The Projector #108: When Do You Call It a Year? (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

We’re in the middle of awards season, the stretch of the movie year that more or less spans from TIFF in September through Oscars night in March. December is usually when publications and critics groups release their best films list, sometimes in early December. From the inside, that means watching a lot of movies but never feeling like you’ve seen enough. Because you haven’t. There’s just too much.

For me, this year seems worse than most. I just filed my list for the Indiewire poll, which will probably look different from the list I submit for the Chicago Film Critics Association in a few days, by which time I will (hopefully) have had a chance to see some more movies. And it will certainly look different from the list to be featured on our end-of-the-year episode and over at The Reveal, which won’t be done until a couple of weeks from now. But that list will undoubtedly be different from a 2021 list I would make a year for now, in part to how weird release strategies have gotten.

To wit: Judas and the Black Messiah was a 2020 film for awards purposes last year (partly because of the Covid-ness of the year) but we didn’t get a chance to see it until 2021. So where should it fall? Same with The Father, which had a qualifying run last year but wasn’t really made available, even to critics, until later. Both are excellent, but should they count? If nothing else, they feel like last year’s films, even if they aren’t.

2021 is no different. We’ve received screeners for much-lauded films like The Worst Person in the World and Petite Maman, which won’t be seen by most viewers until 2022. But should they count? If a great movie plays a single theater in Brooklyn for a week does it make a noise?

I don’t have an answer for this and haven't figured out what I’m going to do about the 2021 list. But I get the feeling that it must be frustrating for those outside the profession who love movies and want to consider the year that was to see a bunch of movies listed that they’ve never had a chance to see and a bunch ignored that made a deep impression in the previous year. So, consider this a prompt. What do you want out of Top 10 lists? A reflection of the year you experienced? A checklist of what to see next? Some combination of the above?

While you ponder that, we hope you’re enjoying our Imitation of Life / Passing episodes. Don’t forget to send some feedback. We’d love your thoughts. And if you’re looking for something to read, may we recommend the following?

• At Vulture, Kathryn VanArendonk ponders the mysteries of Succession’s Tom Wambsgans.

• At Polygon, Joshua Rivera suggests that maybe Star Wars is better off without Star Wars movies.

• Also at Vulture, Matthew Jacobs talks to Laura Dern about Citizen Ruth.

• Why has movie dialogue gotten so hard to understand? Ben Pearson goes deep with the question at /Film.

• At ScreenCrush, Matt Singer talked to James Cameron about the Spider-Man movie he almost made.

• And at The Reveal you’ll find Scott Tobias writing about Drive My Car and the year of Hamaguchi, Keith Phipps revisiting Menace II Society, and reviews of Benedetta, The Hand of God, and Flee.