The American Film Institute's Top 10

'Frozen River'

The AFI always seems more legitimate than most other groups that list the top 10 films of the year, probably because it has a crazily official-sounding title. Or because it's been around for more than forty years and is a terrific institute and has its own film festival and is generally considered to be the best.

Their (unordered) top ten:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Frozen River
Gran Torino
Iron Man
Milk
Wall-E
Wendy and Lucy
The Wrestler

A terrific and eclectic list indeed: not everywhere will you see massive successes like Iron Man and tiny indies like Wendy and Lucy on the same list.

Entertainment Weekly's Oscar Watch pulls out some interesting stats and what it means for the Best Picture race:

Slumdog Millionaire wasn't eligible, it being the American Film Institute and all. But the real news here is the omission of Doubt and Revolutionary Road. Viewed as an aggregate, the top 10s from the AFI, National Board of Review, and Broadcast Film Critics Association often very accurately help predict the eventual Oscar nominees. In the last six years, no American film has scored a Best Picture nomination without landing on at least two of the three lists. Doubt, meanwhile, has only been cited by the Broadcast Critics, and failed to earn a Golden Globe nod for Best Drama despite picking up five nominations in the acting and screenplay categories. And Revolutionary Road didn't make any of the three lists.

If the stats hold, leaving Doubt and Revolutionary Road out, then that might make for a pretty straightforward list of five Best Picture nominees:

Milk
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Slumdog Millionaire
The Dark Knight

...with The Wrestler as an alternative in case not enough Academy members go for a comic book movie.

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