December 28, 2004

With the Best, Worst & Most Overlooked films of 2004 about to fill the last three column days of the year and everyone else's Top Ten lists filling our days at Movie City News, I thought I would take a look at how these lists fit into the curve of the year and of the awards season.

We are still fairly early in the process of tallying up the lists. We're about a third of the way to the 204 lists we had last year. Generally, we are a little picky. Not everyone with a website makes it and not everyone with a job at a major paper makes it. There are always a few people who get onto the chart that make me shake my head (hello, Stephen King), but I think that we end up with a qualified, but pretty effective look at the voice of The Critic in America each year.

This is only our third year in existence, so I can only look so far back. But two years ago, the five Best Picture nominees seemed almost perfectly in tune with the taste of the critics… so long as the titles weren't too tasty. Lord of the Rings made a late surge to break into the Top Five, but Far From Heaven, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Talk To Her, About Schmidt and Adaptation were those "shoulda" films that critics loved, but just weren't "Academy films" and the nominations went to "the next five," leaving out the animated Spirited Away.

Last year was a lot more complicated. Four of the five nominees were in the Top Eight, including a run of the Top Three, followed by "shouldas" American Splendor, Finding Nemo, In America and Capturing The Friedmans. Of course, two of these were films from otherwise nominated categories of animation and documentary. But voters reached all the way to the #19 film, Seabiscuit, also leaving out candidates 21 Grams, Kill Bill, V1, City of God, Cold Mountain, Elephant, The Station Agent, House of Sand & Fog, Whale Rider, Fog of War and Spellbound.

The only film left out that seemed to really surprise anyone was Cold Mountain. It's not a surprise that American Splendor, In America, 21 Grams, Elephant, The Station Agent and House of Sand & Fog were all Independent Spirit Award nominees. City of God and Whale Rider were nominated as foreign films, a status which has always made Oscar nominations hard to get at. That leaves Kill Bill, two docs and an animated film as the left out titles. Not much of a surprise there.

So how will Academy voters match up with critics this year?

Well, it looks like the top two critics' films on our chart so far, Sideways and Million Dollar Baby, will make the cut. The third film that is universally expected to get nominated is The Aviator, which currently lives at #6.

Maybe the next 50 charts will end up making major changes in the charts. But as things stand now, none of the favorites of the other two slots are in the critics' top twenty. There are lots of good, high-profile movies to overlook… Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (#3), Maria Full of Grace (#9), Vera Drake (#10), Kinsey (#12), Collateral (#15), The Motorcycle Diaries (#19) and Hotel Rwanda (#20). But if you want to get to the leaders in the fight for the last slots, Finding Neverland is at #23 and Ray is at #25 to date.

The ongoing issue of Fahrenheit 9/11's effort to sneak in to this race is being supported by the critics' lists. The film currently ranks at #11 on the chart, which is not a bad place to be.

Another angle on analyzing the chart is that last year, the lowest ranking film on the Top Ten Scoreboard was on 34 lists… exactly one-sixth of the total number of lists. With that as the standard, there are only fifteen films currently qualified to get a nominations with 11 critics or more listing them so far.

Of course, this can change. Finding Neverland went from virtually nowhere to #23 yesterday on the power of a handful of very high rankings. Maybe Ray, which has 9 votes so far, will come on. But I can tell you, on the next 15 list going up - which will bring the low end count to 13 critics - there is only one vote between the two films… Leah Rozen's vote for Ray.

Statistical analyses, especially based on an incomplete sample, are problematic. (Just as John Kerry.) And I imagine that great films that have been much more seen in urban centers, like Tarantion and the restoration of The Big Red One, will drop out of the Top 20 as lists from mid-America continue to pour in. But I don't expect Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to drop out of the Top Seven and, still, it is probably going to limited to being one of "those" movies.

What does one make of the New Line trio of Maria Full of Grace (#9), Vera Drake (#10) and The Sea Inside (#26)? Why can't they make any of these titles into serious Best Picture contenders? Or Sony Classics, with House of Flying Daggers in the 7 spot, followed by Bad Education in 8th?

If the trend continues and there is this intense connection between the critics and the voters on top of the chart and then a wider chasm between the critics and the voters as you get into those four and five slots, how do you read that? Does it means that the Academy is getting smarter or dumber? Are critics are being too effete or not effete enough?

Is it a coincidence that Searchlight is going to get its first Best Picture nod in years in a year without a contending picture from big Fox? Do indies have a real voice at the Academy, assuming that we don't count Miramax as an indie? On the other hand, what is the message if most of the films nominated (Sideways, Million Dollar Baby, The Aviator, Ray, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Hotel Rwanda all certainly qualify) are films that were made outside of a constrictive studio situation?

It's all too much to ponder on a rainy night in Los Angeles…

E-ME: How do you count your charts?