Next week, we'll be unveiling our own list of our favorite nonfiction films of the year, which puts us squarely behind the curve with most folks, who have been revealing their own picks since early this month.
Call us lazy or old-fashioned, we like to wait for the year to actually end before we go full-bore, but we've still been checking out everyone else's notations and there are several worth noting for the record.
Two year-end recaps have been indispensable (indefatigable) - indieWIRE's annual Critics Poll and Movie City News' compilation of top ten lists.
In the indieWIRE critics poll, three nonfiction titles featured in the overall top 20: WALTZ WITH BASHIR at #10, MY WINNIPEG at #13 and MAN ON WIRE at #20. Both BASHIR's Ari Folman and WINNIPEG's Guy Maddin received three votes for Best Director (tying them for 12th place). Ellen Kuras and Thavi Prasavath received a vote in the Best First Feature Category for their THE BETRAYAL (NERAHKOON), as did film critic/filmmaker Godfrey Cheshire for his MOVING MIDWAY.
The recently departed Ann Savage ended up in 13th place in the Supporting Performance (tied with BURN AFTER READING's Brad Pitt) for her appearance in MY WINNIPEG, which also received a number of votes for Guy Maddin and George Toles' screenplay, putting the film tied for 6th place in that category.
For Best Documentary, 15 films received more than one vote, with MAN ON WIRE receiving 14 votes to MY WINNIPEG's 10 mentions. The rest of the top 15, in order: STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE, TROUBLE THE WATER and WALTZ WITH BASHIR (tied for 3rd with 9 votes), THE ORDER OF MYTHS (6th with 6 votes), ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, PROFIT MOTIVE AND THE WHISPERING WIND, ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED, THE UNFORESEEN and UP THE YANGTZE (tied for 7th with 3 votes) and CHRIS & DON. A LOVE STORY, DEAR ZACHARY: A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER, FENGMING: A CHINESE MEMOIR and STRANDED: I'VE COME FROM A PLANE THAT CRASHED ON THE MOUNTAINS (all tied for 12th place with 2 votes).
In indieWIRE's critics list of best undistributed films, ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL landed in 19th place, with 5 votes from critics. Tied for 21st with 4 votes was BE LIKE OTHERS and THE ENGLISH SURGEON. FORBIDDEN LIES, GUEST OF CINDY SHERMAN and IN A DREAM were tied for 26th with 3 votes each. OF ALL THE THINGS and the Oscar shortlisted MADE IN AMERICA tied for 36th place with 2 mentions from critics.
On Movie City News' compilation of critics Top Ten lists, MAN ON WIRE is the highest ranked documentary - currently in 13th place. Next is BASHIR in 19th, WINNIPEG in 27th, ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD in 33rd, STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE at 45th, DEAR ZACHARY at 48th and ORDER OF MYTHS at 49th. (The scoring on this chart changes constantly as new top ten lists are updated so scores at the link may not match those posted here.)
Salon's Andrew O'Hehir has four docs in his top ten - BASHIR (#2), ENCOUNTERS (#4), MAN ON WIRE (#8) and ORDER OF MYTHS (#10). Says he:
"This was an exceptional year for documentaries and an unusually strong one for foreign-language releases, but in my judgment pretty tepid for American indie narrative features."
Anthony Kaufman finds himself unable to come up with a list of ten, although he notes that BASHIR and WINNIPEG would probably place if he had one.
Karina Longworth has WINNIPEG and ENCOUNTERS in her list of ten favorite films and includes FORBIDDEN LIES and INTIMIDAD amongst her Best Undistributed.
Over at POV, Tom Roston recaps his year and admits to respecting but not loving MAN ON WIRE. Previously there, Ruiyan Xu wondered if WIRE was the "Doc of the Year".
In a last gasp at IFC before he leaves for GreenCine Daily, Aaron Hillis recapped the year in docs, heaping praise upon BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER*, OPERATION FILMMAKER, DEAR ZACHARY and WILD COMBINATION (among others) while positing that AMERICAN TEEN was the "worst doc of the year".
That thumbs down for TEEN garnered a reaction from Kim Voynar, who seems te remember everyone at Sundance kind of digging Nanette Burstein's film.
Elsewhere at IFC.com, Matt Singer explains why IFC's MY WINNIPEG tops his list:
He also includes DEAR ZACHARY.
Finally, Dentler gets all year-end with his regular "Albums Worth Your Dime" feature. TV On the Radio is tops.
Comments