Top Tens:
Introduction

Come late December of each year, critics of every art form stop performing the task that they are most needed for (the providing of informed judgments to readers of varying degrees of informed-ness) and move into a mode of quiet remembrance: the time of "Top Ten/Best Of" construction. Most of them preface their inventories by discussing the vagaries of list creation - the refrain: "this list would have looked different if made __ minutes earlier or later" is common, as is banal assessment of the year's crop of productions (a few bushels shy of last year, but at least no locusts…). It's all rather silly, and in most cases works more to reinforce the reader's sense of security than to shock them with the new - at the worlds existing outside of their sphere of knowledge. A "Top Ten/Best Of" can be a tool for the creation of complacency, but can also be a powerful weapon, if used correctly. And when the dust settles, distribution companies slap their spoils on New York Times display ads as if "On Over 75 Top Ten Lists!" is necessarily better than a film only on "Over 50 Top Ten Lists!" never begging the question of whether this necessarily means anything on the level of the average viewer at all.

These lists come late out of necessity - so many films are dumped onto screens in the last ten days of December, that it's impossible to see them all before January 1, much less in any way that allows for real perspective. I'd wager that more than a few critics look back on their selections from years past and wonder with regret about curious inclusions and omissions. Too many lists speak about their choices as if personal preferences, when placed aside numerals assume a universal absoluteness. These lists speak at, not to their reader - or at worst, over. Moves that may have seemed bold and political in the heat of the moment morph into pointless critical maneuvering for a long forgotten cause . We may have our regrets too, and our lists may also look like many others that you've read. Hopefully the distinction will lie in the way they sound.

You'll have seen many of these films we're mentioning, and ideally, our blurbs will engage you to consider them from different angles than before. For those films that you haven't seen, our writings should convince you that they're worth your time. To make this possible, we've managed to stick pretty closely to our self-imposed rule to only include films that have distribution and have seen theatrical engagement in New York during the 2002 calendar year, thus subverting another "better than thou, reader" game many critics like to play. Only The Son and To the Left of the Father did not play widely during 2002 but both had profile festival screenings (at the New York Film Festival and New Cinema Novo festivals, respectively) so we decided to let them slip by. Each film is listed because that writer felt passionately enough about it to include it, and films weren't added merely to make sure a list rounded out to a perfect "10." We agree on some, disagree on others, but in the spirit of disagreement as a healthy and necessary part of debate rather then base condition for deadlock. One film may appear on several Top Tens only to re-appear later as another writer's most reviled film of the year. Taken individually, they provide a window into individual taste, but read them all, and take them as the dialogue we intended.
-Editors