Even when a global pandemic hasn’t upended everything, year-end lists and surveys often strike a faintly apologetic tone, acknowledging up front that there’s something inherently frivolous about ranking films in preferential order (whether individually or collectively). “This is kinda dumb, but enjoy!” How, then, should I further diminish a poll conducted in the name of a publication that effectively no longer exists, conducted at the conclusion of a film year that can barely be said to have happened? Movie theaters in many major cities have been dormant since last March, and the Village Voice, which established the original freewheeling critics’ […]

When the Village Voice abruptly had its plug pulled by its final, Forbes-ranked owner two years ago, its annual film poll, which had been around since 1999, expired along with it. That needn’t necessarily have been the case—somehow, we still got a Pazz & Jop music survey last February, published on the paper’s semi-defunct website (which otherwise merely cycles through articles from the archives). The film poll was run by less obsessive and/or masochistically dedicated folks, apparently, which means that the task of insisting that it should continue, whether or not some tycoon chooses to bankroll it, has fallen to […]