and reacting. It reminds me of how much fun I have when I go to the movies -- which is exactly what I want from all film criticism.
So why don't we see more lists like Gleiberman's? Or like the one from Slate 's David Edelstein, which includes only eight films (he felt he hadn't seen 10 excellent films), one of which is the critically reviled mobster comedy Gun Shy? Or the one from Elvis Mitchell, my predecessor at the Star-Telegram, now at The New York Times, which includes three movies few people have even heard of -- the jazz documentary Calle 54, the Australian love story Praise, and the Welsh coming-of-age drama Ratcatcher ?
Well, let's consider the laziness factor -- the undeniable fact that people like the idea of being critics but don't necessarily like the effort it sometimes takes to do the job right. At the only area press screening for The House of Mirth in late November, there were probably about six other critics in the theater -- which leads me to wonder, where were the other 40 members of the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association? (It follows that the film didn't fare too well in our annual critics' awards voting.) Were they turned off by the length (140 minutes)? The reputation of Terence Davies as a demanding filmmaker? That there were three other screenings scheduled later that day?
Of course, many critics simply don't feel the need to make an effort -- not when the Hollywood studios are dictating to them which movies matter. In November, a publicist at Artisan called me, asking if there was a possibility that Requiem for a Dream might appear on my top 10 list. I said probably not, but asked her to send me a videocassette of The Way of the Gun -- an Artisan release I missed in theaters, but which I'd heard interesting things about. She said she would look into it.
The video never arrived -- probably because Artisan wasn't going to be making an Oscar push for the film, and didn't particularly care if it landed on my top 10 list. A similar thing happened with DreamWorks, which in November sent me a collection of its major 2000 releases on video. "For your consideration for top 10 lists," read the note attached. Almost Famous, Chicken Run, The Contender and a handful of other titles were included in the package; not surprisingly, however, my favorite DreamWorks film from 2000 -- the lowbrow comedy Road Trip -- was nowhere to be seen.
Perhaps this lemming mindset isn't a new problem. But it certainly feels like it is. I wasn't the greatest fan of the criticism of the late Gene Siskel, but the man certainly knew how to be a champion for unsung films. The No. 1 film on his 1992 list, the noir thriller One False Move, probably would have died a straight-to-video death if not for his and Roger Ebert's efforts in talking it up on their show. In 1998, he boldly chose Babe: Pig in the City, a widely panned box-office turkey, as the best film of the year.
This year we needed more of Siskel's brand of advocacy. The supportive reviews director David Gordon Green received from New York critics for his experimental film George Washington were an encouraging sign. And the alternative press critics could once again be counted on to point viewers in the direction of offbeat foreign fare like Beau Travail and Pola X. But for the most part, the laziness feels like it's becoming institutionalized; the critics aren't challenging one another, either.
Consider the proliferation of film critics groups in recent years, and the annual awards they hand out. About 10 years ago, there were only three major critics groups -- the New York and Los Angeles Film Critics Associations, and the National Society of Film Critics. But gradually critics in various cities organized -- Boston, Toronto, Fort Worth-Dallas -- and decided they wanted in the game, too.
In theory, this sounds like a terrific idea -- the more accolades distributed, the more interesting films that can be championed. In practice, well . . . all of the critics' awards become meaningless facsimiles of each other. In this year's judging, Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich ) and Laura Linney (You Can Count on Me) win the best actress prizes, Crouching Tiger, Traffic and Almost Famous are the most oft-cited best pictures. In the ultimate act of monkey-see, monkey-do, Steven Soderbergh has, so far, picked up 12 best director critics' awards for his work on both Erin Brockovich and Traffic.
Again, is this what the American moviegoing public needs -- endless accolades that have the effect of telling us what we already know? Some critics would argue that they are making bold choices here -- especially in the case of championing box-office flops such as Wonder Boys or Almost Famous. But it's interesting how critics rally around box-office flops that will be supported by expensive studio Oscar campaigns. Movies such as Ratcatcher or the French drama Human Resources, for instance, or performances like Kathrine Narducci's in Two Family House, were equally well-reviewed and underseen. But no one was bestowing awards on them. Probably because there was no Oscar buzz for these films -- no Entertainment Weekly or Variety telling critics to pay close attention. The thinking goes: Why waste your vote on a movie that no one else cares about?
There was one notable stand-out this year. The National Society of Film Critics selected Edward Yang's Yi Yi as its best picture; it's a choice that actually means something, too, because the distributor is now likely to expand the release of this complex and richly imagined film beyond New York and Los Angeles. But here's one instance out of more than a dozen groups. For everyone else, the Oscar tail keeps on wagging the movie critic dog.
Why does any of this matter? Because film criticism is about advocacy -- championing the underdogs, questioning the status quo, embracing the diversity and complexity of all the films that are out there. The Oscar folks are in the business of celebrating -- and selling -- safe and mainstream movies. And it goes without saying that some of the works that have proved most influential in recent years -- Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, Todd Haynes' Safe, David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, Mike Leigh's Naked -- are ones Oscar wouldn't have touched with a 10-foot pole.
I'm sure some critics would defend themselves by saying that, in our media-saturated world, everything gets covered. In response, I'd point to the reception of James Gray's The Yards. This flawed, but hugely ambitious thriller was pretty much abandoned by Miramax; Gray told the Los Angeles Times the studio considered the film too downbeat for audiences and Oscar voters.
I'd like to think that in years past, some top 10 lists would have given The Yards a second chance. Maybe a critic or two would have noted that, despite its problems, the film -- following Gray's superb debut Little Odessa -- suggests we have on our hands an important young director working out fascinating themes of family and betrayal in his films.
This year, however, we'll have to settle for The Yards landing at video stores, where it's likely to collect dust. Meanwhile, we'll be treating ourselves to an Oscar showdown between, yup, Gladiator, Crouching Tiger and Traffic.
I'm not sure who the winner will be. But the loser is pretty much anyone still foolish enough to think movie critics can have something important to tell us.