The best films of the year

Well, it's almost the end of the calendar year, so people are putting out lists trying to tell you what the best of 2007 was for films, books, political protests, toy recalls, or whatever. I've looked at four lists of films, and it's interesting how little overlap there is between them.

The lists are: Alison Gilmour's in the Winnipeg Free Press, The Globe and Mail's, The National Post's (which tries to make it a best 11, rather than 10, but 11 is just a bunch of runners up of what isn't in the top 10), and the JAM list from Canoe's website (i.e., the Sun chain of newspapers).

Only one film is on all of them: No country for old men. There are two films that appear on three of the lists: Juno and Away from Her (Gilmour didn't include either of those; perhaps Juno was excluded from her list as it's only now opening in Winnipeg).

Only five others are on two of these lists: Ratatouille, Knocked Up, Once, Zodiac, and Eastern Promises.

Thus, of the 40 films on these lists (41 really as Gilmour puts Knocked Up and Superbad as one item on her list), only 8 are duplicates. That's quite a divergence of opinion. But then how many films come out in a year?

There's, say, at least 3 major releases each week, and more than that if all films are included. Thus, if we take it to be 5 films a week, then we're talking over 250 films a year, of which 10 are being selected for the "best of" list. So maybe it's not so surprising to see little convergence in the lists, especially when one considers that there's likely a desire to be at least a little different from others/standard opinion when creating the list. Thus, in a situation where there's a choice between two films, the more idiosyncratic choice may be chosen more often than not.

Of all the films on the lists, I've only seen one of them: Michael Clayton, which I quite liked (it was on the JAM/Canoe list). It was suspenseful; you always had the feeling that something was just about to happen, and sometimes it did, and sometimes it didn't. And it ended well.

I did see some films this year - like The Bourne Ultimatum, but apparently few - well, one - of the Best of 2007. C'est la vie.