WALL-E Named Best Picture by 'Film Comment' Readers

Readers of 'Film Comment' magazine have named WALL-E the best film of 2008.

The highbrow journal published by New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center invites readers every year to vote for their top films. Results are published in the new issue, dated March/April 2009.

It is terrific to see highbrow cinephiles embracing WALL-E. Frequently one feels as a cinephile a certain favoritism toward the avant-garde. But every now and again a major Hollywood studio surprises everyone and produces a mainstream film that is a major work of art. Disney/Pixar did this with WALL-E. (The film was also my personal choice for no.1 film of the year.)

Readers did not stop at WALL-E, however. They lauded another big-studio film, The Dark Knight, calling it the second-best film of 2008. This is surely the first time mainstream commercial films took the two top slots in the 'Film Comment' poll. (My personal list had Dark Knight as the seventh-best film of the year.)

Snobbery is clearly on the wane among highbrow cinephiles, and that is great news.  Art is art, regardless of who is financing it. If only the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences would catch this wave. They embarrassed themselves by refusing even to nominate Dark Knight for Best Picture. Rounding out the top 20 were:

3. Milk

4. The Wrestler

5. Slumdog Millionaire

6. Let the Right One In

7. Happy-Go-Lucky

8. Wendy and Lucy

9. A Christmas Tale

10. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

11. Man on Wire

12. Synecdoche, New York

13. Vicky Cristina Barcelona

14. Rachel Getting Married

15. Gran Torino

16. Paranoid Park

17. Waltz with Bashir

18. In Bruges

19. The Edge of Heaven

20. Frost/Nixon

It is surprising and saddening that Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely (my no.2 film of the year) was not on the list. I would have thought this postmodern, Fellini-esque fable would at least have gotten noticed by sophisticated filmgoers such as those who read 'Film Comment.' 

Happily, my no.3 film, The Edge of Heaven, was on the list, albeit in the 19th position. It's nice to see that I wasn't the only cinephile who noticed this magical little film from Germany. Given how poorly distributed it was in the United States, the fact that Edge of Heaven was on the Top 20 list at all is quite something. That shows how deeply it impacted the small number of people who were lucky enough to see it.

My no.4 film was also on the list: Synecdoche, NY. But my no.5 film, Snow Angels, was not. That's not such a bad record though. Of my top five films, three appeared on the 'Film Comment' Top 20.