When the world runs out of lists

By Steven Zeitchik

There's nothing a story-starved reporter -- or copy-starved editor -- loves more than a list. Like a male character in a Nick Hornby novel, like a housefrau compiling the week's grocery needs, scribes meticulously lay out their favorites and their not-so favorites, adding and subtracting, shuffling and shuffling again, until we're left with...group of titles next to a bunch of numbers.

And yet these lists make people extremely passionate, for reasons we only sometimes understand.

One question that does strike us as semi-interesting as everyone's puttered around for favorites the past few weeks is how much should these choices should overlap with commercial success.

On the one hand, you have the critics who put "Wall-E" and "Iron Man" on. On the other, you have those contrarians picking the most obscure movies possible. Props to the New York Post's V.A. Musseto for taking this year's trophy; he chose the Spanish-language "In the City of Sylvia" as his best movie of the year (don't worry, we had to look it up too).

There's no right answer on the correct balance of all this, but we're hearing from critics aplenty over a column we wrote Tuesday  about the value -- and danger -- of putting too many popular movies on a list.

 Our thesis: the occasional "Dark Knight" on the end-of-year list is good for film  criticism, too many blockbusters make you look preening. That's never good -- and especially not good in a time of waning column inches for reviews.

 And with that bit of ambivalence about (certain) rankings, we offer -- delightfully late and inexplicably odd-numbered -- our list of the top eleven movies of the year. Send appraisals, complaints to Ben Brantley.

The Risky Eleven

1) The Wrestler
2) Slumdog Millionaire
3) Synecdoche, New York
4) The Class
5) Sugar
6) Man on Wire
7) Body of Lies
8) Two Lovers
9) The Dark Knight
10) Rachel Getting Married
11) Defiance