There is no more personal act in the contemporary society than compiling a Best Of List. Since Congress decreed that people could no longer have personalities and substituted cultural pastiche for humanity, the choices we make in terms of what we put on our year end best lists has said everything about who we are and more importantly, whom we'd like people to think we are.

However, in our best of the year lists, we find ourselves so constricted; so many times ending up with the same ten movies or Mad Men episodes or Arcade Fire songs as everyone else. But in a best of the entire decade, our spirits truly have room to romp and play and reveal their golden shades within.

And for critics, this is the time to throw down the fire hose and say, this is who I really am. This is me, people!

Let's look then at some of the early entries in the Best of the Decade Derby and see what they say about the listmakers behind them.

• The Furrowed Brow: Many of the 00's are very heavy on turgid, dark dramas. Much like the times, would say the critics, who above all, want you to know they are thinking turgid, dark, serious thoughts in such turgid, dark, serious times. Rolling Stone's Peter Travers for instance offers a list guaranteed to make anyone take their own lives if they try to watch the list films straight through, featuring such laugh riots as There Will Be Blood, Children of Men, A History of Violence, No Country for Old Men, Brokeback Mountain, The Departed and Mystic River. Sounds like somebody needed a teddy bear this decade...
• When the Moon is in the House of Quirk: Whimsical goofiness was the theme for much of the world's intelligensia through most of the 00's; childlike wonder drawing on the looks and sounds of the 70's and 80's, the times of the artists' precious youth. Many lists are run heavy on the quirky side of the ledger, demonstrating the critics' refusal to dress like uptight smallminded Middle American people, thereby proving in contrast that the critic who likes quirk possess both intelligence and a depth of spirit unknown to non-quirky people. The Paste list heavily represents the decade's great moments in Quirk, including The Royal Tannenbaums, Amelie, Lost In Translation and Eternal Sunshine all in their top ten. Few quirk-centric critics had the courage to put their true spiritual leader, Napoleon Dynamite, on their list, but his spirit runs strong throughout them all.
• I Came To Play: Some critics shun the heavy Oscar-bait dramas that makes up so much of our prestige listing in favor of genre films. Cinematical's Jessica Barnes even breaks her list down by genre, giving the best of the horror, action and superhero genres, showing her adventurousness by giving the much-underseen and truly terrifying The Descent her top horror slot.
• A Man's Critic: The Times of London's Top 100 list demonstrates that these critics are guys' guys, who love to see movies about guys or watch intense, unnerving guy-friendly subjects. Their #1 pick, is Michael Haneke's unnerving Cache, something only an intense guy critic could handle. The rest of their top ten includes such a guycopia of titles about guys in extremis including Grizzly Man, No Country for Old Men, The Bourne films, Casino Royale, Team America and Hunger. (Somehow The Queen slipped in there too, but what real guy doesn't get weepy for HRM?)
• The Geek Flag: An end of the decade list is also a time to prove how much better you know your film than anyone else around could ever dream. The Onion's AV Club for instance, is heavy on the overlooked (25th Hour, The New World, Time Out) and the condemned (A.I) .

But there's still weeks left to the decade, and plenty of time for people to reshape their entire identity with the liste juste that makes the world see them in a whole new light.

While the evidence has mounted that Avatar will turn out to be a laughably earnest ham-handed quasi-environmental parable, there remains the question of how much the big pretty forest canvas 3D images and lots of shooting and fighting could drown ridiculous plotting, characterization and dialogue. Well, not that Cameron ever had anything to worry about but judging by the first rapturous reports from the UK, he really has nothing to worry about and the power of his effects will roll easily over whatever opposition there may be.

The world's first full review of Avatar, breaking the official embargo, comes from an anonymous writer calling himself "The Sneak" in The Sun. The review reads like a fanboy write-up on ainitcoolnews, and gushes

It's a 3D movie people will look back on in years to come to comment on how it transformed cinema.

In recent 3D releases such as Beowulf, the effects were impressive but the computer-generated humans looked far from real.

In Avatar, everything feels real - and it's as if you are immersed in the action.

And what action.

The final battle scene is 20 minutes long and absolutely mind-blowing.

Avatar, out next Thursday, is truly an event movie.

As he the review goes on, however, his praise contains many hidden warnings for those not as enamored of Cameronia. A twenty minute battle sequence..."A voiceover from Sam leads the audience through the alien world in a soothing, laid-back way"... an old-fashioned tale of good versus evil. It's unashamedly populist. Just like Titanic."

In Cameron/fan boy'ese, unashamedly populist = we can make the plot as heavy-handed and laughable as we like, because only snooty PhD's care about craftsmanship and competence in those people are talking parts.

However, writing with a somewhat cooler head, The Guardian, while not formally breaking the embargo, files an article, not a review, in which it reports that people present at the screening did not consider it a disaster. They write:

The film does not make you feel sick and it is not a disaster. All journalists watching the movie in Fox's Soho headquarters had to sign a form agreeing not to publish a review or even express a professional opinion online or in print before Monday.

So by saying Avatar was really much, much better than expected, that it looked amazing and that the story was gripping – if cheesy in many places – the Guardian is in technical breach of the agreement. It is not a breach, however, to report that other journalists leaving the screening were also positive: the terrible film that some had been anticipating had not materialised. It was good.

There is, though, a certain amount of suspension of disbelief needed when watching Avatar. Cynics might sneer at the plot. The film, set in 2154, revolves around a paraplegic marine assigned to a planet where brutish humans are forcing the natives from their homes to mine a precious mineral, unobtanium, which is the only thing that will keep Earth going.

So again, not that the reviews mattered, but at least, from Cameron's side, he now can have a sense that laughability index won't be at movie-killing AI levels. And who knows, maybe Cameron will pull the biggest surprise of all and deliver a sensitive and nuanced drama underneath all the pyrotechnics.

But sensitive or not, what there is certain to be in Avatar is a lot more of it. The Guardian quotes Cameron promising "I have a story worked out for a second film and a third film." Let's just hope he had a story worked out for the first one.

With a 13 score on Metacritic, shooting at the very last minute past The Ugly Truth's 29 rating, All About Steve has made entertainment history, taking the title as Worst Film of the Summer of 2009.

It's amazing that after a summer like this, critics have any bile left to hurl, but our brave critical establishment, even in this last mile, has risen to the challenge of honoring this Gladiator of Awful.

Below are some of the frothing-at-the-mouth hi-lights.

Rolling Stone's Peter Travers was so broken by the experience of Steve that he could only manage to get out three sentences in his review, reprinted here in its entirety:

I don't have much to say about this unwatchable, unbearably unfunny farce in which Sandra Bullock hits the lowest point of her career as delusional, demented Mary Magdalene Horowitz, a cruciverbalist (she creates crossword puzzles) with no sex life who believes she'll find happiness by stalking Steve (Bradley Cooper), a TV news cameraman who wisely tries to avoid her. Audiences are advised to do the same. Jokes involve deaf children falling down a mine shaft.

The Boston Globe's Ty Burr openly campaigned to for Steve to get the title, calling it,

easily the worst movie of the week, month, year, and Bullock's entire career. It is to comedy what leprosy once was to the island of Molokai: a plague best contemplated from many miles away.

Mary is supposed to be adorable. She's not. She's possibly the most irritating character I've ever encountered in a Hollywood movie. Five minutes in her presence produces only a searing pain in one's frontal lobes and a primal flight response. The other characters understand this. Why don't the filmmakers?

The Onion's Nathan Rabin valiantly searched for traces of good, before lowering the sword:

Steve had the potential to be a sly deconstruction of romantic comedies, which have long posited stalker-type behavior as adorable, but the film isn't interested in clever meta-commentary. It's ultimately neither romantic comedy nor anti-romantic comedy, wandering so far off course that it's hard to tell exactly what it is, beyond a self-infatuated quirkfest populated by three-legged babies, deaf children stuck in abandoned mines, and a potential love interest for Bullock, played by DJ Qualls, who makes apple carvings that look like celebrities' faces.

More than a few mourned the fall of their beloved Bullock. The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday moaned,

In her other, better movies Bullock has managed her characters' inevitable transformations with her wry, self-deprecating aplomb intact. No such luck in "All About Steve," where a little bit of dignity is crushed with each step of Mary's red go-go boots. What was Our Sandy thinking? Will she ever come back? "All About Steve" is a puzzle, all right. Just one not worth solving.

Many reviews, including the Onion's, Salon's and the New York Post's single out one line of dialouge as the metaphor for all that is terribly wrong about this movie. Apparently at one point, Bullock offers a little piece of quirky wisdom, saying, "I wear these boots because they make my toes feel like 10 friends on a camping trip."

Critics also made rich use of the film's crossword puzzle theme as another metaphor for its suckiness. (Bullock plays a "cruciverbalist", i.e. a crossword maker). Variety's Brian Lowry writes:

Mary's throughout-the-movie narration gushes about the joys of crosswords, and there's a puzzle here, all right. But the only solution comes when two words (six letters) that mean "The movie's over" finally appear onscreen.

The Wall Street Journal's Joanne Kaufman writes:

Honoring the conventions of movies made for the chick-lit crowd, Ms. Bullock supplies the ruefully confessional voice-over narration. Like everything else in the movie, it is-five-letter word for lacking significance-inane.

Robert Abele in the LA Times offered more literally:

Puzzle aficionados may balk at their pastime being labeled a signpost for crazy, but "All About Steve" — a screwball wannabe that leaves one begging for the comforting embrace of a professionally made sitcom — can't get near a crossword's interlocking logic. Think the Jumble.

The NY Post's Kyle Smith, in a major feat of critical acrobatics, combines the crossword theme and the horrible line to come up with one catch-all slam:

In the end, we learn that crossword puzzles are popular because we all have an urge to fill in the empty spaces around us. That might also explain how a pile of innocent blank paper found itself besmirched and degraded with dialogue like, "I wear these boots because they make my toes feel like 10 friends on a camping trip."

Congratulations critics. Steve may have taken home the gold, but in taking us inside suckiness as we've never been before, you are the true heroes of this day.

The best part: You don't even need to go to the movies. Just have a sponsorship from the video-game industry, apparently:

I recommend Scene It? Box Office Smash for Xbox. It helps me improve my movie knowledge, and it's a lot of fun to play either alone or with some of the homies when they come over. With Xbox Live it downloads new questions all the time over the Internet, so no matter how many times I play it, it always has new puzzles and questions. The material is sometimes really challenging, even for someone like me who watches about 300 films a year. Even if you're not as big a fan of movies as I am, the anagrams and games within the game are a lot of fun. I challenge anybody who dares to step into The Lyons Den to a game of Scene It? on Xbox... Let's get it on!

Only if the "homies" play along, Ben. Recruit Keira Knightley for a round or two and we're in.

• The Buzz Board [The Daily Beast via Hollywood Elsewhere]

The first we heard after the screening got out, one critic didn't do much to counteract a colleague's avowed conventional wisdom that "Opening Night film equals shite" — largely on the basis of a script that "sounds uncomfortably like samples pulled at random from a bag of fortune-cookies." But we found our heavy weaponry in Todd McCarthy's arsenal at Variety:

The International scampers all over the place, but it's alternately frantic and a little slack, with a hole in the middle where some interesting characters ought to be. [...]

Owen's Salinger is clearly designed to be the counterhero, a scruffy, stubbly, ornery maverick who's let the rest of his life slide, in his often bumpy pursuit of justice. The basic notion behind the character is fine, but insufficient psychological detail is provided to back up the exterior sketch. [...] Salinger's spirited tag-along crimefighter Whitman is one of the few roles to which [Naomi] Watts hasn't been able to bring anything special, because there's nothing remotely suggested about her inner-life or past.

The good news, per THR: "[Director Tom] Tykwer's cinematic virtuosity has often exceeded his narrative grasp. But if he has little instinct for relationship or conversation, he has a keen eye for visual metaphor." Like all those guys blowing the shit out of the Guggenheim Museum, reducing soundstage art replicas to bullet-riddled shambles? Now there's a metaphor. Get your tickets now!

• 'The International' [Variety]

• Film Review: 'The International' [THR]

Taylor was one of Village Voice Media's few remaining full-timers, with reviews syndicated nationally alongside those of her editor Scott Foundas. The chain had largely left LA Weekly alone in its periodic, system-wide purges that began two years ago at its New York flagship; Taylor follows ex-LAT critic Carina Chocano and numerous Hollywood Reporter staffers in the most recent round of movie-beat bloodshed. Join us in a moment of silence, followed by our best wishes and amplified dread at increased contributions by Luke Y. Thompson.

• Next out at LA Weekly: Ella Taylor [LA Observed]

With a small but symbolic cross-section of critics having reported at Rotten Tomatoes, Bride Wars has inspired the first — and what may prove the most vicious, depending on how that Towelhead sequel is coming along — beatdown of 2009. A sampling to date:

· "Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway, who play the would-be brides, are good actors and quick-witted women, here playing characters at a level of intelligence approximating HAL 9000 after he has had his chips pulled." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

· "Bride Wars pretends to be a satire of wedding mania, but since there's virtually nothing else to the movie, the satire comes depressingly close to endorsement." — Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

· "A crass, despicably sexist piece of Hollywood trash." — Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly

· "Will make you hate brides." — Victoria Alexander, FilmsInReview.com

· "The most lamentable thing about the dismal Bride Wars is the total absence of fatalities." — Nick Schager, Slant Magazine

Dammnnnn. The glass-half-full observer in us takes solace from that last, scorching rebuke from one of our '08 Listy winners, but the other half worries that Hathaway's Best Actress Oscar hopes for Rachel Getting Married may find the bad-taste brick wall too tall to climb by late February. We hope we're wrong, but if the wedding dress is the new fatsuit, here's also hoping that lovely new Golden Globe will suffice.

• 'Bride Wars' [Rotten Tomatoes]

They found two: Rinku Singh, and runner-up Dinesh Kumar Patel. Both are currently training right here in L.A. at USC's RDRBI Institute, and Dinesh has been documenting their amazing journey in a blog (which we discovered via Defamer editor-at-large Mark Lisanti's Tumblr).

Today, Dinesh relays the boys' reactions to a random sampling of American cinematic offerings:

Rinku and me mostly watching the action movie we saying. now we understanding more the English, so we trying comedies.

I must be telling you… American comedy very good thing about this. We watching movie Darjeeling Train. very funny movie having brothers on train in India. it looking just like village and peoples same.

We also watching American Comedy movie Borat. We not believing this movie good funny. we laughing very many times from this one.

We also watching the Cable Guy. The movie actor very good faces. he very crazy man, doing many crazy things in movie. End not so good.

Also we seeing movie calling ET. This very big movie in America history. It great story about boy and spaceman. it make you sad and also too making me laugh. this special movie.

Let's see how our own opinions line up: Check. Check. Check. Check. Yeah, these guys are throwing a perfect game. We're firmly Team Shitcan the Bens and Make it Dinesh & Rinku At the Movies.

• American Movies - Not Just All Flash [Dinesh's Blog via Lisanti Quarterly]

5. Kristopher Tapley, In Contention

Like his Top 10 Top 10 classmate Michael Wilmington before him, Tapley's taste for esoterica is less egregious than his inability to keep his meals down. Take for starters this blurb-spray spattering The Incredible Hulk with a monolithic, almost steroidal grandeur:

Louis Leterrier’s re-boot of the mean, green machine was one of the biggest, most exhausting (in all the good ways) film-going experiences of the year. But despite consciously pushing the action peddle to the metal in this effort, and therefore breeding suspicion that the filmmakers might overdo it, each set piece is more dazzling than the last. The film holds the second turtledove of a young studio’s seizure of what promises to be one of the greatest cinematic roll outs the comic subgenre has seen.

"Second turtledove"? Are there three French hens forthcoming? Tapley is even less convincing about his list's number-one film, Slumdog Millionaire, which he acknowledges likely wouldn't have "secured this brand of classification" in a year as competitive as 2007. Or: If it weren't for lists, we'd have no way of knowing that There Will Be Blood is better than Slumdog. Or The Incredible Hulk for that matter. Well! We're glad that's cleared up.

4. Joe DeShano, MTV News

While we're damning with faint praise, it's probably unfair of us to include MTV News video editor DeShano's year-end list; he's not a critic, but was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when some egg-nog addled Web overlord blasted his Top 10 solicitation to the entire staff instead of just the folks in Movies. But whether we attribute what followed to drunkenness or democracy, it's a spectacular example of why this tradition should be entrusted to more civilians in 2009. Never mind the trenchant accolades for Milk ("It’s interesting to see how a movie made about the late ’70s is still so relevant and poignant today") and Changeling ("Reminded me a little of Frailty, but that’s a good thing") — it's the MTV team spirit for No. 4 Twilight that puts DeShano over the top:

I remember a movie back in 1989 that got fans really excited. Long lines of people dressed like the characters. Everyone was excited about its particular genre again. That was Tim Burton’s Batman. What a glorious day that was. This movie is that for the younger, female generation. What’s better is that it isn’t necessarily some sappy love story. There’s action and vampires and, yeah, a love interest, but there are also subplots and interwoven texture, which are rare to the vampire genre. I actually liked this film a lot and love that it became a big hit, despite all odds. Good job, Twilight folks. I look forward to the sequel.

So do we, if only to get this guy back on the listmaking beat. Only 11 months to go.

3. Michael Sragow, Baltimore Sun

Sragow's generally unqualified endorsement of the awful American Teen tests our tolerance for list contrarianism, but he steps even more forcefully on the fine line distinguishing unorthodoxy from a sideshow of look-at-me-I-liked-What Just Happened stunt criticism. It's the second-worst instinct of the Top 10er (we'll get to the worst), crystallized here with Flash of Genius commendations like, "[N]o actor had a better 2008 than Greg Kinnear, who was a deft light comedian in Ghost Town and delivered an inspired characterization of a wary obsessive here."

We could agree and demand that Mickey Rourke, Frank Langella and Philip Seymour Hoffman apologize for any shadows their towering, even more warily obsessive characterizations threw over Kinnear. Or we could just issue the conviction that critical crimes like these deserve, sentence Sragow to a year of Superlatives Anonymous meetings and check back in '09.

2. Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

Addict counseling isn't enough for Schwarzbaum, a bona fide Top 10 brutalizer who never experienced a year she couldn't blow to hell with her Molotov cocktail of hive-mind elitism alit with white-hot hype. When she's not condescending to readers with eye-rolling Dark Knight fangirlishness...

Watched again with the passage of time and the changing, too, of the American political landscape, Christo­pher Nolan's triumph of comic-book relevance, starring Christian Bale as a superhero uneasy with his calling in a city anesthetized to matter-of-fact evil, takes on new and even more poignant shadings of relevance.

...she is practicing bloody serial commacide in the name of WALL-E:

Years from now — yea, unto eternity — all who love movies will rank WALL-E among the medium's most profound, subtle, sophisticated, and gorgeously inventive specimens, ever. Never before have robots, Twinkies, a cockroach, and a lone, tenacious plant seedling intertwined so elegantly to tell a story of endurance, optimism, love at first sight, courtship, ecological destruction, postapocalyptic redemption, and... well, eternity.

So — you're big on eternity, Lisa? Then here's a tip: There are not 72 virgins waiting for you in the critical-terrorist afterlife. Cease fire, for God's sake.

1. Roger Friedman, Fox News

Friedman earned his second Listy championship with an unusual flair of imagination: Compiling the Worst 10 Films of 2008. Inspired! But however he decides to send the year off, his signature style of misspellings ("Just because Manola [sic] Dargis put [Synecdoche, New York] on her best of the year list, I had to make sure that sin-eck-doh-key was put in its proper place. ... Keener says she speaks Kaufman’s language. Well, they still need a translater. [sic]"), wild inaccuracies ("[Steven Soderbergh's] landmark 1989 film, sex lies and videotape literally created the indie film world") and vendetta-airing against Scientologists and the legacy-tarnishers of Soul Men withers against the genius that is eviscerating Valkyrie — which Friedman hadn't even seen:

But the reviews so far bear out my original assessment from the first trailer: Tom Cruise plays Jerry Maguire trying to kill Hitler in this ruined account of the 1944 attempt on the Fuhrer’s life. [...] I’ve joked about a tag line for the ad: “You had me at achtung.” But it seems on target. Cruise seemed to understand his predicament by taking a cameo in Tropic Thunder. But all that good will may be wiped out by this peculiar, misguided endeavor.

Slow. Clap. For Mr. Friedman, whose continued bar-lowering is no doubt appreciated by this year's runners-up. May all their examples reflect the symptoms of our deadly list-plague, and may their recovery — and yours — be swift in 2009. In the meantime, does anyone want to deliver an acceptance speech?

As enumerated since 2005 at this Defamer editor's alma mater, the annual survey of Top 10-list transgressions aims to improve both critical rigor and reader experience, all while helping save cinema from those who would rank it for no other reason than to see how much more profoundly their superlatives might resonate among those of their peers. Worse, the Top 10 impulse generally rewards the same rotation of 30-35 movies that such circle jerks — cheered on by high-rolling studio publicists — remind us are OK to single out from the 600+ released each year.

We can do better, as can the 10 critics comprised in this year's Top 10 of Top 10s. For their varying permutations of laziness, decontextualization, overstretching, vagueness, self-importance and all-around bad writing, we bestow the accompanying trophy, colloquially known around the Defamer office as the "Listy." May its autofellating icon (NSFW version here) remind the winners every day of their valued service to criticism and cinema in general. Let's hand out the hardware!

10. Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

As the court jester to David Denby's sulking imperial hack, Lane often enlivens The New Yorker's film criticism with much-needed bursts of wit, enlightenment and contrarian panache. But when he drunkenly crashes to bed at the end of each long year, ensuing depressions like "The Ten Best Films of the Year" qualify little more than whatever his editors appear to have overheard him muttering in his sleep. By our count, Lane endorses only five of the 10 films on his list — not even a list, really, but rather a stream-of-consciousness blog screed deploying the words "confused," "stuttering" and "compromised" to describe We Own the Night, Quantum of Solace and I've Loved You So Long, respectively. By the time he anoints WALL-E the year's highlight, his preciousness reasserts its will over his process. And just like that, it's 2009, and the cycle begins anew.

9. Michael Wilmington, Movie City News

A critic's Top 10 contrarianism is less a criterion for our consideration than is his or her ability to write engagingly, persuasively or at least logically about the year's picks. No one cares that Wilmington chose Shine a Light as his No. 1 film of 2008; it's troubling, though, to see him effuse about Mick Jagger, "He's the Stone that, like Sisyphus' rock, never stops rolling." Of course, Sisyphus's rock was his eternal curse for cheating the gods, which leaves us wondering if Keith Richards represents the wily Greek in this equation or simply the craggy, calcified hill over which poor, asthmatic Martin Scorsese pushed Jagger for two interminable hours. Such confusions litter Wilmington's lengthy copy, but he deserves bonus points for his description of Australia's "magical artificiality," the best euphemism we've yet heard for "gold-plated bullshit."

8. Brian Orndorf, eFilmCritic

eFilmcritic has earned its reputation as The Authority on critical abuses, from its comprehensive attacks on blurb whores to its assiduous attention to Ben Lyons' every misstep. But it could stand some housecleaning — particularly in Orndorf's room, cluttered with abstraction ("A fitting new chapter in the life of the big screen’s greatest hero, [Indiana Jones and the] Crystal Skull presented a buffet of amusement and thrills to be gorged on with as much repetition as possible"), obviousness ("A Swedish horror production with enthralling, unnerving romantic overtones, Let the Right One In is not a simple film to summarize or absorb") and overripe portent ("Revolutionary Road made for a spellbinding sit ... Not an easy sit by any means, Road nevertheless stuns with its dedication to the gnarled core of hope"). Orndorf's work is the list equivalent of that marginal American Idol dreamer dispatched with a "Pitchy, dawg" and Paula Abdul's sympathetic admonitions to try again next year. You are not going to Hollywood.

7. Marshall Fine, Hollywood and Fine

Anyone can make a Top 10 list, but veteran critic Fine infuses his with an unusual cross-breed of entitlement and boredom, rotely inflating the same late-year films (Revolutionary Road, Benjamin Button, WALL-E, etc.) as pretty much everyone else. It's an "I don't give a shit, but you should" blog-fart that hardly seems worth the effort, such as in Fine's praise of Button: "Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett strike sparks as destined lovers who take years to actually find each other." "Strike sparks," Marshall? Really? Extra-super-bonus points for his take on fifth-worst film My Blueberry Nights: "For the first time, critics noticed that the over-praised Wong [Kar-wai] had nothing to deliver, perhaps because there weren’t subtitles to distract them." Sophisticated!

6. Ed Gonzalez and Nick Schager, Slant Magazine

Speaking of sophistication — like, to the point of impenetrability — Slant's two-headed Gonschager hydra is approaching lifetime-exemption status on the Top 10 of Top 10s. Where in previous years it was fun to play "Who Said It?" with the duo's dense, overlapping favorites, their lists differed almost entirely in 2008, affording only the opportunity to play "They Said What?" with their unfavorable descriptor-to-noun ratio:

Gonzalez: Built on sensuous interplays between people and objects, reality and representation, José Luis Guerín's rapturously alfresco In the City of Sylvia uses a voluptuous language of spatial-temporal equations to conflate one's love of people with one's love of movies.

Schager: Hype and haters be equally damned, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is a complex contemporary morality play filtered through DC Comics's iconic cowled vigilante. Visceral and vital, this über-blockbuster is both cultural touchstone and preeminent example of the superhero spectacular's expansive potential.

We herewith predict: If ever a sixth inert gas is to be discovered, Gonzalez and Schager will find it.

Tomorrow: The top five!

4. Go 180 degrees in the opposite direction. That years-old tradition continued today (with slight variation) when the NYFCC anointed Milk as its Best Picture for 2008.

LAFCA's own favorite, WALL-E, did make an appearance among today's awards, earning Best Animated Film, and the groups' choices for Best Actress (Sally Hawkins), Best Actor (Sean Penn) and Best Supporting Actress (Penelope Cruz) overlapped as well. From there, however, all the Dark Knight and Slumdog Millionaire love dissipated into sloppy kisses for Josh Brolin, Mike Leigh and Rachel Getting Married, among others. And yes, for the record: Revolutionary Road still has yet to win anything after more than a week of awards season.

The full list of winners:

Best Picture: Milk

Best Director: Mike Leigh, Happy-Go-Lucky

Best Actor: Sean Penn, Milk

Best Actress: Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky

Best Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin, Milk

Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best Screenplay: Jenny Lumet, Rachel Getting Married

Best Foreign Film: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Best Documentary: Man on Wire

Best Animated Film: Wall-E

Best Cinematography: Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire

Best First Film: Courtney Hunt, Frozen River

Star-Ledger writer Stephen Whitty, the chair of the NY Film Critics Circle, suggested last week that MGM still wasn't serious about pushing Valkyrie for awards season despite moving its release up to Dec. 25. it was a better date than that Feb. 13, 2009, dump job planned before Paula Wagner's departure, but the release date was less important to critics than when they could see it for their own awards consideration.

And with the first official press screenings taking place after Whitty's organization votes, that can only mean one thing: MGM and United Artists have no faith in their $90 million Tom Cruise Nazi epic. Of course! Isn't that what you derived from that strategy?

Us neither. In fact, MGM has been screening Valkyrie informally for media on both coasts since at least September, and either way, the film was an awards-season write-off for months among many of the same newspaper and online critics whose senses of entitlement are now somehow offended. MGM can't win for losing, though its beleaguered marketing VP Mike Vollman can at least send along another spirited defense:

When did a december release date mean that a film exists first and foremost for award consideration? And when did film criticism become a competitive sport, with deadlines, rankings, winners and losers.? We want valkyrie to be judged on it's [sic] own, not as one of a cramped herd of dissimilar artistic endeavours lumped together unfairly due to the vagaries of the calendar and the marketplace. Valkyrie is eligible for every guild honor, from ampas to ves, and will be on every single nomination ballot. If members of the entertainment community wish to honor it, they will be able to do so. We hope they do as the work is excellent and deserves recognition.

Fine — they can sort it out themselves. And anyway, who cares? We're all really just waiting for Ben Lyons's take, anyway.

• `Valkyrie' surrenders [Star-Ledger]

• `Valkyrie' fires back [Star-Ledger]

· It's... OK! Todd McCarthy has the most substantial review so far in Variety, starting off:

The beauty of the film's stars and landscapes, the appeal of the central young boy and, perhaps more than anything, the filmmaker's eagerness to please tend to prevail, making for a film general audiences should go with, even if they're not swept away.

That's pretty much the consensus, in fact; THR blogger Steve Zeitchik invokes "the schmalztier parts of The English Patient," while Anne Thompson sighs Australia is "well done for what it is, assuming that you like old-fashioned Hollywood movies of the sort they do not make anymore."

·It's a melodrama! "Snidely Whiplash" comes up in both McCarthy's and Thompson's reviews of Australia's cattle-baron villains, and THR reviewer Megan Lehmann cites some "cringe-making Harlequin Romance moments between homegrown Hollywood stars" Kidman and Jackman. But roll with it, says Patrick Goldstein: "[It's] hopelessly cornball if you're not willing to embrace the material with the same childlike abandon you felt when you first saw Brigadoon or Singin' in the Rain."

·It's long! "A bladder-burster at 165 minutes," complains Lou Lumenick. It's a unanimous observation across the board, and not always in a critical sense — though Variety's McCarthy emphasizes a succession of lags after the big second-act cattle drive and a drawn-out ending. And Zeitchik writes, "[W]ith many slo-motion shots accentuating melodrama, one can only wonder if it would have might clocked in at 1 1/2 hours had all scenes been shot at regular speed.

·It's got bad CGI! Lumenick decries "a special-effects laden Japanese attack on Darwin that looks like rejected test footage from Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, and an even phonier-looking cattle charge toward a cliff." How phony-looking? Says McCarthy: "A dramatic stampede so CGI-heavy that it may as well have been animated."

·Nicole Kidman overachieves! Even Lumenick, one of the Oscar-winners most consistent critics, acknowledged "she gives the first performance I've liked since Cold Mountain." But how does she stack up against Jackman? "Pin thin and ramrod straight, Kidman gives one of her most engaging performances, occasionally harking back to the comic highs of To Die For," Lehmann writes. "Meanwhile, Jackman looks good in his Akubra bush hat."

·The Aboriginal kid is great! McCarthy says of young star Brandon Walters, "Eleven when the film was made, the attractive non-pro has a natural ease and winning way before the camera as the character who represents the tension in the country's racial divide and historical conscience." Lehmann gushes further, suggesting the "breakout star" lends Australia "its true heart."

·It's got a happy ending! Which, as you might already have heard, should make for a great series of DVD extras.

Michael Phillips first teased readers with his "non-review" late Tuesday, which seemed review-y enough to us:

The film is low-keyed supernaturalism. [...] The leads look pretty together. Kristen Stewart, who played the desert wild child in Into the Wild, enters Deep Smolder Mode (Celibate Division) earnestly and well with Robert Pattinson. [...] If Twilight performs below expectations at the box office, it may have something to do with…the special effects, which are not special. They are, in fact, on the cheesy side.

Why stop there, Michael? The Summit hit men are no doubt on their way, with Phillips likely the first victim in a multi-state spree that will next target Jeffrey Wells — even if he did seem to like it:

I can at least describe a conversation I had with a sharp Manhattan female columnist in the outer foyer. "Whadja think?" I asked. "I liked it!," she said, nodding and wearing a serene little smile that spoke of resolution. Then she quickly added, perhaps thinking I was a hater and not wanting to argue, "I'm a girl." And I said, "And I'm a guy and I don't think it was half bad! In its own realm it works. And Pattinson is great! And Kristin Stewart is such a good actress that she knows how to finagle her dialogue and it all goes down pretty smoothly."

"In its own realm" = the estrogen class. As such, Wells is less guardedly optimistic about Twilight's box-office chances, comparing its x-chromosome muscle to Titanic's and predicting a possible $200 million finish. Nice try, sir; that spin will still get you broken kneecaps. And you'll need to register yourself as an embargo offender when you get home; good luck telling your neighbors.

• 'Twight': A Non-Review [Talking Pictures]

• Turnaround [Hollywood Elsewhere]

Nearly all of Ebert's rules seem like common sense to our minds — "Provide a sense of the experience," "No freebies," "A trailer is not a movie" (though the "Avoid trailers" rule seems a little dire for even our purist sensibilities) — but one in particular stands out toward the end:

No posing for photos! Never ask a movie star to pose with you for a picture. No movie star ever wants to do this. They may smile, but they're gritting their teeth. [...] Remember, you are a professional. You are not a friend. You diminish yourself by asking for a snapshot. [...]

On the other hand, treasure real photos of you really with a movie star. Photos taken at a real event by a real other person unknown to you who didn't ask anyone if he could take it. My favorite such photo shows Jason Patric and me assisting Peter O'Toole as he makes his way from a reception at the Savannah Film Festival. I have appended this to the left as a sample of a permissible star photo. Such a photo can be distinguished from the other kind because they represent star-f***ing practiced with abstinence.

And we've appended Ebert's photo above. We were worried this counsel might fall under the "No Freebies" rubric, but really, advice of such value can only be given away. Keep it close, young Lyons.

• Roger's little rule book [Chicago Sun-TImes via Spout Blog]

Ticket buyers older than 8 should simply close their eyes and ponder a more stimulating concept: Beverly Hills Cujo. — Claudia Puig, USA Today

It's still only October, but I'll go ahead and say it: Beverly Hills Chihuahua is the best film of 2008 starring a purse dog. — Carla Meyer, The Sacramento Bee

You could say Beverly Hills Chihuahua is Lady and the Tramp meets Viva Zapata!, but seriously, I've seen zestier attitude in a Purina commercial. — Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

Sublimely silly and oddly poignant, Beverly Hills Chihuahua — that's right, the one with the talking canines — is Lady and the Tramp for lap dogs, Roots for pooches, Legally Blonde told from Bruiser's point of view. — Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Enquirer

The film is Beverly Hills Chihuahua. The audience is the fire hydrant. — Kyle Smith, NY Post

Right? Right?? Can't! Wait!

• 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua' [Rotten Tomatoes]

Some go no deeper than "Fag!"; some are actually amusing — "Keep your head in Little Women and Suffrage texts you pansy" — but others are downright ugly. On Rotten Tomatoes, someone felt it would be beneficial to post as many personal details about Jürgen that they could find, while another likened his crime to Joan of Arc's:

"This guy is a terd [sic], let him rot. Lets [sic] burn him at the stake!"

The comments left for Keith are even more vile, particularly this one, which the author later claimed was written while channeling his inner Joker. Yikes. (All [sic]):

"You know, some people have been so enraged by your little opinion piece that they want you to kill yourself. Please DON'T!!! You know why, because I am going to have so much fun killing you myself! I promise, it WON'T be painless. I am going to carve a smile in your face. And then I am going to carve you stomach. And you know why? Because i just want my phone call. You're my bitch now! I am going to track you down through your IP address and then I am going to f@#%!%* kill you!!!"

Daaammmn. Worried as we are for Mssrs. Fauth and Uhlich, really: You've got to see this in IMAX. Michael Caine will be campaigning for these guys' Oscar nominations by Monday.

• Hell Hath No Fury Like a Fanboy Scorned [Filmbrain]

Dragon Emperor doesn't exactly beg for a sequel (neither did The Mummy Returns, for that matter), but it'd be fun to watch the filmmakers try to outdo this dizzy spectacle in the arena of sheer ridiculousness. — Nathan Rabin, The AV Club

Possibly the most fun Mummy yet — call it The Uber-Mummy. — Randy Cordova, The Arizona Republic

The film's best quality is that it continues the Mummy tradition of mocking its own big-budget gratuitousness. — Christy DeSmith, Minneapolis Star Tribune

It doesn't take itself too seriously but it takes the action scenes seriously and there are some great ones. — Nell Minow, BeliefNet

Now why did I like this movie? It was just plain dumb fun, is why. It is absurd and preposterous, and proud of it. — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

And you know what? Universal will probably have that rave on its TV spots by primetime tonight. Thanks a million, Rog.

• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor [Rotten Tomatoes]

And ESPECIALLY when the solution to America's Movie Critic Deathwatch is hidden within the trenchant stream-of-consciousness rant therein. We're just sorry that troubled Hot Blog commenter "LexG" won't be around to reap the rewards of his masterwork after the blog's proprietor, David Poland, cut him off at the knees:

I'M SMARTER THAN HALF THE SO CALLED EXPERTS. I SHOULD BE A FUCKING FILM CRITIC. WHY AM I A WORKADAY POSTHOUSE DOUCHE WHEN I'M SMARTER THAN ANYONE IN THE WORLD?

Our thoughts exactly! But that's hardly everything; taste all the bile after the jump. (Or, if you're Kenneth Turan, Elvis Mitchell or Luke Y. Thompson, maybe just consider skipping to the next item.)

I DON'T GET WHY SOME PEOPLE GET TO BE PROFESSIONAL MOVIE CRITICS WHEN I'M OBVIOUSLY SMARTER THAN THEM.

I HAVE DEGREES IN JOURNALISM, FILM HISTORY, AND ENLIGHT LIT, WITH MINORS IN RUSSIAN LIT, FILMMAKING, AND LIKE 15 OTHER THINGS.

HOW DOES A LUKE THOMPSON OR A FATBODY LIKE ELVIS DOUCHEBAG MITCHELL GET A PAID JOB AS A FILM CRITIC?

OR THAT FAT OLD BITCH KEN TURAN? THAT GUY IS THE WORST MOVIE CRITIC IN AMERICA, AN OLD, ELDERLY, BORING STUFFY BORE. KEN TURAN BLOWS.

LEXG IS SMARTER THAN FUCKING KEN TURAN, WHO'S LIKE THE BORING BOOK CRITIC VERSION OF MICHAEL MEDVED.

YEAH, I SAID IT. FUCK KEN TURAN. WORST MOVIE CRITIC IN AMERICA. OLD FUCK. MAN UP, TURAN, YOU'RE A PUSSY.

KEN TURAN IS GARBAGE.

HIRE THE LEX.

I'M SMARTER THAN HALF THE SO CALLED EXPERTS. I SHOULD BE A FUCKING FILM CRITIC. WHY AM I A WORKADAY POSTHOUSE DOUCHE WHEN I'M SMARTER THAN ANYONE IN THE WORLD?

YES, I AM SMARTER THAN YOU.

YOU ARE A BITCH. I AM GOD. BOW TO ME.

THREE COLLEGE DEGREES, IQ OF 230. [...]

ALCOHOL OWNS. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

DRINK UP ALL BITCHES— LEXCOUNT = 11 BEERS, HALF A BOTTLE OF THE D.K.A. AND NOW SOME JACK BITCH.

YEP YEP.

KNOW. I AM PLAINVIEW. FUCK EVERYONE.

And there's more. Who's hiring?

• Dumping Posts [The Hot Blog]