As Paul rightfully notes, Entertainment Weekly's list of 100 recent classics is an embarrassment to all things cinematic. Not only is Napoleon Dynamite on the list, it's five places higher than In the Mood for Love. In a just world, the EW offices would have burned to the ground in an act of God/s but this is not a just world.
But rather than just gripe, perhaps we should compile our own list. I'd offer the following five, in no real order:
1. Magnolia
2. Unforgiven
3. Talk to Her
4. Children of Men
5. Tarnation
But here's another question: Has the Internet made such lists all the more suspect? They've always been of limited use, although an essential part of the cinematic experience. Even Cahiers found value in them. But in an age when everyone who has an opinion now has a place to get it published in some sense, and in an age when lists proliferate like Tribbles on Viagra, does singling out the best really mean anything any more? What film can't find a home on some best-of list somewhere?
Or perhaps more pointedly: What's the use of a general best-of list like this, or of the term classic? Has the Internet atomized film so much -- as evidenced by clips, fake trailers and the like posted to YouTube, message boards that dissect scenes for flaws in computer graphics, etc. -- that the concept film as a singular entity, as a relatively coherent expression is meaningless? If one wants to put together a list of "best films to do bong hits to" then Children of Men or There Will Be Blood or Russian Ark might not make the cut. In the retarded high school movie category, Napoleon Dynamite is probably a classic.
Film has always been a popular (populist?) art. Has it become such of one that the masterpiece -- the film that most if not all will recognize as sublime achievement -- is an obviated concept?
Just asking.
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I thought that "top ten" or "best of all time lists" had some purpose as guides when I was first getting into film. BFIs lists were essential to deepening my film viewing after I'd already worn through Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema, which is essentially a book length best of list. I think that's one of the reasons why lists like EWs irk me. I fear some younger movie kid just getting into it will take EW as definitive and have his or her viewing tastes circumscribed before they ever had a chance to reach further out.
For myself, these days, I find such lists next to meaningless. I think that's less to do with the atomization of film criticism across the web than my ever growing understanding of just how many movies are out there in circulation at anyone time in festivals around the world and which never get seen in the united states. I don't know how anyone could feel they were doing anything of value in compiling an end of the year or end of the decade list if they've been feeding themselves only on what's on screen at either the local multiplex or art house. All you end up doing is compiling a list of the top films that you've seen over any one period. So the list says more about the list maker than anything at all about our moment in film culture, which precisely what these lists are always pitched as.
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