Other Top Ten Lists.
With the release of The Disaster Artist came a preponderance of articles heralding The Room as "The Worst Movie Ever Made." That specific phraseology troubles me for several reasons. The first (and least important) is that it's simply not true. Part of the charm of The Room is the baseline competency which serves to highlight its deranged aspects by contrast. It's clear that Wiseau threw a decent amount of money at the thing, and that there were at least a handful of bored but capable professionals working on it. There is an endless wealth of bad cinema out there. Using any criteria you could think of, I guarantee I could find a "worse" movie than The Room. It's arguably the most famous bad movie ever made, but it is not the worst.
The second thing I take issue with is our culture's continued insistence on extremes, binaries, polemics. Something is either good or evil, smart or dumb, best or worst. "The Room: One of the Many Bad Movies Ever Made" just isn't as eye-catching a title. Clickbait preys upon the easily beguiled. The sooner we can move toward a place of nuance and admit that things can be many-layered and multifaceted rather than singular and objective, the sooner we can properly converse with each other.
Finally, I hate that calling The Room the worst movie ever made is totally in violation of the spirit of the thing. The dopamine rush that comes with being a part of a consensus feels good, but we shouldn't be watching bad movies to fit in. Everyone's favorite movie, favorite bad movie, and least favorite movie should all be deeply personal, not adherent to some sort of quasi-objective regulating groupthink. Every time someone is ashamed to admit their favorite, or sheepishly refers to their preferred media as "guilty pleasures," we have lost an opportunity for empathy and celebration.
This is why top ten lists are heinous. They are so often used as a tool to exert critical supremacy over the taste of others, either by the author or by a reader. The audience consumes a list and fires back accusations of, "What, no _____???" The author gets defensive and feels the need to tear down other art to legitimate the art that they chose to feature. The cycle repeats.
Top ten lists are bankrupt for the same reason awards shows are bankrupt: It is ultimately absurd to compare different works of art based on an often arbitrary set of standards. The act of wielding one film to cheapen the impact of another is so counterproductive to the reason these lists were created to begin with.
Yet I still make top ten lists for two reasons. When top ten lists are made with openness and love, the year-end proliferation of them functions as a celebration of incredible art. Not only that, but we learn about each other. It reveals a lot about the critic-as-person to see their ten preferred films. It should be invigorating to step into another perspective, not frustrating. Reading a top ten list is a time to open yourself up to new ways of experiencing the world--something that the best movies do better than anything.
The other reason is more selfish. For me, making top ten lists is a lot of fun. There are tough calls to make, sometimes agonizing; it reminds me of the tournaments I used to wage with my favorite action figures. I love them all, but someone needs to come out on top. The act of culling--or to put it more generously, curating--can be engaging the way puzzles are engaging. Putting together a top ten list is a feat of trying to fit each piece into its truest or most aesthetically pleasing place.
