We spend an awful lot of damn time on this here website complaining about the preemptive assessment of movies – how “year-end” award nominations start rolling out in freaking November, how “Oscar season” creeps earlier and earlier every year, you know the drill. So we should also stop to acknowledge a rare “year in review” poll that’s actually, like, reviewing the year. After it’s over.
The Village Voice dropped the results of their annual film poll this week (and yes, your correspondent voted in it, and contributed an essay too), and while it’s not a wild departure from the other film awards and lists of 2017 – you’ll see most of the same titles represented here – there are a few subtle twists. For example, the Voice-polled critics chose Phantom Thread as the year’s best film, indicating that Paul Thomas Anderson’s unorthodox love story lingered in the memory perhaps a bit longer than its contemporaries. (Or that the kind of critic they poll just loves PTA; he also topped the poll in 2013 and 2007.) And a few smaller picks that got bulldozed in the November/December consensus gathering – like Personal Shopper, Nocturama, and A Quiet Passion – made their way into the Voice top 10. Oh, and if there was any doubt that this was a very strong year for women, note that the “lead performance” winners, which do not separate by sex, include six women to only four men (and two of them were tied for ninth place).
Also: their top five for Best Documentary (Faces Places, The Work, Dawson City: Frozen Time, Wormwood, and Kedi) is comically better than the list of nominees for Best Documentary at next month’s Oscars.
Check out the results here.