Roger Ebert has come out with his annual Top Ten List of films released in the past 12 months and it's David Fincher's Facebook creation movie The Social Network that holds the number one slot. For as long as I can remember, Ebert has been my favourite film critic and every Friday I religiously read all his reviews and even when we don't see eye to eye about a film, I always understand where is coming from. For example, we have been well known to disagree on whether we like or dislike a film based on the same criteria! This year however I have a feeling my personal list won't be a million miles away from his;
1. The Social Network 2. The Kings Speech 3. Black Swan 4. I Am Love 5. Winters Bone 6. Inception 7. The Secret in Their Eyes 8. The American 9. The Kids Are All Right 10. The Ghost Writer
I just wish the bloody UK would hurry up and get around to screening Black Swan, The King's Speech, The Fighter and True Grit so I can scribe my own top ten... Love the inclusion of The American and The Ghost Writer, two movies I have fallen in love with this year. However Ebert does later say we shouldn't read to much into his ordering, as he was forced by user comments to rank the films in order of preference, rather than his usual alphabetical ordering...
David Fincher's "The Social Network" is emerging as the consensus choice as best film of 2010. Most of the critics' groups have sanctified it, and after its initial impact it has only grown it stature. I think it is an early observer of a trend in our society, where we have learned new ways of thinking of ourselves: As members of a demographic group, as part of a database, as figures in...a social network. In response to the reader protests of recent years, I've returned to the time-honored tradition of ten films arranged in order from one to ten. After that, it's all alphabetical. The notion of objectively ordering works of art seems bizarre to me.