My Top Ten List:

http://www.iSteve.com/05JanB.htm#top.ten.films

I spend far less time worrying over my Top Ten lists than most film critics because, unlike most critics, I'm not convinced that you should listen to me because I have better taste than you do. Instead, I write film reviews because the studio marketing departments do a tremendous job in focusing public attention for a week or two, and any movie raises issues of interest, upon which, if I put in some hard work, I can be informative and interesting.

For example, my upcoming review in The American Conservative of Hotel Rwanda will the be the first thing I've ever seen that explains the true nature of the Tutsis and Hutus. They aren't exactly tribes or races or ethnicities or classes, so you read a lot of nonsense about them.

Anyway, for whatever it's worth, here's my list:

1. The Passion of the Christ
2. Hero
3. The Incredibles
4. The Aviator
5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
6. Bright Young Things
7. Sideways
8. Spring, Summer, Fall Winter ... Spring
9. The Motorcycle Diaries
10. The Battle of Algiers (timely re-release)

Runners-Up: Ocean's 12, Hotel Rwanda, A Day Without a Mexican, Fahrenheit 9/11

Worst film of the year: Spike Lee's She Hate Me.

Notes: I never found that much to say about Sideways: it's a nice little picture, but the fact that so many critics have it at the top of their lists says a lot about what a weak year it was overall. It was an especially weak year if, like most critics, your irrelevant prejudices and hatreds prevented you from acknowledging the roll-the-dice-death-or-glory artistic knockout punch of the year, The Passion.

I think the most overlooked movie of the year had to have been Bright Young Things, English national resource Stephen Fry's directorial debut in a wonderfully entertaining version of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies.

Steve Sailer's homepage and blog is iSteve.com