From the daily archives:

Sunday, January 3, 2010

My 2009 List of Lists

by James McNally on January 3, 2010 · 2 comments

in Lists

I’ve been avoiding making any year-end “Best of 2009″ list and have been waiting for the flood of other people’s lists to pass me by, but now, goaded by TSS co-founder and now-just-occasional con­trib­utor Jay Kerr, I’ve decided to draw atten­tion to some of the best films I saw in 2009 in my own unique way. No simple Top Ten for me. No way. I’m far too afraid of get­ting the order wrong, and besides, I’m not a pro­fes­sional film critic. I don’t see most of the major releases. In fact, if I don’t want to see a cer­tain film, I don’t see it. And if I see it and don’t feel like reviewing it, I don’t review it. So I’m not really qual­i­fied to come up with a com­pre­hensive list. Instead, enjoy a whole bunch of non-ranked lists from my filmgoing exper­i­ences of 2009. Films marked with an * actu­ally appeared on my 2008 list as well.

P.S. I also get con­fused as to which films are actu­ally eli­gible for these lists. Some films I saw in 2009 haven’t been released the­at­ric­ally yet, while others that were released the­at­ric­ally I actu­ally saw in 2008 or before. And some­times things that come out in the US have dif­ferent release dates in Canada, or vice versa. It makes my head hurt.

Favourite Documentary Films of 2009

Favourites from TIFF 2009

Favourite Non-Festival Films from 2009

Favourite Films from 2008 That Are Appearing on a Lot of 2009 Lists

Favourite Undistributed Films of 2009 (no known dis­tri­bu­tion in US or Canada)

Perhaps this next list is most important, because it tells you that I’m far from qual­i­fied to judge 2009’s best films when I haven’t seen many which are being con­sidered for awards and are on other critics’ lists.

Biggest Omissions in My Filmgoing in 2009

Tagged as: 2009faves

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