ARGH! I was happy with Roeper's Worst of list until I saw "Saw". :evil:

35 THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
21 1

Its doing better than i thought.

ESOTSM and sideways are neck and neck.

The only thing I don't really like about Engin's site is that they dont pay attention to how they rank on the lists, so if a movie appears on 50 lists at #1 on all them (wouldn't that be a critical smash ) and another film appears on the exact same lists, but at #10 on all of them, they'd still rank the same on his charts.

Which is why I prefer OscarRace's chart(Same critics' lists):

http://www.oscarrace.com/crit04.htm

Top 10:
1. Sideways
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Million Dollar Baby (!)
4. Before Sunset
5. The Aviator
6. The Incredibles
7. Kinsey
8. Dogville
9. Kill Bill vol. 2
10. Hero


It's nice to see Dogville at least getting recognition form critics, I thought maybe even they would forget about it by the end of the year. Sideways and Eternal Sunshine have pulled in way ahead of the rest of the films already, so it doesn't seem like they will be leaving the top 2 spots.

David Poland's Best Films of 2004:

1. Born Into Brothels
2. Sideways
3. The Five Obstructions
4. The Motorcycle Diaries
5. Bad Education
6. Million Dollar Baby
7. The Polar Express - IMAX 3D
8. Hero
9. The Bourne Supremacy
10. The Incredibles
11. Twist of Faith
12. Kinsey
13. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
14. Tarnation
15. The Sea Inside
16. The House of Flying Daggers
17. Dodgeball
18. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
19. Dogville
20. The Door in the Floor

Honorable Mentions: America's Heart & Soul, The Aviator, Bukowski: Born Into This, Dawn of the Dead, Hellboy, Home on the Range, I'm Not Scared, Intermission, Man on Fire, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Ocean's Twelve, Soul Plane, The Terminal, Vera Drake

Soulplane? Dodgeball? :evil:

Hey there,

I don't pay attention to the rankings on the lists mainly because not every critic ranks their choices. If you look at the lists, you'll see that a good number of them just list the films alphabetically. You'll never get an actual representation when you apply the points system in this case because you'll be giving, say, 5 points to all films on unranked lists whereas the ranked ones will go from 10 points (to the #1 pick) to 1 point (#10). Obviously, it wouldn't play on a fair ground.

I don't think assigning points to the rankings do justice to the picks of the critics, actually. I can never know if Critic X thinks his #2 pick is indeed 1 point away from his #3 pick. If they had graded the lists, it would be okay.

What matters at the end is that they like a film enough to list it. I provide the number of #1 picks to show how many of them thought a film was the best of the year.. because that's another thing that matters. The difference between the 7th best of the year and 9th best of the year isn't that much, really. You'll see when it's over that sid's list (oscarrace.com) and mine will look almost identical.

That said, I've been meaning to register here for a while to thank you all for following and supporting the site. It really means a lot that people are enjoying it all.. Thank you so very much.

I still think the site is great, and love and I especially like going through all the individual lists there, so great job.

Just personal preference I guess for the reason listed in my post.

But hey if my comments got you to register... :wink:

YES!


And yes to all other rankings of Incredibles and SM2, as well as The Passion.

Wow. I didn't realize it was the creator or manager of the tcritics lists site posting until I was almost done with it.

First off that signature pic is awesome!!!
Second, I love your site. It is the bomb. I was waiting a month for you to put it up, but it was worth the wait. Congrats to all the work!

And I am more inclined to agree to your argument.

I actually can't talk much, I'm in Vegas now and I'll b back home in time for ALIAS on Wednesday

Hope you keep on posting here!

Engin, glad to see you posting here!

Some shifts at the top, as The Aviator rises to the No. 3 spot, and Before Sunset drops to No. 5. Finding Neverland has re-surfaced and is on the doorstep of the top 10. Hotel Rwanda continues to rise, while Maria Full of Grace has become the top foreign movie of the year. Ray is fading big time in my opinion, and I'd even place it after Eternal Sunshine now in the best picture race.

Great to see you here, Engin!


Personally, I think that Hotel Rwanda is ahead of Eternal Sunshine and Finding Neverland in its chances to get nominated.

Thanks all

I too think that "Eternal Sunshine" and "Hotel Rwanda" are looking good for a best picture nomination.

The latter's situation reminds me of "The Pianist"s, actually. That film, which shares a similar subject matter, also didn't take off until early January. The Academy likes important films and, the way I see it, there hasn't been a more 'important' film released in 2004 than "Hotel Rwanda".

I wouldn't say "Ray" is slipping though. That it still maintains it's spot shows that it has the support. It's campaign is pretty fabulous too. They gave the film it's own unique identity, positioning it as a film that 'matters'. The Academy members like stuff like that.

A bunch of people are underestimating Ray's chances in this thread. Personally, I think it has a greater chance of being nominated than Hotel Rwanda, Eternal Sunshine, or even Million Dollar Baby.

Ray has a much higher box office than any of those films ($71 million), and if you take notice of previous years, movies with high box office and above-average mainstream reception always gets nominated over low box office with really high critical acclaim. And each year since 1997, at least three of the nominated movies grossed over $57 million. (2003 had 4, 2000 had 5, 1999 had 4, 1997 had 4). Of all the potential Oscar movies to gross (or potentially gross) over $55 million, Ray has to be in the top three.

Also, I think a lot of you putting down Ray's chances haven't actually seen the movie and are just trusting some of the critical pans. But it has the most Academy-friendly elements of any movie this year, which ironically is the same formulaic cliches that critics are railing against in their reviews. But it's not too critically derided either, as it made #20 on the Engin's Critics list, which fulfills the requisite that a best picture nominee has to be in the critic's top 20 in order to make the cut.

Most importantly, it has the strong Universal marketing push, which drove the sucessful campaigns of Seabiscuit and A Beautiful Mind in previous years. People following the Oscar race have especially noted that Universal's campaign for Ray's campaign is all over the place and has the classiest and best-produced For Your Consideration advertisements.

For all these reasons above, Ray is a very strong contender in making the cut, at least over the alternative films being predicted.

Ebert and Roeper had their top 10 list show last weekend. They already revealed the lists online a few weeks back, but it's interesting to hear them on TV. Here is the link: http://tvplex.go.com/buenavista/ebertandroeper/today.html.

Wow, I never thought I'd say this, but I like Roeper's list a lot more than Eberts.

PEACE, Mike

Another update.

Hotel Rwanda works its way up into the TOP 10. I expect it to crack it in a few weeks.

The results now are probably close now to what the final results will be. 545 critics lists have been collected this year, while last year, 514 were in a final total. I don't think there'll be many more now this year (if anymore at all) now that were up to 545 already, unless a lot of new lists were found again this year.

PEACE, Mike

Probably not count as a critic, but Nathaniel runs one of my favorite sites, http://www.thefilmexperience.net, and he has put up his top 10 list:

http://www.thefilmexperience.net/Awards ... view3.html

Awesome list, except I don't think Spider-Man 2 should be that high on any list and The Incredibles shouldn't be there.

I mean I really don't get the Incredibles. I'm really thinking of sneaking into it and watching it again to make sure I didn't see the wrong movie. After the first 20 minutes it turns into such a generic slice of animation I found it to be the opposite of what everyone is saying: ground-breaking. Just because we're dealing with a "family" and "retirement" from superhero action, it's as good as other amazing dramas?
I agree I really loved how it started and how the father kept going out at nights when he was supposed to be retired. I loved the husband-wife dynamic from their first meet, but after some point, around when the dad got captured it went DOWNNNN hill.
I will see it again though.

I forgot to post what I originally was gonna say :wink: ...

I think the lists will actually rise up to about 575, but we'll see.

I am very happy with the list, thoroughly satisfied with every single film (except the Incredibles).
I'm very happy to see Before sunset passing The Incredibles.

Though I considered it a masterpiece and with KBill, the best movie of the year, I am still completely floored with the critical reaction to Before Sunset... 37 #1's??? I mean that is just astonishing for such a SMALLLL film. I mean a REALLLLLY small film. More than half the people I know, (more like 75%+ of them) haven't even heard about much less seen it far less think it one of the best this year.

I think this has been one of the most peaceful and most enjoyable Oscar seasons with so many great films and alot of people who love love them all.

5 out of the top 7 are in my Top 7 Best of the Year. And 15/20 are in my top 20.

Just noticed that on the bottom left on the page, Engin created a new link to World of KJ.

http://www.geninn.net/critics/2004/index.htm

ya I noticed that last week, but I've been waiting for some updates because in the paper, for the past 3 days Million Dollar Baby has been advertising it's "On over 200 Top 10 Lists" which means there must have been a huge gain or they are counting wrong or they are counting unimportant or unregistered critics.

We can send in our own top 10 lists?

Nice site, Engin. Thanks for the link. It's nice to see us among the other big sites we all know of (Movie City News, Oscarwatch, etc).

I just noticed that Sideways and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are neck-and-neck in terms of #1 placements, 74-73 \:D/ :wink: