This Critic Was Wrong: Mistakes from 15 Years of Ranking Movies

This January marks 15 years since I started ranking all the movies I've seen in the previous year, from first to worst. I started the practice in January of 1997, and here it is, January of 2012. (Technically, that's 16 lists, because there are two lists bookending that 15-year period. But it's still 15 years. If you are for some reason coming to my blog for the first time during this very post, my 16th list went up yesterday.)

So to celebrate this milestone -- because you know how I love burdening you with my milestones -- I thought I would take a look back at where I've been and how far I've come.

But I'm not going to do something boring like give you a list of my favorite movies from those 15 years. Especially since there were plenty of great movies I saw during that period that I didn't see within their release year, meaning they never appeared on any year-end list, meaning talking about them here would be a strange way to mark the occasion. (No movie I see after the morning of the Oscar nominations is eligible for ranking.)

Instead, I'm going to look at what I got wrong. Those rankings are and will always be part of the "official record," but clearly my feelings about the movies I ranked have changed over the years. Some, I like a lot more than I did when I first saw them; others, a lot less. And so I thought I'd give you a list of the top ten movies I misranked when they came out, at least, relative to how I feel about them today. And in some cases, as you'll see, I even wonder what the hell I could have been thinking at the time.

But before we get into that, I want to lay the groundwork, to give you some idea about my tastes over the years. For each year from 1996 to 2010 (see yesterday's post for 2011), I want to tell you three things: 1) how many movies I ranked by my deadline, 2) the movie I ranked #1, and 3) the movie I ranked last.

Here they are:

1996 - 43 movies. #1 - Looking for Richard (Al Pacino), #43 - Before and After (Barbet Schroeder)
1997 - 39 movies. #1 - Titanic (James Cameron), #39 - Speed 2: Cruise Control (Jan de Bont)
1998 - 58 movies. #1 - Happiness (Todd Solondz), #58 - Almost Heroes (Christopher Guest)
1999 - 57 movies. #1 - Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer), #57 - Wild Wild West (Barry Sonnenfeld)
2000 - 58 movies. #1 - Hamlet (Michael Almereyda), #58 - The 6th Day (Roger Spotiswoode)
2001 - 73 movies. #1 - Gosford Park (Robert Altman), #73 - The Musketeer (Peter Hyams)
2002 - 80 movies. #1 - Adaptation (Spike Jonze), #80 - Bad Company (Joel Schumacher)
2003 - 58 movies. #1 - Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola), #58 - Dreamcatcher (Lawrence Kasdan)
2004 - 59 movies. #1 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry), #59 - Troy (Wolfgang Petersen)
2005 - 73 movies. #1 - Hustle & Flow (Craig Brewer), #73 - Saw II (Darren Lynn Bousman)
2006 - 77 movies. #1 - Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron), #77 - Lady in the Water (M. Night Shyamalan)
2007 - 82 movies. #1 - There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson), #82 - Captivity (Roland Joffe)
2008 - 87 movies. #1 - The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky), #87 - An American Carol (David Zucker)
2009 - 113 movies. #1 - Moon (Duncan Jones), #113 - The Final Destination (David R. Ellis)
2010 - 109 movies. #1 - 127 Hours (Danny Boyle), #109 - Furry Vengeance (Roger Kumble)

Come to think of it, I don't know what this actually tells you. One thing of interest to me, though, is that never have I awarded the same director top honors twice, nor have I hung the dunce cap on any director more than once. (Though I think M. Night Shyamalan came close, and Joel Schumacher came very close yesterday when I ranked Trepass second lowest of 2011.) However, Charlie Kaufman did write two of my #1s, those being Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Okay, enough preamble. I found 25 contenders for my biggest mistakes and pared them down to ten. I've also given you their ranking, and some better films they finished ahead of or worse films they finished behind. In reverse order of their severity ...

10. Napoleon Dynamite (2004, Jared Hess)
Ranked: Too low, 27th out of 59
Below such films as: Fahrenheit 9/11, The Forgotten
Explanation: This must be a case of the film not having achieved its eventual beloved status until well after it was released. (In fact, the movie is apparently so beloved that Fox decided to revive it this year as an animated show.) One of the other contenders for this list was Office Space, which I had ranked fairly low at the time it came out, but has since become a common reference point for numerous film fans by playing regularly on cable. The same could be said for Napoleon. Still, I knew that I liked it at the time and I also knew that Michael Moore's 9/11 polemic annoyed me, so how did I get this wrong?

9. High Fidelity (2000, Stephen Frears)
Ranked: Too low, 37th out of 58
Below such films as: Red Planet, Mission to Mars, The Perfect Storm
Explanation: I wouldn't say I was a huge fan of Frears' movie, prefering Nick Hornby's book (as people who have read the book first are wont to do). But I must have really thought it trod wrong if I ranked both of the Mars movies, neither of which was very good, ahead of it, not to mention The Perfect Storm, which I found even more problematic than the Mars movies. Or perhaps it's just that over the years I have conflated the film with the book, and just see them as a single entity that I love.

8. Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002, George Lucas)
Ranked: Too high, 14th out of 80
Above such films as: About a Boy (speaking of Nick Horby), Blue Crush, Signs
Explanation: Yes, I loved seeing Yoda bust out that lightsaber. And yes, I saw it twice in the theater. (An honor the inferior Phantom Menace can also claim.) But I think I must have had a case of serious Star Wars blindness, or perhaps just relief to move on from the narrative inertness of Episode I, in order to rank it ahead of the movies listed above. I know Signs has its detractors and Blue Crush may just be a guilty pleasure, but Crush is a guilty pleasure I felt fervently about at the time. Then again, none of us could know the extent to which the prequels would backlash on George Lucas until they had all been released and they were all sub-par.

7. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004, Alfonso Cuaron)
Ranked: Too low, 24th out of 59
Below such films as: The Manchurian Candidate, Before Sunset, Million Dollar Baby
Explanation: Although I was enchanted enough by the Harry Potter movies at the time -- I'd legitimately liked two of the three -- it wouldn't yet have been possible to know that this movie would become the crown jewel of the series, looking better and better as each new movie disappointed me (until the final one, that is). It certainly helps my current appreciation of Azkaban that Children of Men would elevate Cuaron to the status of a god in my mind two years later. Still, I knew I really enjoyed this at the time, so I don't know how I would have ranked it behind a serviceable if unspectacular remake, a somewhat frustrating sequel (that's beloved by some) and a best picture winner I didn't find worthy of that honor, even if I couldn't have known it would win best picture at the time.

6. Wag the Dog (1997, Barry Levinson)
Ranked: Too high, 18th out of 39
Above such films as: Air Force One, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Explanation: Even at the time, I'm pretty sure I found this an overly smug satire that didn't make me laugh the way it considered itself so clever for doing. I actually remember resenting the critical praise directed at this movie. Yet as I looked back at my lists, I found it in the top half of the films I saw that year. I blame that decision on the fact that I had not yet honed my current sense of independence from what others think. I must have thought I "should" like this more than I did, and elevated it accordingly. Granted, the original Austin Powers is also a movie that's become significantly more beloved (by me, and in general) as the years have passed.

5. The Matrix (1999, Larry and Andy Wachowski)
Ranked: Too low, 22nd out of 57
Below such films as: Magnolia, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Dogma, Sleepy Hollow
Explanation: Oh, the perils of being a movie made in 1999. As I looked back on these lists, I found that 1999 had far and away the greatest concentration of excellent movies. In fact, all the movies I've listed above are movies I either like a little or like a lot. So the inclusion of The Matrix on this list, in this spot on the list, says more about just how much of a cultural institution that film has become in the intervening years -- even though it got plenty of attention as the surprise hit of the year it was released. And the funny thing is, I remember how much of a good time my friend and I had when we first saw it, coming in with no expectations. So it shouldn't have even needed that second viewing to help elevate it toward how I currently think of it, as probably one of my favorite 200 films of all time.

4. Disney's The Kid (2000, Jon Turteltaub)
Ranked: Too high, 12th out of 58
Above such films as: The Cell, American Psycho, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Explanation: Rule of thumb when it comes to movies: Always watch the ending. I watched The Kid on a plane ride to Los Angeles (I lived in New York at the time), and it charmed the damn pants off me. But it was the second film they showed on the flight, and the pilot had to shut it off before the actual ending in order to land. I thought we were close, so I counted it and ranked it and moved on. I mean, how much can really go wrong in the last 10 or 15 minutes of a movie? (Ha.) Well, I finally watched the end in 2010, and, well ... you can read about it here. (And for the record, it was more like 25 minutes that I missed back in 2000.)

3. War of the Worlds (2005, Steven Spielberg)
Ranked: Too low, 30th out of 73
Below such films as: Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Cache, Aeon Flux
Explanation: Sometimes you just never know which films will take hold and become favorites. I own War of the Worlds and have seen it probably four times now. No other film from that year have I seen more than twice, yet I ranked 29 films ahead of it. I don't know what I saw in my second viewing of War of the Worlds that catapulted it so far forward, but that's where it is, and it certainly should have been ranked higher. Darn, now I kind of want to see it a fifth time. (I know, I know, you don't like the ending. Get over it.) For the record, that doesn't mean it's now my favorite film from 2005 -- just that you never know why you'll want to repeatedly watch certain movies, even if they are not "better" than other movies that you don't care to watch repeatedly.

2. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008, Nicholas Stoller)
Ranked: Too low, 18th out of 87
Below such films as: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Taxi to the Dark Side
Explanation: Okay now, you might be saying "What?" It's safely in the top 25% of a year in which I saw 87 movies, and besides, both of the movies I listed above are pretty good. No, this one is again to show you how much this movie jumped up after two more viewings. When I ranked my top movies of the decade a mere year after publishing these rankings, I'd become so smitten with this film that I ranked it 18th again -- out of the whole decade. Granted, I may have been under the undue influence of an extremely heightened sense of appreciation for this film, one that probably doesn't translate to reality. (On a movie podcast last year, I actually said I preferred this movie to Jaws. Why those two movies were being compared, I won't get into right now.) But the fact remains that there's no movie I've seen more than this since I first saw it in November of 2008, having just watched it for the fourth time on New Year's Day.

1. Scary Movie 2 (2001, Keenen Ivory Wayans)
Ranked: Too high, 39th out of 73
Above such films as: The Princess Diaries, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Blow, The Fast and the Furious
Explanation: Did I have a brain embolism when I was making out my 2001 rankings? Or have I just completely forgotten the things about this movie I might have once found funny? The reason this movie is my #1 ranking mistake is because I currently think of it as so loathsome, so puerile, and so inept, that I have it ranked #3289 on my Flickchart -- out of only 3329 films total. That means that according to my current understanding of Scary Movie 2, there are only 40 movies that I've ever seen that I hate more. Yet in the year 2001, I thought it was better than nearly half of the movies I saw -- 34 movies in that year alone. What's the real truth? And could I possibly be so intrigued by this odd disconnect that I would actually watch it again? Eh, probably not.

Was this exercise interesting to anyone but me?

Eh, probably not.

Ten years and 25 minutes

This is the seventh in my Double Jeopardy series, which runs on Tuesdays. I'm trying to figure out if I was crazy for liking movies most people didn't like, by watching them a second time.

It took me nearly ten years to watch the final 25 minutes of Disney's The Kid. Therefore, I spent nearly ten years thinking it's a much better movie than it actually is.

I didn't think I'd missed that many minutes back in the fall of 2000, when I watched the movie on the plane from New York to Los Angeles. I can't remember which trip it was, though I think it was the October one -- the first of two trips (the second coming at New Year's) that convinced me it was time to move to Los Angeles, which I did the following spring. My airline made the strange choice of playing two movies for the five-hour trip, something I had never experienced before and haven't experienced since. However, they started the second movie -- Disney's The Kid -- too late in the trip to be able to finish it.

From the pacing of the narrative, it looked like there were 10, 15 minutes at most remaining in the movie when they shut it off. It had already reached the crisis at the end of the second act, and I had a pretty good idea how the remainder of the third act was going to unfold.

At least, I thought I did. Fast forward ten years.

But before I get to that, let me tell you just how much I liked the 80 minutes of The Kid I did see. Quite simply, I was tickled pink by it. The story follows Russ Duritz (Bruce Willis), a Scrooge-like image consultant living in Los Angeles, who's about to turn 40. He's handsome and successful, and has a pretty almost-girlfriend (Emily Mortimer) whom he keeps disappointing. His world gets shaken up when he is suddenly confronted by the eight-year-old manifestation of himself (Spencer Breslin), who doesn't know how he's gotten there, but is definitely flesh and blood, as everyone else can see him and interact with him. Young Rusty is dumpy and has a lisp, and older Russ can only see bad memories of the child he was. However, it's soon clear that Rusty is there to teach him to be a better person, to remind him of the good parts of himself that he walked away from when he became this allegedly more successful human being.

Sounds Capra-esque if you're being generous, cheesy if you're not, right? Actually, not really. Director Jon Turteltaub gives the proceedings a lot of heart, but it's Breslin who steals this show. The child actor -- who was also great in the second Santa Clause movie -- has impeccable comic timing for being so young. Almost everything he says or does inspires giggles, and he gets the most out of Willis, who has always been good when acting harried. Their odd couple pairing is highly watchable, and Mortimer has great chemistry with both of them, most notably young Breslin. Add in a funny turn from the great Lily Tomlin as Russ' assistant and a nice cameo from Jean Smart as a local anchorwoman, and you've got a warm family movie that actually reminds adults of a time when they didn't feel so cynical toward movies with simple and heartfelt messages.

Okay, so that was the part I saw.

(Spoilers, as if you care ...)

Right around the time the airline shut off the video for landing, what would have happened is that Russ and Rusty would have driven through a tunnel somewhere in Los Angeles, and come out the other side wearing 1968 clothing and driving a 1968 Porsche convertible (as opposed to Russ' 2000 Porsche convertible). Then they would have driven to a schoolyard to witness young Rusty fight a bully -- a bully who knocked him over with one punch the first time these events played out, directly resulting in years of loserdom. Of course, since old Rusty has taught young Rusty to fight in the few days they've been hanging out, now young Rusty beats up the bully -- which doesn't seem to be the exact right message, but this isn't the worst part. Then it turns out that this is not the crucial moment that made Russ such a self-loather -- it turns out that Rusty got in trouble for winning this fight (but did he actually win the first time? I'm confused) and that his cancer-stricken mother had to report to the school to pick him up. Then later on, his father shakes him and says "Are you trying to kill her more quickly?" or something similarly scarring. Apparently, the adult realization that he wasn't responsible for his mother's death (mind you, none of this had been discussed in the film until this point) is the trigger to starting to approach his life differently. Russ and Rusty end up at Santa Monica Airport at a diner called the Skyway Diner, where they see an alternate version of Russ as a mustachioed pilot, with the dog that young Rusty always said he wanted, and Mortimer's Amy in tow as his wife. Call me crazy, but this mustachioed Bruce Willis does not really seem like an improvement on the one we've known throughout the movie -- he just looks cheesier.

The whole movie is based on a fantastical premise, of course -- we're supposed to believe that Russ is being visited by an eight-year-old version of himself, and that several other people accept this on face value. However, as far as suspension of disbelief goes, it's a lot easier to accept this one basic premise than to have to accept the second one, that Russ kind of time travels back to his own childhood, and this creates an alternate timeline for Russ that may just be imaginary. We never quite understand in what reality pilot Russ with the mustache exists, and where that Russ goes. But young Rusty does finally disappear, and old Russ makes amends with Amy. The end.

So yeah, I really didn't like the ending. And so for the last ten years, I've been praising this movie a lot, when I should have been praising it only a little. How much did I praise it? Well, I ranked the first 80 minutes of Disney's The Kid as my 12th favorite movie of 2000. Out of the 58 I saw in time to qualify. Want to know what titles finished behind it in the rankings? How about Requiem for a Dream at #13? How about The Cell at #17? (Both of those would be top 10 if I re-did the rankings today.) How about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at #20? Yeah, I'll call myself out when it's justified.

So thank goodness for Double Jeopardy, as I can finally finish watching Disney's The Kid, and finally set the record straight -- in my own head, at least.

Double Jeopardy Verdict, Disney's The Kid: If the movie had wound down in the present tense with merely the conventional "Look what we can learn from the innocence of a child" message, it would have been a real winner, rather than just okay.