Here is my Top 10 list of the best movies of 2003, along with those of my fellow cultural buzzards. I'd love to tell you I sweated and strained over it, making sure to carefully weigh each movie against the other, with an eye towards creating the perfectly balanced list, with just the right number of foreign and arthouse films, quirky choices, and a worthy mainstream effort or two. I've done that in the past, but as I look over my previous lists (this is the fifth I've done for CV), I can only shake my head and wonder what I was thinking. My 2000 list is particularly baffling. Is it really possible that High Fidelity and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon meant enough to me to include them on the list? And Human Traffic? I guess I vaguely remember that. But Winter Sleepers and Girl on the Bridge - I think I was trying too hard to create that magically balanced list when I included those. And my enduring favorite movie of that year - O Brother, Where Art Thou? - isn't even on the list, because I hadn't seen it yet by the deadline.

The 2001 list is better - I'll definitely stand by Mulholland Drive, Ghost World and The Royal Tenenbaums. Including Linklater's Tape, however, was a real stretch. Last year's list just makes me shrug. It was a lousy movie year and I suppose I did my best, although in hindsight Gangs of New York should have taken the top spot.

This year, I took less than two minutes to scribble out my list. It looks okay to me at the moment. A little documentary-heavy, maybe, but it was a good year for docs. I had much more fun putting together my 10 Worst list, which should be showing up at the High Hat soon, presumably after the start of the year. Watch this space.